NDP leader Tom Mulcair says his main job is to prepare the way for the next leader.Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press
Tom Mulcair says he is sanguine about his place in federal politics and the monumental task he has set for himself of rebuilding the federal New Democrats to the point where forming a government is not merely an exercise in wishful thinking.
He also says he will be content to eventually hand the party he has led for the past four and a half years to the person who will be its face during the next election. And he is prepared to step aside when that happens in the fall of 2017.
But, until then, he is in charge and, during that time, he intends to give Justin Trudeau and his popular Liberals a run for their money.
"I have that peace of mind of knowing that I am not running for anything. What I am trying to do, both with the staff team and the MPs, is to prepare the way for the next person, whether it's administratively, whether it's politically. And that's my main job," Mr. Mulcair told The Globe and Mail on Thursday in a suite of a downtown Montreal hotel where his caucus was meeting to plot its fall strategy.
He acknowledged that there will be challenges – not much of an admission when his party is languishing in the polls. The Liberals, on the other hand, are enjoying a period of sustained strength and a recent survey by the Angus Reid Institute suggests that Mr. Trudeau's popularity is the highest it has ever been.
"The ability of this new government to please Canadians who wanted progress is undeniable," Mr. Mulcair said. "The tough job for us is to say: 'Can you take a second look as to whether or not they [the Liberals] are actually doing it?'"
In keeping with that tone, Mr. Mulcair said he is experiencing what he calls, in French, a feeling of "quietude." The suggestion that he is at peace with himself and his party might sound hollow coming from a man who was rejected by a majority of New Democrats at a convention last April and has twice had to quell minor uprisings within his own caucus.
The most recent of those occurred in the past few weeks when unnamed New Democrat MPs told reporters that they believe the party would be best led by someone else.
They said Mr. Mulcair is a great orator in Parliament, but he does not have the will or the desire to work at the ground level to rebuild fundraising and the base of volunteers, both of which have been depleted since the 2015 election. And they accused him of being "absent" during the summer recess, when he could have been travelling the country and selling the NDP brand.
But the revolt, if you can call it that, does not seem to have been either widespread or strong. Mr. Mulcair emerged on the first day of this week's private meeting to say the discussion about his leadership had taken place and he had the "unanimous" support of his MPs.
Asked by The Globe to divulge what he said to convince them that he deserved to stay on as leader, he said he did not say much of anything at all.
"It was my colleagues who spoke amongst themselves," he said. "I am rarely emotional in meetings, but it moved me a great deal – the level of support, the very kind things that were said about my abilities in the House, and how we've managed to keep the party on a steady course."
As for the accusation that he took the summer off, it is at least partly true.
After going hard for years in the build-up to the last election, after a gruelling 11-week campaign, and after the months that followed in which he acclimatized himself and his New Democrats to, once again, being the third party in the House of Commons, he spent some time at his cottage. He swam a lot. He lost some weight, and he does look more fit than he has some time.
He is ready, he said, to be the leader his party needs for the coming year – Mr. Mulcair bristles at the term interim. "I am the leader, chosen by the members. So I am not an interim leader. And I think that is a point worth making," he said. "I have chosen not to run for my succession. Of course I could. But I am not going to. And that's a choice …"
Mr. Mulcair is particularly outraged that the current government voted in Geneva this summer against international negotiations to ban nuclear weapons. He plans to raise that matter often and forcefully in the House of Commons.
But, after what he has been through in the past six months – after fending off two coup attempts from within his own ranks, what would Mr. Mulcair tell the next leader of the federal New Democrats?
"I am going to tell them that it's the best job in Canadian politics," he said. "We are a party of passionate people and we are a party of true believers. So, yes, when you have true believers, you are going to have that passion express itself in different ways sometimes, and that's not always positive. But I think that the result long-term is always positive. It's to push us in the right direction."