NDP MP Thomas Mulcair has a reputation for speaking his mind.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
He's whip smart, aggressive and hot-tempered in both official languages. He's also poised to become a major player in Canadian politics.
Expect to hear a lot more from Thomas Mulcair should the NDP, as polls suggest, ride a wave of support from Quebec to form the Official Opposition - or even government.
As the party's finance critic, the Montrealer is its chief economic spokesman - a sensitive role now that markets are taking a much closer look at the NDP. On Friday, NDP Leader Jack Layton had to clarify himself to correct an impression in a previous interview that he was weighing in on the Bank of Canada's interest-rate decisions.
A fierce debate is already playing out over what the election outcome will mean for the economy. A Bloomberg analysis reported that since 1979, Tory victories are better than Liberal victories when it comes to stock market gains. Separately, a senior CUPE economist reported that NDP governments in Canada - which have only been elected provincially - have a better track record for balancing the books than Conservative and Liberal governments.
Conservative Finance Minister Jim Flaherty spoke to the media at a Whitby, Ont., gas station Friday warning NDP environmental policies would boost gas prices. Both Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff and Mr. Layton accused the Tories of campaigning on fear.
"It's time that these companies absorbed some of the cost of their pollution," Mr. Layton said.
In addition to the finance beat, Mr. Mulcair has extensive background in two of the party's most controversial files: Quebec language rights and environmental policy.
He has introduced legislation that would make French the mandatory language for federal institutions in Quebec. He's also a former environment minister in the Quebec Liberal government who is well-versed in cap-and-trade measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Albertans take note: To Mr. Mulcair, it's tar sands, not oil sands.
First elected federally in a 2007 by-election, Mr. Mulcair's surprising victory for the NDP in Outremont laid the blueprint for what polls suggest is now happening across Quebec: leapfrogging into first as the Bloc Québécois vote collapses.
As the NDP's only Quebec MP, Mr. Mulcair boosted the party's presence dramatically in the Quebec media, allowing him to secure more high-profile candidates. Mr. Layton will owe his Quebec lieutenant big time if the party pulls off an upset in the province.
Mr. Mulcair is known for his sometimes testy exchanges in committee with Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney. The two locked horns last October when the NDP MP accused the Governor of allowing a "revolving door back to the private sector," in relation to a temporary position at the bank for Tim Hodgson, an investment banker from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., where Mr. Carney also used to work.
The relationship between the bank and a strengthened NDP will be worth watching, given the long-standing and fiercely guarded view that central bankers in advanced democratic economies are supposed to be free from the slightest perception of political interference.
Finance and the central bank have until the end of 2011 to decide whether to renew or tweak the current five-year inflation-targeting regime, which regulates the cost of borrowing to keep price increases to about 2 per cent a year.
Those negotiations could be trickier than expected, especially if NDP leaders actually do question Mr. Carney's judgment behind the scenes as he decides what to do with interest rates.
Relationships between finance ministers and central bankers are never perfect, but they do matter. During the Diefenbaker administration, former governor James Coyne resigned after he and finance minister Donald Fleming had a number of public disagreements about economic policy. And after John Crow's laser focus on inflation was blamed for Canada's recession in the early 1990s - and in part because of his less-than-diplomatic defence of his approach in the face of criticism - the Chrétien Liberals decided against reappointing him once they took office.
"I'm quite confident that the Bank of Canada would try to work with anyone," said Kevin Milligan, an economist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. "But there might be some adjustment to working with a new finance minister such as Mr. Mulcair.''
With a report from Campbell Clark in Kamloops, B.C.
Bill Curry