Thomas Mulcair is launching a membership blitz in Quebec, hoping to sign up a total of 10,000 new NDP members in the leadership race.
In a fundraising letter this week, the deputy NDP leader said Quebec remains key to the party’s hopes of winning the next general election in 2015. Mr. Mulcair said he wants to raise $30,000 by Sunday, with all of the money being directed to the membership blitz.
“Our gains [in the last election] in Quebec were the lynchpin to becoming the government-in-waiting, and they're the only way we can hope to defeat Stephen Harper in 2015,” Mr. Mulcair said in his letter.
“This is our chance to make Quebec's voice a permanent part of the NDP and make our strength in Quebec the foundation of an NDP majority government in 2015,” he said.
With eight candidates still in the race to replace Jack Layton as NDP leader, the various camps are tightly controlling information, including the amount of money that they have raised and the number of members that they have signed.
The Ottawa-born Mr. Mulcair, who is the party’s best-known face in Quebec, has weathered a storm this week over the fact that he holds a French citizenship in addition to his Canadian one.
By making a Quebec-specific pitch, he is trying to solidify his branding as the candidate who would be best positioned to maintain the NDP as a dominant political force in Quebec.
“Let's finish what Jack started,” Mr. Mulcair’s fundraising letter states. “Let's entrench Quebec voters in the membership of the NDP, sending a message that by working together, Quebec's support for the NDP is here to stay.”
According to numbers that were released last November, Quebec has 5.9 per cent of the party cards in the NDP, which will select its new leader in a preferential one-member, one-vote leadership ballot. By comparison, Quebec accounts for 23 per cent of the Canadian population, and almost 60 per cent of the members in the NDP caucus in Parliament.
Overall, the NDP had 100,000 members late last year. The deadline to sign up new members is February 18, while the new leader will be selected at a convention in Toronto on March 24.
