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opinion

New Democrat MP Nycole speaks to reporters Thursday July 28, 2011 in Ottawa after being chosen interim party leader.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel is not the first Canadian politician to have changed her stripes, but the decision to invest a long-standing sovereigntist with the interim leadership of Canada's Official Opposition is a serious political miscalculation that speaks to an incapacity in the NDP, beyond whatever form of cancer ails Jack Layton.

Ms. Turmel's appointment has emphasized a vulnerability that has plagued the party from the time of the election, by justifying concerns over the NDP's Quebec caucus and indeed its Quebec policies, including its support for the extension of Quebec's provincial language law to federally regulated employers and Mr. Layton's commitment to protect Quebec in any redistribution of House of Commons seats on the basis of population.

Mr. Layton may have done Canada a service by having attracted a number of Quebeckers like Ms. Turmel to the federalist side, in the process relegating the Bloc Québécois to a rump in the current Parliament. But he and the party's management should have paused to reflect on the consequences of appointing such a person to such a position. Not since Lucien Bouchard and Gilles Duceppe has someone whose loyalty to federalism appeared so tepid and fair-weather served as leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition.

It would be one thing had Ms. Turmel been a Bloc supporter in, say, the 1990s, and long ago renounced that affiliation, becoming an outspoken federalist in the process. But her conversion only came this January. Even then, she wrote a letter to the Bloc that her membership cancellation "has nothing to do with the party's policies, I am doing this for personal reasons." Chief among the "party's policies," of course, is the promotion of Quebec sovereignty.

As if her Bloc past were not enough, Ms. Turmel was revealed on Tuesday to remain a supporter of Québec solidaire, a provincial party dedicated to socialism and sovereigntism. The NDP defended Ms. Turmel's Bloc membership as being a merely a gesture of support for a friend. What then explains her Québec solidaire membership?

If Mr. Layton, who publicly declared for Ms. Turmel when he announced his leave for cancer treatment, and the party's council, knew of her history and still backed her for the interim leader's job, then they are reckless with the trust given them by Canadians. If they did not, then they are incompetent. Either way, the NDP's suitability for the role of government-in-waiting is at best tenuous, unless the government in question is that of a sovereign Quebec.

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