Photo credit: "Ottawa Metro" Apr 21-24 2011
Ignatieff is now tete-a-tete with former Prime Minister Stephen Harper in polls across Canada. Layton still sits in second place there, however is now 1st in Quebec, kicking the Bloc off top podium.
Who knows, maybe the NDP will win, or at least become the main Opposition party (hopefully, to a Liberal government)?
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Fictional paper the day following the elections:
Photo credit: Mathieu Fortin
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The Star says:
Surging NDP challenges Liberals
April 21, 2011 00:04:00OTTAWA BUREAU
"The New Democrats are threatening the Liberals’ second-place status as a new national poll gives the party a reason to dream a little harder about playing a bigger role on the national stage.
Jack Layton has been riding a wave of popularity in Quebec over the past few days, with polls now putting him ahead of even the Bloc Québécois in that province and suggesting he could grab another couple of seats if not start building a caucus.
Layton, 60, told the Toronto Star on Thursday that he viewed growth in Quebec as key to showing the rest of the country — especially Ontario — that his party can be taken seriously in its quest to form government.
“We’ve never broken through in Quebec and I believe that unless you have built your foundation, all four corners of your foundation — and Quebec is one of those four corners, speaking metaphorically — then you’re never going to get there,” Layton said during an editorial board meeting. “You’re never going to be able to offer yourselves as the government of the country. And so I’ve been working eight years to build what is happening in Quebec right now.”
The orange wave that has been building steadily in Quebec, particularly since the televised debates where Layton was viewed favourably in both English and French, is something never before seen in Canadian politics.
If the support holds it could lead to a breakthrough for the left-of-centre party in the province, where it currently holds just one seat: the former Liberal stronghold of Outremont in Montreal, where deputy leader Thomas Mulcair won in a 2007 byelection.
Layton believes it is no coincidence that his party held onto that seat in 2008 — the first time in history the NDP won a Quebec riding in a general election — the same year it grew its Ontario caucus bigger than ever before.
“I think one of the reasons is the people of Ontario want to know that you’re serious and you’re not serious if you’re not present in a quarter of the country. I think those two things are linked,” Layton told the Star on Thursday. “I believe as we get stronger in Quebec, more and more people in Ontario are going to say: you know something? This party is actually serious. They’ve go the kind of diverse representation from across the country that could actually figure out how to take the country forward.”
There could also be a link between recent polls in Quebec and the Ipsos Reid survey released Thursday that put the NDP in second place with 24 per cent of the vote, three percentage points ahead of the Liberals but well behind the 43 per cent that puts the Conservatives in majority territory.
In the latest Angus Reid poll, conducted on April 15 to 16, one-quarter of respondents said they would vote for the New Democrats, putting them in a tie with the Liberals, who were also at 25 per cent.
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff dismissed the Quebec numbers by noting the NDP has never formed government, but with Layton now playing a bigger role in the race, his party platform — traditionally an afterthought in election coverage — could be coming under greater scrutiny.
Layton has been focusing on health care, job creation and help for seniors — issues he hinted would be his bottom line in any potential negotiations with other parties in a post-election scenario. But in Quebec he has been courting Bloc voters with some soft nationalism that could potentially get him in trouble in other parts of the country.
Layton insisted they are just practical solutions to what he views are obstacles in the way of Quebecers feeling more comfortable within Canada.
“Right now if you’re at an intersection in any city in Quebec and you’re working for a provincially regulated financial institution, and you’re a French speaker, you can speak French in your workplace and have the instructions about your work and your contract be in French, in the language that you understand best, whereas across the street if it’s a federally regulated bank you can’t,” Layton said. “We want that changed.”
It is clear Layton is already grappling with the paradox that greets every potential leader of our fractious federation, professing his support for increasing the number of ridings in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia while simultaneously arguing Quebec, as a founding nation, should have greater representation, too.
“This is all about statecraft in a complicated country,” Layton said. “I don’t minimize the challenge, but I think we should try to take it on and see if we can find a workable solution and probably there will be lots of algebra involved.”
The NDP has long advocated overhauling the electoral system through proportional representation and abolishing the Senate, but Layton said what he views as a major problem with the status quo — an underrepresentation of large urban areas — can also be addressed through targeted, coordinated legislation.
The NDP plan for Canadian cities includes bills his MPs have previously introduced in the Commons that offer long-term ways to improve access to affordable housing and public transit.
“I think that just making a campaign promise and putting some dollars in a platform that may or may not ultimately appear in budgets as we’ve seen so many times isn’t good enough,” said Layton, whose party has also proposed legislation surrounding child care and post-secondary education with the same philosophy in mind.
“I’ve always believed that we should construct a matrix of legislation that would deal with the fact that since the country was founded we have changed and we’ve now got cities that are significant in so many different ways.”".
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