Mulcair tiptoes around Manitoba NDP

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This article was published 23/08/2015 (3916 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair was studiously, politely evasive when asked why Manitoba’s most prominent New Democrat was invisible when the federal campaigner was in town last week. Premier Greg Selinger took no spot on a podium, nor was he in the audience at the NDP’s rally Thursday night.

Mr. Mulcair told reporters he had seen the premier, but as for sharing the spotlight, well the federal NDP wants to focus on bringing its message forward, across the country, he stressed.

It’s not that the federal Opposition leader had nothing good to say about Canada’s least popular premier. In fact, “Greg and his government have done an amazing job, for example of keeping unemployment low,” he told one interviewer.

That’s conspicuously faint praise from the man who has been heard to extol the fiscal prudence of past NDP premiers, including Manitoba’s Gary Doer.

There wasn’t a lot of that brotherly back-slapping this time around. The provincial NDP is struggling to get a little bit of love out of Manitobans, still sore about a surprise hike to the PST and the government’s inability to tame deficits that have added more than $8 billion onto the province’s debt since 2010.

That painted Mr. Mulcair into a bit of a corner, when his campaign touched ground in Winnipeg.

He couldn’t embrace the Selinger government and its economic performance.

But an overt attempt to distance his campaign from the policies of the provincial government would jeopardize the door-knocking campaign of federal NDPers who rely on the support of party volunteers.

Federally, Mr. Mulcair and the party have accused the Harper Conservatives of mismanaging Canada’s economy and finances, pointing most recently to the Parliamentary Budget Office’s projection of a deficit for 2015/16. Stephen Harper’s fiscal management plan doesn’t work and is hurting Canadians, the NDP insists.

For his part, Mr. Mulcair has played coy about whether an NDP government would run deficits to stimulate the economy that remains fragile (Canada is on the verge of being declared officially in recession, once again). It’s a legitimate fiscal policy, supported by some economists because of the damaging effects that can flow from restraint.

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It’s also something Greg Selinger uses to defend his successive deficits and his administration’s refusal to commit to a hard and fast deadline for getting back to black.

These are early days, still, in the federal election campaign. It’s the honeymoon period when parties typically roll out pricey promises to catch the attention of the electorate while voting intentions are still relatively soft.

The parties are costing out their promises, but not their platforms. That usually comes after the halfway point of a campaign, but with this long campaign, who knows? For now, there’s some elbow room for temporary ambiguity on the fiscal policy. (While the Conservatives are holding fast to a balanced budge, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have refused to commit on whether they would balance the budget until getting a good look at the books.)

The NDP, however, has to contend with a historical view it is the “tax-and-spend” party, to reshape itself into a more centrist alternative to the Tories, to win the support of those who could otherwise vote Liberal.

That is why Mr. Mulcair opted to go it alone on his public appearances in Manitoba. Grip-and-grin sessions with a premier with a proven spending problem would be bad political optics. The last thing the federal NDP wants is to make Manitobans, and Canadians, nervous.