Federal NDP leadership hopeful Paul Dewar said, if chosen to lead the party, his first priority will be the West.
“We need to have a western strategy,” he said, describing it as his priority in a range of regionally specific playbooks he feels are necessary to get the NDP elected.
The candidate paid a visit to the Sunshine Coast last week, speaking at the Roberts Creek Hall on Feb. 1.
He was the second candidate to speak to the region after Thomas Mulcair made the trip in December.
The party’s current slate of candidates has been campaigning towards the March 24 leadership convention in Toronto, where the next leader of the NDP will likely emerge to replace interim leader Nycole Turmel.
After the party made historical inroads in Quebec, a great deal of attention has focused on maintaining their power in the province that catapulted them to opposition status for the first time in the party’s history.
But for Dewar, his message has focused on “the next 70,” his vision of a strategic framework tailored to the specific desires of the country’s different regions, with the West taking centre stage.
“It’s not going to be guys in Ottawa telling me what our western strategy is. You can think of things like energy policy, you can think of things like getting into resource development,” he said. “All we have to do is go to ground, I call it — talk to people.”
Dewar also took the time to set his sights on Prime Minister Stephen Harper, criticizing him for a “rap sheet” that included heavy-handed policy directions on the Canadian Wheat Board, oil and gas pipelines, healthcare, defence and old age security.
“Harper and Flaherty put the offer on the table and then they go away,” he said with reference to the First Ministers conference held last January in Victoria, where discussions on healthcare garnered significant attention. “It’s like the flat Earth society with these guys.”
A political science professor at the University of British Columbia, Richard Johnston said the temptation for a fringe candidate to play the ‘western card’ could be a strong one in a leadership race that has flown under the public’s radar.
“You’ve got this unprecedented situation in which almost 60 per cent of their MPs are from Quebec, but there’s almost no organization on the ground, except to the extent that leadership contention has kind of created it after the fact,” he said.
Historically, the party’s base has been the western provinces, where the party used to enjoy high levels of popularity.
While provincially the party has seen support dip in Saskatchewan, Johnston said the current climate in British Columbia and Alberta has grown more favourable towards the party.
However, the irony of a western strategy is that in order to be successful in the West, a party has to prove it’s got what it takes to win in the East, said Johnston.
“You can’t do that without seats and votes in central Canada. At the moment, in fact, they have them. Can they keep them?”
A Jan. 25 Harris Decima poll of over 2,000 people put the NDP’s national popularity at 29 per cent, three points behind the Conservatives.
In British Columbia, the party’s lead on the Tories was 12 points, with the NDP sitting at 42 per cent popularity.
