Apparently the NDP still exists:
The NDP leader’s stop in Sault Ste. Marie, which began Sunday and included meetings with community and labour union officials, continued Monday with a visit to Essar Steel Algoma.
Mulcair will move on to Manitoulin Island to discuss First Nations issues Tuesday, and to a meeting regarding rail safety in Sudbury Wednesday.
The Northern Ontario visits are part of a summer-long, nationwide Mulcair tour, which has been described as a “listening tour.”
It must be galling to be Thomas Mulcair right now. A decades long career spent climbing the greasy pole of Quebec politics. A quick ascent to the federal level and then, by the oddest stroke of luck, an unexpected death places you into the leader's role. It seems that with a bit of luck your old nemesis the Liberal Party might be finished after the next election. Happy days to be leader of the Official Opposition.
That is until the MSM started following around the latest bright shiny thing: Justin Trudeau.
While the Once and Future King is touring the sumptuous beauty of British Columbia, poor Tommy is wandering through the backwoods of Northern Ontario. The region is horribly neglected. An afterthought to provincial administrators in downtown Toronto. The area above the French River, sadly, has always failed to capture the imagination of Canadians.
The settlement of the West is one of the great romances of Canadian history, if not the greatest. The charm of the Maritimes is irresistible. The North's terrible majesty demands admiration. Quebec is Quebec. Southern Ontario is the center of English Canada, Toronto commanding the region like, well, an Imperial Capital around which all else revolves.
Northern Ontario is kind of just up there. Somewhere between Barrie and Winnipeg. What small romance that region conveys is from faded memories of the great mineral boom a century ago, and the twangy recollections of Stompin' Tom. Only he could make Sudbury Saturday Nights memorable. At least Hamilton has the virtue of being between Burlington and Niagara.
Poor, poor Tommy. There isn't a major media outlet that gives a damn about his "listening tour." Leader of the NDP shaking hands with a miners union representative doesn't make for great copy, especially not when competing with Justin's adorable family.
Mulcair's forlorn tour is to shore up the troops. The 2014 political touring season will be a warm up for the 2015 writ period. So 2013 is spent reminding all those loyal NDP voters in Sudbury, Timmins and Thunder Bay that all the important people in Ottawa still care about them. Or at least care about them showing up on election day 2015. Between then and 2019 they'll have manage as best they can.
There are serious issues facing Ontario's north, primarily how do you modernize a mining and industrial rust belt. But Tommy isn't interest in those issues. Serious reforms might piss off the unions and the NDP leader well remembers what happened to Bob Rae twenty years ago. Instead he's there to shake hands, smile, occasionally hector and above all wait. Wait until the MSM comes back to him.
Hopefully.
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