The Candidate

by Noah Richler

  “Take a shot of Harper and the CPC’s Nixonian front bench of overweight male white thugs—Fantino, Kenney, Moore, Van Loan—and put another of the NDP’s diverse bunch beneath it with the slogan WE ARE YOU, CANADA,” I said. “And, while you’re at it, change the name of the New Democratic Party to the National Democratic Party, because you’re the only one that is. Look on the upside. You won’t need new stationery.”

  Craig, Nova Scotia–born and not given to histrionics of any kind, simply nodded. Barely. I talked about how it was important to any democracy that not just the “career politician” enters into the fray, and then we discussed, overtly this time, the feasibility of my candidacy either in Nova Scotia, where initially I had been imagining I might run, or in Toronto, as he’d intuited the party would prefer.

  “Would you run to lose?” Craig asked.

  Well, I thought, he would say that. Craig, damn it, had been my captain on the Oxford University hockey team for the all-important Blues match with Cambridge, thirty years before, when he’d benched me for the first two periods and nearly all of the third before putting me on ice for less than the final minute of a game already lost. The memory was an amusement more than a grudge (I was a lousy player), but I understood the point my friend was making. He’d been through several major life transformations—the Nova Scotian turned Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, the Osgoode Hall professor of law turned art gallery proprietor and now member of Parliament and democratic reform critic for the Official Opposition—and wanted to make sure I grasped the bigger picture; that I understood the magnitude of the life changes that just might occur despite the almost insurmountable odds of victory facing any NDP first-timer.

  Since Jack Layton’s death, Craig told me, the party had been slipping steadily in the polls.

  “Not an issue,” I said. “I’d be running so that Canadians would see that a fella whose own family has likely always voted Liberal thinks the NDP is the right choice. I want us to show that ours is more than a two-party system, and there’s an alternative to what we’ve known forever. Real choice is vital to the country. The idea that the NDP is able to lead is a good one across the board.”

  “So, would you?” Craig asked again.

  “Would I what?”

  “Run to lose.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Sure. I’ll run to lose.”

  A month later, Thomas Mulcair, the New Democratic Party leader, called me at the house my family keeps on the Digby Neck, in southwestern Nova Scotia. Mulcair and I had met once before, when Craig brought him by the stand in Riverdale Park at which I’d been flipping burgers and steaks for the Canada Day fair of the Chinatown community of nearby Gerrard and Broadview, a bit of holiday volunteering I’d enjoyed doing for a couple of years for Judy Ouk, a businesswoman and tremendous community advocate. Mulcair had been friendly then, and over the telephone was just as congenial. He spoke about the party’s plan for fifteen-dollar-a-day child care spaces—a subject I’d not spent much time thinking about as my wife’s two daughters were already of university age—but the pitch made sense. The man credited with having brought Quebec so dramatically into the fold sounded impressive and the call was flattering.

  “I don’t know that I can do this,” I said. “I’m worried about raising money—I’ve never had to do that—but, more so, that my past may get the party in trouble. You see, I was a heroin user in my late teens. Most of all, I don’t think my family is behind me.”

  We talked some more, the NDP leader upbeat all the while and, as I listened, I thought the press really needed to stop resorting to what seemed like the only photograph in their possession, of Mulcair on the floor of the House remonstrating angrily. Mulcair suggested that Sarah and I have dinner with him and his wife, Catherine Pinhas, but I’d made the point of my family’s recalcitrance well—likely too well. I did not hear from Mulcair again and in our house the subject of my running was as good as dead.

  Then, on October 20, 2014, Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent was run down and murdered in Quebec in what was being described as “a possible terror attack.” Two days later, the deranged Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a petty criminal and drug addict from Montreal, killed Corporal Nathan Cirillo while the reservist was on ceremonial guard duty at the National War Memorial. Zehaf-Bibeau went on to storm Parliament with his rifle, and died in the Hall of Honour after being shot thirty-one times. Ottawa was under lockdown and Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers, a figure of lethal calm at the scene, became the hero of the moment—though consternation at killing a man seemed writ deeply into his face when, the next day, Parliament accorded him a standing ovation. MPs had tweeted the terrible goings-on and yet despite the hyper-excited, even manic, responses of members of all parties finding themselves at the centre of the maelstrom—and, too, the zealous embrace of the drama by media stimulated by the new and made-at-home nature of the incident—the terrorist element of the narrative did not categorically hold. Many raised the issue of the perpetrator’s mental health. This aspect was less inflammatory and therefore less exciting a subject of discussion than the incident being one of “terror,” the latter interpretation providing an un-proclaimed dry run for the election slated to occur almost exactly a year afterwards. The major parties’ leaders all paid tribute to Corporal Cirillo and Warrant Officer Vincent. Harper described the Ottawa shooting as a “brutal and violent attack on our soil” and Zehaf-Bibeau as a terrorist, no surprise. Mulcair, to his credit, refrained from rushed judgment and called the act “criminal” and “cowardly,” referencing the shooter’s “attempts to get help, even to be in prison to get help” that, had they substance, meant Ottawa had not been “in the presence of a terrorist act in the sense that we would understand it.” Trudeau appeared more impassioned—certainly it was the first time I’d found him convincing—exhorting Canadians not to let “anger and perhaps confusion” win the moment. “Losing ourselves to fear and speculation is the intention of those who commit these heinous acts,” said Trudeau. And yet, within the week, Trudeau would side with Harper, describing the shooting as “motivated by political ideology.” “The RCMP was clear,” said Trudeau on October 29, “these were acts of terrorism.”

  Less than three months later, after the indubitable terrorist attack on the Paris offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo that killed twelve people on January 7, 2015, Harper made another speech true to form.

  “We are looking at additional powers to make sure that our security agencies have the range of tools available to them to identify potential terror threats and to [undertake] detentions and arrests and other actions where necessary,” said Harper. “The fact of the matter is this, ladies and gentlemen: the international jihadist movement has declared war. They have declared war on anybody who does not think and act exactly as they wish they would think and act. They have declared war and are already executing it on a massive scale on a whole range of countries with which they are in contact.”

  And yet, despite the gravity of the incidents in Paris and Ottawa, the unceasing Conservative rhetoric felt tired and hollow. The stern admonitions, so trumped up and ominous, were devices the government was repeatedly turning to because these were all they knew how to deploy—“Is it clear people?” tweeted Conservative MP Michelle Rempel during the House of Commons lockdown—but the fear mongering seemed the last tool of an atrophied arsenal. For a decade it had been used by Harper’s Conservatives as the barometer of anything and everything of political worth: as a gauge of party loyalty; of Canadian loyalty; as a rationale for domestic fossil fuel development; as a grant-deciding measure of the merit of artistic endeavour—even as a litmus test of allegiance and good conduct in business. By the end of the month, the Conservatives would initiate the passage into law of Bill C-51, a highly contentious set of provisions of power for police and security forces that would prompt responses in all the parties’ unofficial and then official campaigns—most of all, if not immediately, the NDP’s.

  On February 2, three days after the government introduced
Bill C-51, Green Party leader Elizabeth May said she would oppose it. May pointed out there were already sufficient permissions and safeguards in existing laws to oppose crimes that the bill was designed to quash ham-fistedly, and warned the powers it allotted the Canadian Security Intelligence Service would make of CSIS a “secret police force” and could be “applied to anything.” A particular concern was that the proposed laws would be used to curtail demonstrations against pipelines and energy projects by First Nations and environmental “activists” (a term that, under Harper’s government, was a softer way of saying “terrorist”).

  When the bill came up for its second reading on February 18, Mulcair and the NDP followed May’s lead. Trudeau, however, prevaricated, speaking of the proposed law’s “concrete measures”—such as strengthening the no-fly list, improving coordination between national security agencies and loosening rules around preventative arrest—as steps of which he approved. Trudeau also spoke of the necessity for “oversight and a review process,” which his party was committed to bringing in “after the next election” were they not approved by the committee in the interim. But then, on March 4, Trudeau told an assembly of University of British Columbia students his party was planning to support Bill C-51 because he didn’t want the Conservatives to “bash people on security” or to make “political hay” of the issue. An overwhelming number of Canadians reacted negatively to what was widely regarded as a weak stance of appeasement and opportunism, and support for the Liberals and their young leader dropped. Progressives were worried another violent incident at home or abroad would shore up Conservative support, but there was significant opposition to Bill C-51’s potential curtailing of civil liberties and what Trudeau himself had described as the government’s “fear narrative.” The store of vaguely focused Canadian anxieties about security, on which Harper’s expedient stoking of fear relied, was being exhausted.

  —

  This was encouraging. In an op-ed column for the Toronto Star in the wake of the Ottawa attack, I’d challenged the description of Vincent’s and Cirillo’s murderers as terrorists (“Were they financed? Were they part of a cell? With whom were they in communication?”). I’d written that “the ‘heart of our democracy’ is to be found in the spirit with which we imbue it—in the fair-mindedness that, not to be confused with ‘innocence,’ is the result of Canadians’ awareness of their good fortune and wanting to share it.” The article garnered kudos, enough to keep the idea of running in mind despite my family’s being opposed, and occasionally, in its wake, others would ask if I’d ever considered politics, typically no more than a gambit of conversation, but fanning the embers of an idea I’d not quite abandoned. At a downtown Toronto bookstore, I ran into the author John Ralston Saul, whose ideas about Canadian inclusivity, derived from the country’s experiences of First Nations, I shared. He was congratulatory about the piece and told me outright to make something more of it. Then, a few weeks later, I found myself at dim sum with a group that included the writer Margaret Atwood. She’d been supportive of my first book, which we both knew to be in a line with Survival, her groundbreaking consideration of Canadian literary identity. I said outright I was thinking of running, and now here she was nudging me on again, if cautiously.

  “Don’t be too clever,” said Atwood, leaning in to me close enough that I had no choice but to confront her intent, affixing gaze. “Keep your message simple. You use far too many words when you speak. And take a look at Leadnow—do you know what they’re doing, Leadnow?”

  “Yes,” I said. “They’re polling ridings and instructing voters which is the candidate most likely to turf the Conservative.”

  “That’s the most important thing,” said Atwood. “We have to get Harper out.”

  —

  April 8, 2015, 8:40 a.m.

  It used to be that I played squash to stay in shape, but come my late forties the habit was, as much as anything, a way to get out of the house for games in which the banter was more important than the ball. My partner was Doug Bell, author of Run Over: A Boy, His Mother and An Accident (Doug had been the unfortunate boy) and subsequently a political blogger for The Globe and Mail. He’d covered the 2008 and 2011 federal elections and the better sparring came during the coffees, lunches and drinks post-match. Our talk, however impassioned, was not going to lead to one iota of the country’s problems being solved, but that did not stop the flow of outrage, complaint and gossip, the two of us harping on like Statler and Waldorf, the curmudgeonly pair of old men in the balcony of The Muppet Show. The previous afternoon, I’d lost as usual. I always lost, unable my whole life to put away the last points of a game, as if there was something gauche about winning. Or I just wasn’t good enough and lacked the killer instinct. For someone else to judge.

  Now it was morning, and Doug and I were having the usual: the Toronto Star, the National Post and the CBC’s Metro Morning with coffee and toast—Sarah mildly entertained, maybe relieved that her stay-at-home fella was not rendered so eccentric by writing that he was entirely without friends. The Toronto Blue Jays’ season had started, news of Senator Mike Duffy’s trial for corruption was on the papers’ front pages, and Doug was repeating the case for my running that he’d made the night before over a couple too many whiskies “for the road.” Except there had been no road, only a train that he was not taking, and we’d known already he was staying the night. I was frying bacon and ignoring Doug urging me to think again, or that he was carrying the argument to Sarah, as was his habit: once more unto the breach, inevitably to be stonewalled with a “Noah’s not suited.”

  Never assume.

  “Okay,” said Sarah. “Run. You should. You need to.”

  —

  Sarah, the spouse:

  Noah wakes up in the morning and before he’s even had a coffee he’s thought of some way to save the world, some innovation that will revolutionize our lives and make things better. I’m so used to this that mostly I tune out. I’m forever saying, “Great idea, but who will implement it?” Be careful what you ask for. Over the period of about a year, I took note the idea of running for politics was looming large in his mind. My guy was making more and more comments that indicated to me that he was considering a career change—he was going to be the one to implement. He was serious, and the only thing keeping him from throwing his hat in the ring was my agreement, but I was dead set against it. We already had a busy life, my job was more than full-time running House of Anansi Press and, while it was true that we were empty nesters—both the girls off and following their own paths—we still had pets to care for, and plans to set up a not-for-profit arts centre in Nova Scotia. Also, I truly believed Noah was more effective writing about politics than participating in the game, but he continued to agitate—aided and abetted in this game of persuasion by his major domo, Douglas Bell.

  I’m not exactly sure what made me change my mind, but it happened sometime in the winter of 2015. Maybe the two of them just wore me down, though actually I think I came round to the idea that if he felt he could sacrifice his time and income to fight for his idea of a better Canada, then who was I to stand in his way? Why should he not put himself forward? It felt like I was being selfish to hold back my endorsement. So, reluctantly, I agreed.

  —

  April 8, 2015, 9:48 a.m.

  Sarah is at work. Doug has departed. I am in my office with three numbers for Tom Mulcair and I try his cellphone first.

  “Please stand by while we complete your long-distance call. To avoid this message, please dial one before a ten-digit long-distance number.”

  I try the number for Mulcair’s Ottawa office.

  “Votre appêl à été acheminé à un système de traîtement de la voix. Chantale Turgeon, chef de cabinet adjoint au bureau de Thomas Mulcair n’est pas disponible. Au signal veuillez laisser un message.”

  “Bonjour Chantale, ç’est Noah Richler qui appelle pour Thomas. Hi Tom. I wanted you to know that the discussions about your party and the upcoming elections
have been ongoing with my wife and a couple of close friends and I now have the home endorsement that I need to be able to run—if you still think that there’s, umm, a possibility of that. That’s what I want to talk about, being a candidate of yours—about contesting the nomination to be a candidate of yours, I suppose. And I’d like to do it in West Nova. Give us a call when you have a moment. All the best, bye.”

  April 8, 2015, 9:51 a.m.

  I try again.

  “Hello,” says the speaker at the other end of the line (an actual voice!), “Leader of the Opposition. Bonjour.”

  “Hello,” I say. “Is that Chantale Turgeon?”

  “I can transfer you if you like.”

  “Sure.”

  “Votre appêl à été acheminé à un système de traîtement de la voix. Chantale Turgeon, chef de cabinet adjoint au bureau de Thomas Mulcair n’est pas disponible. Au signal veuillez laisser un message.”

  “Salut, Chantale, ç’est Noah Richler qui appelle pour Thomas. J’ai laissé un message sur votre cellulaire. Si ç’est encore d’interêt à monsieur Mulcair, j’aimerai bien lui parler car j’ai maintenant la permission de participer in this very important election that’s coming up. I’m taking nothing for granted but perhaps Mr. Mulcair would be kind enough to call me, mon numéro je le laisse. All the best, bye.”