Heather McPherson entered the NDP leadership race on Sunday afternoon, telling supporters that she intends to unite her party and lead them out of their worst federal election performance ever.
McPherson is the second major name to publicly announce they’re running after former leader Jagmeet Singh resigned following the April election results. Joining her is activist and well-known journalist Avi Lewis, who launched his campaign a little over a week ago.
While McPherson may not have the same name recognition as Lewis, she assumes unofficial front runner status, as she is the only candidate who currently holds a seat in the House of Commons.
Rob Ashton is among the leadership candidates listed on the Elections Canada website. Political activist Yves Engler has announced that he’s running for leadership.
The Edmonton-Strathcona MP chose to launch her campaign in her electoral district focusing on a new vision for a federal New Democratic Party that is a big political family.
CBC News obtained an early copy of her speech.
McPherson began the speech by speaking about her roots — her stay-at-home mom and truck-driver dad and their “loud and chaotic” family dinners where “no one was turned away.”
To make a seat for everyone inside their home, she recalled how they would “take the doors off the hinges” and turn them into makeshift tables to make sure “everyone was included.”
Inclusion was a running theme throughout McPherson’s speech, which noted that fractured communities and divisive politics “doesn’t reflect those values anymore.”
McPherson said she is running to bring people together.
Though it didn’t outline any new policy direction the party might take under her leadership, McPherson’s speech reiterated her commitment to fighting for fair wages that rise with the cost of living, affordable housing, cutting grocery prices and public health care and education.
For years, McPherson has served as the NDP’s foreign policy critic, a record she referred to in the speech, mentioning how she fought for justice in “Ukraine and Palestine.” She said she’d taken on those and other battles “out of a belief in fairness,” which she noted also meant “condemning genocide wherever we see it.”
McPherson mentioned Prime Minister Mark Carney only once, calling him “a conservative Prime Minister in a Liberal jersey.” But she name-checked Conservative leaders several times, including Alberta’s premier and the federal Opposition leader.
“Danielle Smith, Pierre Poilievre and others across the political spectrum thrive on division. They turn politics into us versus them, workers versus environment, urban versus rural,” McPherson said.
“We won’t grow that way. We don’t grow by pushing people out. We grow by bringing people together.”
McPherson also said the recent election should remind the NDP movement that it needs to do better, referring to candidates who were defeated in the last election, like former Edmonton MP Blake Desjarlais and Edmonton Centre candidate Trisha Estabrooks, noting they should be sitting in the House of Commons on the NDP benches.
“We need to change,” she said. “Not what we believe but how we talk about it and who we talk to.”
Early on in her speech, McPherson noted that the party needs to be inspired again by the big ideas that drove successful NDP leaders like Tommy Douglas, Jack Layton and Rachel Notley, as opposed to “shrinking into purity tests and pushing people away.”
“Instead, we need to meet people where they are … and listen. We need to stop dividing our movement,” she said, noting the key to building a winning campaign was in “communities, not Ottawa backrooms.”
She called for “more resources for the grassroots,” saying the party needs to “invest in our members and trust our base again.”
McPherson ended the speech by saying that an election “could come as early as this spring,” and noted that the party needs a leader who is ready to campaign and organize.
