An Open Letter to Thomas Mulcair—

I’m not really anybody. For demographic purposes you could segment me as a 50ish single woman with two children in their 20s, a self-employed professional living in downtown Toronto. I have no pension, no big home to sell and no expectation of a family inheritance. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if that makes me a middle class Canadian like you or a soon-to-be older woman likely to end up living in poverty.

I have voted NDP in every election, save one, and have many friends, smart people and committed social democrats that I respect and love, and who are doing everything they can to get you elected Prime Minister. It is, in my view, a terrible pity you are giving them so little so work with. As follows:

1. On the economy: You are making a balanced budget (a bit of a shell game according to many people who know a lot about money) the priority of your economic plan, despite the considerably well-known fact we need huge and immediate spending on our infrastructure, especially with the added stresses of extreme weather events caused by climate change. If you get into power, you (and all of us who will, unfortunately, bear the brunt of your priorities) will rue the day. On a personal note, I simply cannot stand the thought of four more years of an over-privileged white man in Ottawa with a good salary and pension harping about how, as a country, we cannot afford to do the things that matter most to people. Could it possibly be that this Thomas Mulcair Austerity Project means you are actually Stephen Harper-lite?

2. On the issue of whether you are a social democrat: The reality of your career is that you began to sit in the Liberal caucus of the Quebec legislature 1994. You served in that Liberal caucus and had a 3-year stint in the Cabinet of former Conservative MP, Premier Jean Charest until March 2007. Five months later you ran for the NDP in Outremont. You have been a Liberal for the majority of your political life. A question: has the 13 years you spent as a Liberal affected your thinking less that the 8 years you’ve sat as a federal NDP MP? Either way, it’s pretty shocking how quickly and completely a person can change his political spots on such a large scale and never be called on it. It makes your current critique sound a bit hollow and the overall NDP brand tilting to opportunistic.

3. On taxes: You seem to be all about the tax savings for the so-called middle class. What about the people who don’t make enough money to benefit from a tax break? Are they invisible? And what about the vision of building a great country together? Is that over for good now? Or is it just more important to have an extra hundred bucks in your pocket to make another run to Costco.

4. On the issue of pot: You refuse to commit to legalizing pot, even though people who work at the Centre for Mental Health and Addiction (CAMH), and who know about such things, believe that is precisely what needs to be done. You have only committed to decriminalizing small amounts—a far cry from the legalization and regulation our young people need and ordinary adults who like the occasional joint want. This is hypocrisy with a capital H—65% of Canadians support decriminalization. Plus that dumb Conservative click-bait line you threw out about Trudeau knowing all about puffs of smoke during the debate. I’m not interested, but I don’t think you are talking to me anymore. Perhaps it’s your potential conservative voters, who are attracted by your fiscal policies, that you don’t want to scare away.

5. Foreign aid spending: I saw the news article that you are not going to increase foreign aid spending, despite the fact that Canada ranked in the lower half of the OECD in foreign aid spending, dropping from .27% in 2014 to .24%. The UN’s target is .7% of GDP. Weren’t you guys involved in that .7% Solution campaign a few years back? This diminishing commitment is, of course, going to make that extra run to Costco possible (see #2) for the middle class, so perhaps you feel it’s all worth it in the end. The UNHCR will get along without Canada’s two cents. The sad thing is that, after 10 years of Harper’s foreign relations catastrophe, you will to continue make it look like Canadians don’t care about the rest of the world.

6. Party tricks: Politics is said to be a blood sport and not for the faint of heart, I know. But your commissioning and publicizing of a CROP poll in Trudeau’s riding of Papineau showing he was running behind the NDP candidate, a poll roundly criticized for its methodology by several pollsters including the self-regulating body they’ve formed to regain some credibility, the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, is a bit tricksy, don’t you think? But I won’t mention Stephen Harper again.

And, at last, it must be said, the recent reports of your 1996 description of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador left me stunned. You needed a synonym for the word “stupid” and you just picked the word “Newfie” out of thin air to get your point across? Stupid = Newfie?

I get it. It was almost 20 years ago. You were only 41 years old and a Liberal member of the Quebec legislature at the time. But the not so funny part of that, especially in those days, is that Newfoundlanders often did feel looked down on, less refined, less educated and poorer than the swanks on the mainland. I remember feeling like that and it wasn’t until a bunch of talented artists and comedians who held Newfoundland traditions up to be admired that I, and a good many more like me, became more proud than embarrassed about being a Newfoundlander.

You have no idea, do you? The smug confidence you have in your own intelligence was hurtful then and is hurtful now.

But that’s okay, Mr. Mulcair. Why don’t I just say that you acted like an arsehole and we’ll call it even?

GAIL PICCO, Toronto

Gail Picco is a strategist who has worked in the nonprofit sector for 25 years. She is the author of What the Enemy Thinks, a recent novel set in the nonprofit sector, and is Chair of the Board of the Regent Park Film Festival. She also writes about baseball and F1 racing.