The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports that Opposition Leader Jack Layton, who led his left-wing and historically third-place New Democratic Party to a stunning second place in this year’s recent election, has died at age 61, after a long battle with cancer.
Layton was an unusual politician, in that he came from a political dynasty –Â but from the opposite side of politics, with his grandfather and his father having both served as cabinet ministers in Quebec and federal conservative governments, respectively. For his own part, though, Layton joined his country’s social democrats and built his political career in Ontario, leading the left to victories on the Toronto City Council.
He went on to lead the federal NDP through four elections, and their greatest ever result in the election of May 2011 — when they pushed the historically dominant, moderate-progressive Liberal Party all the way into third place, though at the same time witnessing Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper win a majority of parliamentary seats for the first time.
Layton previously announced in February 2010 that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, but remained as NDP leader while being treated. This past July, however, Layton stepped down from an active role as NDP leader, announcing a new cancer diagnosis. His passing now puts Canadian politics, which has been in great flux, into a newly uncertain place.
The NDP’s breakthrough this year came in large part from a massive breakthrough in Layton’s original home province of Quebec — home to the country’s French-speaking minority, where cultural nationalism and even secessionist political movements have presented serious social challenges ever since Britain acquired the area after the French and Indian War in the 1760s. Layton’s party, who historically were close to non-existent in the province, won a huge majority of seats, virtually wiping out the secessionist left-wing Bloc Quebecois that had dominated federal politics there since the early 1990s.
Since Layton stepped down in June, though, the NDP has struggled to perform the balancing act that Layton did in appealing to the province as part of a united Canada. The biggest blunder came with the appointment of their new interim leader, former public employee labor union leader Nycole Turmel from Quebec — who was revealed to have been a card-carrying member of the separatist Bloc Quebecois until she just recently became an NDP candidate for the recent election. Turmel has maintained that she was not a separatist herself, but regardless the story itself has not helped the party.
Layton’s death puts the NDP at a crossroads, with it unclear whether it can continue successfully without Layton’s personal popularity. If the party handles the situation effectively, it could potential overcome the growing pains of finding itself as such a major player in national politics — having never won national office, but have actually governed on and off in several provinces — and go on to big things.
But if the cards aren’t played correctly, the NDP could find its recent breakthrough fleeting — and possibly fall again to historic lower results, with the centrist Liberals returning as the country’s main progressive party. Though of course, there are also a great many other variables, and the ultimate outcome will depend not only on the NDP’s actions, but on what the Liberals do in their own efforts to recover, and how the Conservative government performs on its own.
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