Strength of Conviction

September 28, 2015
In this accessible memoir, Mulcair, leader of Canada's New Democratic Party, writes that his deep philosophical convictions came from the values learned from his Irish Catholic father and French-Canadian Catholic mother. In a family of 11, he witnessed the necessity of consultation, cooperation, and conciliation, which translated into a lifelong commitment to honor dignity, respect, fair treatment and equal opportunity for everyone. Despite financial challenges, Mulcair acquired two law degrees by age 24 and began working in the Quebec department of justice, where he saw policy ideas translated into laws and acquired the fundamental foundation and impetus for his life's work. The book details his career in Quebec's civil service and provincial politics, where he earned the nickname of "Opposition Pit Bull." There are more personal views of Mulcair in chapters about his wife and soulmate Catherine and their family. In 2006, when federal parties began wooing Mulcair, Jack Layton and the NDP won him over, and he describes the party's remarkable rise in the 2011 election. Although the book is political and out just ahead of the 2015 federal election, it is written in a warm, friendly style that offers readers the opportunity to get to know the man who would be prime minister.

June 2, 2014
Not so long ago, Canada's New Democratic Party (NDP) was polling at single digit levels; its rise from this nadir to official Opposition marks a historic change few would have predicted in the 1990s or even the 2000s. Lavigne, the party's 2011 campaign director, offers an insider's view of this remarkable transformation and of the role played in it by the late Jack Layton, who succumbed to cancer a mere 113 days after his great victory. With an introduction by Layton's wife, Olivia Chow, the work provides a compressed history of Layton's NDP from leadership victory, initial missteps, to Opposition, with enough history to contextualize Layton's accomplishments. Each election cycle is discussed, and while it is true that the Liberals sabotaged themselves, it was Layton's vision that allowed the NDP to exploit the opportunity of the Liberal decline. The work is a well-organized history, concise and straightforward. Its one major flaw is its brevity; under three hundred pages, it fast-forwards though a decade of history. The reader will be entranced but may wish for a more in-depth study. Agent: Rick Broadhead, Rick Broadhead & Associates.