OTTAWA—The NDP is trailing far behind its rivals in choosing candidates for the coming federal election, but the party’s campaign co-chair says the lag is because of efforts to attract diverse nominees and that New Democrats will be ready whenever the writ drops.

Less than seven months before Canadians are scheduled to take to the polls, the NDP has nominated 42 candidates, with incumbent MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau selected Wednesday night to run again in the Quebec riding of Berthier—Maskinonge.

That amounts to confirmed candidates in 12 per cent of the 338 federal ridings in Canada — a tally that puts the NDP way behind other major parties. As of this week, the Conservatives have confirmed candidates in 226 ridings and the Liberals have “more than 170,” party spokespeople told the Star. The Green Party, which has one seat in the House of Commons, has nominated 70 candidates.

In a phone interview Wednesday, NDP campaign co-chair Marie Della Mattia downplayed the party’s relative dearth of nominees. She said another 32 nomination contests are already scheduled before the end of April and that the party will be ready with a full slate of candidates even if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unexpectedly breaks with Canada’s fixed-date election law and drops the writ this spring.

Even so, Della Mattia said the NDP takes longer to secure nominees because of rules to ensure efforts are made to attract a wide range of candidates — including women, racialized people and members of Indigenous communities, and those who identify as LGBTQ or disabled. Local riding associations need to prove outreach efforts to the party before they nominate their candidates, and the party wants more than half of its candidates this year to be women, trans or non-binary people, she said.

The Liberals introduced a similar requirement this year for associations in ridings without a Liberal MP. The party requires associations “to document a thorough search for potential women candidates and other candidates who reflect the demographics of the community,” according to its website.

But Della Mattia said the NDP is also taking time to allow for robust nomination contests in ridings such as Nanaimo—Ladysmith, a B.C. constituency where a high-profile Indigenous chief and community activist are squaring off to run for the party in a coming byelection.

“What we’re trying to do is build into our process the time and space for those conversations to happen,” she said.

“It just takes longer for us.”

At the same time, the NDP is looking for candidates to replace the host of incumbent MPs that has moved for the exit door since Jagmeet Singh became leader in October 2017. Fourteen of the 44 New Democrats elected in 2015 have either resigned their seats, announced they won’t seek re-election this year or — in the case of Saskatchewan’s Erin Weir — have been expelled from caucus.

Most of the remaining incumbents have been confirmed as candidates, but two told the Star this week that they remain undecided. Christine Moore, the MP for the Quebec riding Abitibi—Témiscamingue, said by email that she will decide whether to run again after she gives birth in the coming weeks. And Pierre Nantel, another MP first elected in the 2011 “Orange Wave” in Quebec, is also “still in reflection” on whether he will seek re-election, his office confirmed.

Robin MacLachlan, an NDP strategist and vice-president at Summa Strategies in Ottawa, said it’s still too early to get concerned about the NDP falling behind on candidate nominations. If there are organizational delays, though, he said they could be explained by the party’s all-out focus on Singh’s byelection campaign in the B.C. riding of Burnaby South, which he won Feb. 25 to become a federal MP for the first time.

“There’s no doubt that there’s a lag that we’re trying to catch up from,” he said, adding that “there’s no way to sugar-coat the situation” where incumbents retiring and party fundraising has dropped from $18 million in 2015 to around $5 million last year.

But he described the turnover as a “natural changing of the guard,” and pointed to new candidates competing in long-held NDP ridings like Hamilton Centre, where local city councillor Matthew Green is vying to inherit from party stalwart David Christopherson, who was first elected there in 2004. MacLachlan also pointed to well-known candidates like former MPs Svend Robinson and Andrew Cash running again for the party.

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“There’s a new leader, and he’s breathing new life into the party. But it’s clear that he was starting from the position of great challenge: not having a seat in the House of Commons, the NDP having not formed government in the 2015 election and NDP members feeling a bit of malaise after that election,” MacLachlan said.

“He has to simultaneously demonstrate that he’s up to that challenge in the House of Commons while making sure that the party apparatus is nominating the right candidates.”

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