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A couple of months ago, when the NDP were surging in the polls, senior campaign adviser Brad Lavigne was asked what the momentum shift meant for the party and leader Tom Mulcair.

“It means closer scrutiny,” Lavigne replied, “as it should.”

It certainly does. Nobody much cared about Mulcair’s economic and foreign policy positions when the NDP was languishing at 20 per cent and third place in the polls last winter. But being the front-runner, north of 30 per cent; that’s different.

The NDP didn’t expect to find themselves in first place going into the summer pre-campaign season. Their objective was to grow into the mid-20s by summer, and become competitive with the Liberals for second place as the party representing change. Their bottom line for the election was to hold onto what they had — Official Opposition for the party and Stornoway for Mulcair.

The NDP were already in the mid-20s in their internal polling in the spring, when along came Rachel Notley in Alberta. Her historic victory in early May gave the federal NDP brand another five-point bounce in the polls.

And here they are, under closer scrutiny.

Last week, Maclean’s dug up an old story that after Mulcair quit the Quebec Liberals in 2007, he was in talks with the Harper Conservatives to become an environmental adviser to the government. The story quoted former PMO staffer Dimitri Soudas that the negotiations broke off over money. Soudas used to plant stories about Liberals, but now that he’s become one, he’s put out one out about Mulcair.

More likely, as Mulcair’s office maintains, he was not negotiating his future with the PM’s deputy press secretary of the day, but with a much more senior official, probably Ian Brodie, then PMO chief of staff. As a former Quebec environment minister, Mulcair would have been an excellent choice as head of the National Round Table on the Economy and the Environment. Instead, he was recruited by Jack Layton to run for the NDP in the Outremont byelection in 2007. And his life turned out very differently.

On a more serious note of closer scrutiny, Mulcair had a bad moment in the last week of the parliamentary session. In a CBC radio interview, he was asked about his plan to increase the corporate tax rate. He said it should be “closer to the G7 average…somewhere in the 18-19” per cent range, while the Canadian rate is currently “12-13, something like that, right now.”

No one in Quebec has been talking about the Sherbrooke Declaration, the Clarity Act, or anything else about what it takes to break up Canada. No one in Quebec has been talking about the Sherbrooke Declaration, the Clarity Act, or anything else about what it takes to break up Canada.

Actually, it’s 15 per cent. And Mulcair should have known that. In the House the next day, the Conservatives pounced.

“Yesterday, of course, he was out there saying businesses need to pay higher taxes,” Stephen Harper began. “When asked what is the tax rate exactly, well, he didn’t know, and stated it three points lower than it actually is.”

For good measure, Finance Minister Joe Oliver added: “He doesn’t even know what the tax rate is, and yet he wants to raise it.”

Ouch! To his credit, Mulcair blamed himself for the mistake. “I’ll take responsibility, as I always tend to do, for any lack of clarity,” he said. “That would be my fault.”

Mulcair has some interesting ideas for business that would move the NDP from the dogmatic left closer to the pragmatic centre of economic policy. For example, he wants to cut the small business tax from 11 to 9 per cent. But as part of the larger conversation on the economy, in terms of his own credibility he needs to be in command of the file.

Then, over the St.-Jean Baptiste holiday, Mulcair noted in a speech in Quebec City that he was proud of the NDP’s 2005 Sherbrooke Declaration that “50 plus 1” was all that was needed to pass a referendum on Quebec independence.

This has always been the default position of every party in the National Assembly, going back to the first referendum in 1980.

But after the scare of the 1995 referendum, when Canada came within a single percentage point of breaking up, the Chrétien government referred the question to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 1998 that it required a “clear majority” to a “clear question”, which led to the Clarity Act in 2000.

No one in Quebec has been talking about the Sherbrooke Declaration, the Clarity Act, or anything else about what it takes to break up Canada.

But Mulcair’s comment did not pass unnoticed by the Liberals or Liberal precincts such as the Toronto Star. Justin Trudeau accused Mulcair of “pandering” to the nationalist vote and practising a “divisiveness that is irresponsible for a prime minister.”

Trudeau told Canadian Press: “On St.-Jean Baptiste, Quebec’s national holiday, that Mr. Mulcair would decide to make this announcement about repealing the Clarity Act and making it easier to break up the country is just the worst kind of politics.”

Mulcair didn’t say anything about repealing the Clarity Act, but it’s a fair question of whether he would as prime minister. And now that he’s raised it inferentially, it’s bound to come up in the leaders’ debates.

While it might be a winner on the margins in Quebec, it’s a loser in the Rest of Canada. A big loser.

Closer scrutiny goes with the territory of being first in the polls. It also challenges Mulcair and his team to raise their game. And now, back to the Happy Tom Tour.

L. Ian MacDonald is editor of Policy, the bi-monthly magazine of Canadian politics and public policy. He is the author of five books. He served as chief speechwriter to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney from 1985-88, and later as head of the public affairs division of the Canadian Embassy in Washington from 1992-94.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.