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A big believer in the LEAP manifesto, DiNovo would ensure the document was “front and centre” in party policy. The environmental treatise was championed by author Niaomi Klein and others are the NDP’s March convention, where it was debated and then punted to riding associations to consider whether it should be party policy.

She would also make diversity and LGBT issues a priority and would focus on lifting up marginalized voices within her caucus, the source said.

DiNovo is a strong advocate for higher corporate taxes and told the Toronto Star in January the federal party’s “balanced budget nonsense” contributed to its loss last October.

A month earlier, she told the paper the NDP needed to rethink its rush to the centre in recent years, a decision she has repeatedly criticized as the route of its recent electoral failures.

“Blaming the mainstream media and the Liberal strategists is a little like farmers blaming the weather,” DiNovo told the Star. “The only entity we can change as the New Democratic Party is ourselves.”

In 2014, she told the Torontoist that she felt Horwath was only part of the problem in an interview that hints at where she will take her leadership campaign.

“Whatever happened is not the leader’s issue alone…. This a problem of leadership generally, and there’s a whole strategic team involved in that,” DiNovo said following the departure of top staff from Horwath’s office. “You can change the strategists, you can change the chief of staff … those are probably good things to do. But at the end of the day it’s about who we are as a party and what we stand for that we need to look at as New Democrats.”