Disgusted by how Tom Mulcair was treated at the NDP’s last convention and convinced he’s the party’s most capable leader, Dale Jackaman — a three-time federal candidate — is leading a new grassroots movement to bring Mulcair back as the party’s leader on a permanent basis.

“I was sickened and angered at the treatment Tom Mulcair got at the convention in Edmonton and I remain angry to this day — it never went away — and there are a lot of other people who are angry too. The convention was a sham — it was a disaster — and we just decided we want him back,” Jackaman told iPolitics Wednesday.

On August 26, Jackaman launched the “Bring Back Tom Mulcair Campaign” Facebook group with a post that explained what they were up to.

“The realists in this party know full well that the federal NDP is going to be sitting in opposition for a good long time. And, thanks to the total disaster that was Edmonton, we just hung our best and brightest political gunslinger out to dry!” that first post said.

“We need to convince Tom to hang in there for the good of the party and the country. We need Tom. Canada needs Tom. Case closed.”

It’s attracted 1,650 supporters so far, and Jackaman insisted Mulcair knew absolutely nothing about it.

Mulcair didn’t meet the party’s 50 per cent leadership review threshold at its Edmonton convention in April — he got 48 — but Jackaman’s group believe the process was flawed because “less than one-percent of the membership had a chance to vote.”

Though Jackaman said he’s been told future leadership review votes will be open to all members and thinks this one should be negated, his understanding is that redoing the April vote would require a constitutional amendment — which is extremely unlikely.

“It was unfair and unethical. But right now there is a leadership convention and we want Tom to run for the leadership again,” he said.

On Wednesday, Jackaman — who ran in the Richmond, B.C. riding in 2004, 2008 and 2011, finishing third all three times — said that the current absence of leadership candidates had nothing to do with their decision to form the group.

But he also doesn’t think the names he’s heard bandied about so far are in “Tom’s class”.

“Tom is probably, I feel, the best opposition leader we’ve had in decades…and that’s what we need. We got clobbered by the Trudeau wave. That wave is not going bye-bye anything soon. Canada seems to be happy with their government. But we have traditional role to play as opposition and we need Tom to do that,” he said.

The campaign, Jackaman said, will be Facebook-based and target NDP supporters alone.

“It is a very focused campaign,” he said.

The party is scheduled to choose Mulcair’s replacement through as many as five rounds of preferential balloting in October 2017, with results announced in “mini-conventions” in different locations across the country and the new leader selected no later than October 29.

At the request of the NDP caucus, days after the April convention, Mulcair agreed to stay on as leader until the new one is picked.