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He informed us how well he handled the attack on Parliament: “My address to the nation sought first and foremost to reassure Canadians.”

Few politicians have ever spoken so warmly of their own motives. Self-doubt, ambiguity and nuance don’t exist for him. From the title of his book to its last sentence, Mulcair takes great pains to assure us of his good feelings, his earnest hopes, his excellent intentions. He wants not power or fame but merely to do his best for the people.

Actually, he doesn’t say “the people,” or not often. Nor does he call us the public, or the voters, or the citizens. He prefers to speak of “Canadians,” in case we might assume otherwise that he was doing his best for the Lithuanians or the Brazilians. This is a verbal tic of Ottawa people, long the favourite of Jean Chrétien. Mulcair likes it so much that he uses it up to four times on one page. He says in the first line on page 139 that “what Canadians needed was a breather” from politics. In the same paragraph he speaks of the NDP trying to limit “the damage from government policies to Canadian families.” In the next paragraph he says the NDP worked “to benefit Canadians” by influencing the government to extend unemployment benefits. Before that paragraph ends we learn that this proved the NDP could “improve the lives of Canadians.”

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When searching for a phrase, Mulcair always opts for the well-worn. He believes his policies are new but in Strength of Conviction he deploys words from the ancient phrase-book politicians always keep handy. He says we’ve suffered under the old parties from “ever-diminishing expectations” when what we want is a good and decent Canada with a government that keeps its promises and no one is left behind. In the upcoming election, when Mulcair has a chance to become prime minister, we can attain these goals, if we manage to stay awake.

National Post

robert.fulford@utoronto.ca