In a recent commentary about women and politics, we left out Catherine Pinhas, New Democratic Leader Thomas Mulcair’s wife for the past 47 years. The reason she was not mentioned is that she is not political. She takes him away from the political world and is not your typical mistress of Stornoway, the Official Opposition Leader’s residence in Ottawa’s Rockcliffe Park area. Being apolitical, she can be both a help and a hindrance to her husband.
Mind you, being apolitical is not necessarily as much of a negative influence as it was with Maryon Pearson when her husband was Opposition Leader and then Prime Minister. The usually reserved Mrs. Pearson made it very clear to media and the PM’s political aides that she considered his running the country to be something of a bother to her.
Catherine Pinhas would be much more of a refuge for Thomas Mulcair and both claim her support of his political activities to be a positive bond. The only negative would be her maintaining her French citizenship. Nobody has really dug into what it means to have a citizen of a foreign country as wife of the Opposition Leader or as wife of a potential Prime Minister. As Mulcair holds dual citizenship with Canada and France, there could be many questions asked of his possible conflicts as well.
Those of us who have followed the actions of Mulcair in the Leader of the Opposition role probably consider chances of him becoming Prime Minister as quite remote. Most political analysts see him and the New Democrats reverting to third party status after the next election. In the meantime, he can enjoy Stornoway.
You would have to be something of a parliamentary channel devotee on television to appreciate Mulcair’s excellent role prosecuting Prime Minister Harper’s more grievous errors and choices as Prime Minister. The opposition leader has been in full flight on the Senate scandal and more recently on the quite inappropriately named Fair Elections Act. While Mulcair has been doing this vital job, Justin Trudeau has been out across the country laying the groundwork for the next election. It is the election that both Harper and Mulcair will lose.
And Thomas Mulcair knows it. It is not just the polls. Polls change but people do not change their basic nature. You could see it in Mulcair’s attack the other day on Trudeau. You could see his frustration in accusing Trudeau of knowing nothing about the middle class. You could see it in his saying that he was the only federal party leader who could vote in the Quebec provincial election. It was petty. It was futile. He said that he voted Liberal.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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