The Leap Manifesto The Leap Manifesto is a document asserting support for indigenous rights, environmental protection and economic reform. First conceived in spring 2015 after Toronto meetings among many like-minded activists and advocates, it’s been signed by famous Canadians, like David Suzuki, Judy Rebick and Naomi Klein, and endorsed by organizations including Black Lives Matter Toronto and CUPE Ontario. What complicates matters for Mulcair is that it has also been embraced by more than a dozen NDP riding associations. The party will consider hundreds of resolutions submitted by riding associations and commission across the country, and that will include the Leap Manifesto itself, which has nearly 35,000 signatories so far. The Vancouver East NDP riding association, along with former MP Libby Davies, has proposed a resolution similar to the manifesto. Former MP Craig Scott told The Canadian Press late last month he plans to promote a resolution adopted by his Toronto-Danforth riding association that uses the Leap Manifesto as a starting point for policy discussion. Though he welcomed the input of new ideas, Mulcair himself didn’t officially endorse the manifesto when it was released in September. But given the support the Leaf Manifesto has within his party, along with the push by some in the NDP to orient the party more solidly to the left, he will likely have to address it.

On the first day of the new Parliament in 1997, Libby Davies found herself walking to the Senate to hear the Speech from the Throne, a tradition she was not entirely familiar with, and in the immediate vicinity of Allan Rock, the newly appointed minister of health. Davies—a former city councillor in Vancouver, co-founder of the Downtown Eastside Resident Association and a long-time activist in Canada’s most infamous neighbourhood—wanted then to talk to Rock about what havoc heroin was wrecking in her riding. “I introduced myself and I said, ‘Can I come and meet you? This is a life-and-death issue; people are dying of drug overdoses; we’ve got to stop criminalizing them; we need help,’ ” Davies recalls. Rock, she says, said he was delighted to meet her and that she could come and see him any time. “So I thought, ‘Well, this is amazing,’ ” Davies says. “I got back to my office and we wrote an email. We wrote a letter; we started phoning. Of course, they totally ignored us,” she continues. “After about a month or so, I thought, ‘Well, what would I do in my neighbourhood? How would I handle this?’ And I thought, ‘Okay, I know what I would do.’ So I went to his office and I walked in and I sat down and I said, ‘I’ve been trying to get an appointment for over a month. You haven’t replied, so I just want to let you know I’m not leaving until I get an appointment.’ ” She smiled, then took a seat.