A turtle recruitment in Quebec for the NDP

(Ottawa) Two weeks away from the likely federal election, New Democrats reveal the identity of their 29^e rookie in Quebec. We are far off the list for the province that offered an orange wave in 2011 and where there are 78 seats to fill.

Posted at 18h20

Lina Dib
The Canadian Press

It is a former member of this famous wave, Eve Péclet, who announced his candidacy Wednesday. M^me Péclet will try to retake La Pointe-de-l'Île, a county lost in 2015 to Bloc Quebecois Mario Beaulieu.

Deputy Leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP) Alexandre Boulerice says he is "not nervous", "not worried" that the job is going well.

"With the nomination dates that are already planned, September 15, we will arrive at 53 candidates," he said in a telephone interview Wednesday afternoon.

September 15th is likely to be the date of the outbreak of the campaign.

The New Democrats will still be short of 25 candidates to start the race that lasts only five weeks.

The member explains the slowness of the process because of the complexity of his party's rules. These rules did not prevent the NDP from having 78 candidates for the 2015 campaign, an exceptionally long campaign that lasted two months.

It must be said that in 2015, 48 outgoing NDP MPs wanted to be re-elected in Quebec. The choice of candidates did not require the same recruitment effort.

Four years later, there are now only nine Quebec NDP MPs to try their luck once again, since the defection of Pierre Nantel, gone to join the Green Party.

And then, polls are hardly favorable to the troops of Jagmeet Singh.

A smile in his voice, Mr. Boulerice says his list of Quebec candidates will be complete before October 21, the day of the vote.

Recruitment difficulties are not limited to Quebec. There are still no announced candidates in New Brunswick or Prince Edward Island. The leader of the party admits that there is still work to be done and, like his deputy leader, explains these delays through a more complex nomination process in the NDP than in the other parties.

"You can not name a candidate, you have to have a whole process," Singh said in a telephone interview while in British Columbia.

"For us, it's a challenge because we still have fewer resources than other parties," he said.

The Green Party on Wednesday had already appointed 57 Quebec candidates. The Bloc Québécois was 46, the Liberals 61 and the Conservatives 74.