NDP's gang of rookies includes 4 McGill students, 19-year-old, Vegas visitor
By Andy Blatchford, The Canadian Press – 1 hour ago
MONTREAL — The sudden, startling rise of the NDP was best summed up in Tuesday's headline on the website of McGill University's daily newspaper: Four McGill Students Elected to Parliament.
Another university student, a 19-year-old from Sherbrooke, Que., was not only voting in his first election but also became the youngest person ever elected to Canada's Parliament.
The motley crew of victorious underdogs includes two newly elected MPs, running in largely French-speaking ridings, who have been accused of barely speaking the language. One, who works far away at a pub in Ottawa, spent a week vacationing in Las Vegas during the campaign.
Many admitted to having low expectations when the writ was dropped.
Yet they were among dozens of unlikely Quebec NDP candidates who won Monday as the party's caucus in the province skyrocketed to 58 from one. Many will bring impressive backgrounds into Parliament.
Among the newcomers are a former diplomat, a prominent Cree leader and an ex-Liberal MP once considered a shoo-in for a cabinet post.
Pierre-Luc Dusseault, a 19-year-old student of applied politics at the Universite de Sherbrooke, now becomes the youngest member of Parliament in Canadian history, according to the House of Commons website.
He surpasses Claude-Andre Lachance, a Trudeau Liberal who was elected at age 20 in 1974.
Dusseault, who will earn the basic MP's salary of $157,731, used his Facebook page to thank voters for expressing confidence in him.
"We worked very hard to win," he said. "I'm obviously very proud of my own win."
On Monday night, he told a local radio station the victory was the result of the "fruit of the NDP's efforts throughout the campaign."
"People wanted change, including in Sherbrooke, and that's what happened tonight," Dusseault said
The McGill Daily reported Tuesday that four McGill University students also won for the NDP on Monday night.
Tyrone Benskin, another surprise NDP winner, said he was asked all night Monday about the impact of so many fresh faces in the House of Commons.
"Yes, there are newcomers, there are always newcomers to any party," said Benskin, a veteran actor, director and musician.
"All these people are very good at what they did in their private lives and they're bringing that experience."
In Toronto on Tuesday, NDP Leader Jack Layton was peppered with media questions about his inexperienced team.
"Yes, we have some young people," he replied. "But you know young people got involved in this election in an unprecedented way. I think it was very exciting.
"And the fact that some of these young people have now been chosen . . . I think we should see that as something to celebrate — not something to criticize."
Benskin himself was singled out during the campaign by outgoing Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe for not being at ease in French.
The 52-year-old will be joined in Ottawa by Ruth Ellen Brosseau, perhaps the most improbable newly elected member of the NDP.
Brosseau, an assistant manager at a university pub in Ottawa, won a central Quebec riding that is 98 per cent francophone even though the party has acknowledged she has difficulties in French, spent a week in Vegas during the campaign and never spoke to the media.
The NDP said Brosseau, who returned from Vegas last week, wasn't in the riding on election day and wouldn't immediately be available for interviews.
Brosseau won with a very healthy 6,000 majority.
Benskin said the NDP's young MPs, like Brosseau, will receive whatever guidance they need.
"As a newly elected member of Parliament she'll get the support and she'll get the mentorship to perform her duties," he said as he sipped a bottle of beer at the party's boisterous rally in Montreal after the election.
"It's something that we're aware of and something that we have a plan to address."
The NDP Quebec caucus will also feature Romeo Saganash, former deputy grand chief of the Grand Council of the Crees; Francoise Boivin, an ex-Liberal MP; and Helene Laverdiere, who was posted for the Department of Foreign Affairs in Washington, Senegal and Chile.
Laverdiere earned some of the loudest cheers at the NDP rally when TV screens flashed that she had knocked off Duceppe in Montreal's Laurier-Sainte-Marie.
She seemed stunned to have pulled off the upset, but admitted she had an inkling it could happen.
"A month ago it was a dream," she said.
"(Then), a few weeks ago seeing how people were listening to what we had to say, we started to think, 'Well, maybe the dream will come true.' "
Other new faces, like MP-elect Alexandre Boulerice of Rosemont-La-Petite-Patrie, still can't believe what happened.
"Am I surprised? Of course," said the elated father of four shortly after beating Bloc incumbent Bernard Bigras.
"This is not a wave, this is a tsunami — a political earthquake."
Boulerice, a communications adviser for the Quebec division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, lost to Bigras by more than 17,000 votes in the 2008 election.
This campaign started off much the same way as 2008 for him, as people told him on the street he was a nice guy who would never win.
That was until Easter weekend, when families talked politics, he said.
In the last two weeks of the campaign, he was flooded with emails from supporters asking how they could help, where they could get a sign for their balcony and how they could get themselves an NDP button.
The buttons disappeared so fast that Boulerice didn't even have one to wear for election night.
"Because every time we had a button on, people were asking, "Can I have it?' " Boulerice said.
"So (there's) a back order on buttons."
But he insists the NDP's new team from Quebec will be ready to hit the Hill.
"But maybe not tomorrow (Tuesday), maybe Wednesday," he said, shouting over the ear-splitting rumble of music and cheers.
"For the moment, we celebrate."
