Leader profile: Jack Layton

OTTAWA – NDP Leader Jack Layton is all about strategy.

He first made his name as an in-your-face city councillor in Toronto, using every procedural gimmick in the book to bring attention to his causes.

Now, he’s matured into a veteran leader – but one who’s still plotting constantly about how to leverage the NDP’s fourth-party status into a political force.

His approach has worked. More than once in the last few years, he has parlayed his party’s 36 seats into a position where they were calling the shots.

But Layton now finds himself in a predicament.

After putting his personal stamp on the NDP’s election campaign, personifying the party in the eyes of the public, his health may be forcing him to take a less dominant role.

Fighting prostate cancer and recovering from hip surgery, the 61-year-old Layton is engaged keeping the confidence of his core supporters and party workers as he heads into his fourth, and likely final, federal election fight.

"Like so many people with cancer, you go off to work every day, and provide for your families, and get the jobs done. I draw a lot of inspiration from the Canadian people who are in that situation – hundreds of thousands of them, probably," Layton said recently.

That kind of answer might be expected, but Layton’s close associates also draw comfort from a different source: Layton’s wife, Olivia Chow.

An MP and longtime politician in her own right, Chow is also Layton’s closest adviser, a clear thinker and clearly Layton’s soul-mate. A "mastermind," says Brian Topp, one of Layton’s key strategists.

If Layton weren’t up to a campaign, Chow would stand in his way, says Ian Capstick, a pundit who previously worked as a party spokesman.

"Olivia Chow is his strongest asset. He will drive himself too far. She will put on the brakes," Capstick said. "She’s going to let him know if he can’t do this."

Indeed, longtime political ally Howard Moscoe can’t talk about the good old days at Toronto City Council without referring to Layton and Chow as a single political-family unit.

"They were so good at playing the council," he recalls. "They were kind of meant for each other."

Layton has been steeped in politics since he was a child growing up in Hudson, Que. His father, who remains influential in his son’s consensual approach to politics, was a cabinet minister and then caucus chairman for Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives.

His grandfather was a cabinet minister in Maurice Duplessis’ Union Nationale government in Quebec. His great-great-uncle was one of the Fathers of Confederation.

And last fall, his son Mike was elected to Toronto City Council.

After a couple of failed attempts, Layton moved into federal politics in 2003, taking over as leader of the party. He only had the support of two federal caucus members at the time, Svend Robinson and Libby Davies.

He quickly won over the caucus. But the electorate was more reluctant.

In his first federal campaign in 2004, he aimed to increase the party’s standings from 13 seats to 150, recalls Topp. He scored 19 – after declaring that social-spending cuts under the Liberals had resulted in the deaths of homeless people, and then losing the support of Canadian Auto Workers president Buzz Hargrove to the Paul Martin camp.

In 2006, he was able to solidify his party’s vote, adding an extra 10 NDP seats. And in 2008, he was able to gain some support in non-traditional NDP ridings, expanding the party’s reach in Quebec, Edmonton and parts of Atlantic Canada.

The goal this time is to focus campaign efforts in areas where the party placed second in the last election.

Layton is still the same man he was in 2003, says Topp, a personable politician who gives his full attention to conversations, is interesting and engaged, and consults widely, working the phones almost constantly to sound people out.

But he has also changed his approach to leadership, Topp adds. Where he was once focused on being highly visible, and "vulnerable to accusations of playing stunts," his solid personal popularity means he can now take a more stately approach to politics.

"He has the luxury, if you will, of not having to face the ‘invisibility-is-death’ problem," Topp said.

Davies, the NDP House leader, is convinced the maturity is also partly due to dealing with serious illness.

"Even as he faces his cancer, you see the wisdom and the compassion that’s there," she says. "It’s changed him."

Layton’s overriding trait, however – whether it was during the antics of the 1980s, the loud early days in Ottawa or the more restrained approach of the recent past – is his practicality.

"He’s been key to us using every tool that we have," says Anne McGrath, Layton’s chief of staff. Through motions in the House of Commons, private-members’ bills and extensive networking, the NDP members have managed to see some of their proposals come to fruition.

As a result, many caucus members have high profiles in their region, ready to step in and grab the limelight if their leader needs to run a less-hectic campaign than in years past, says Capstick.

And by searching for proposals that would appeal to both a New Democrat base and a Tory base, Layton has found ways to support the government on occasion, without flinching – notably, his support of the Conservatives’ $1-billion increase to employment-insurance benefits in fall 2009 likely saved the government from dissolution.

That practical approach didn’t work this time though. Despite defining his list of budget requests in Tory terms, the Conservatives didn’t go far enough to satisfy the growing numbers of restless party workers and MPs.