Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath delivers a speech at the party's convention in Toronto on Saturday November 15, 2014.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Nearly a month after the federal New Democrats were devastated in the general election, Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath is warning naysayers not to write off her party.
In a copy of a speech Ms. Horwath will deliver Saturday to her provincial council, she says there are people who "think that New Democrats just can't win." She vows to prove them wrong in the 2018 Ontario election.
Ms. Horwath and the council – it is composed of about 250 members, including representatives from riding associations, the youth wing and affiliated unions – are spending the weekend trying to learn the lessons of what went well and what didn't in the federal campaign as they prepare for 2018.
She has less than 2 1/2 years to manage expectations and the competing interests of elements of her party as she builds toward the campaign. The first step, she says, is to ensure that new supporters and activists who came on board in the federal campaign are not ignored. They need to "stay involved and stay connected to the work we are doing," she says.
With their help, she says, the NDP will be able to "reconnect" with their voters, especially in Toronto where the party lost to Justin Trudeau and his Liberals, and where Ms. Horwath lost three key seats in the 2014 provincial election.
The NDP needs wins in Toronto if it wants to make any progress in 2018; it is now the third party in the Ontario Legislature.
She also focuses in her speech on the issue of gridlock and transit woes in Toronto and the surrounding region.
She has aggressively criticized the government's partial sale of Hydro One, which the Liberals say will help pay for transit infrastructure. In her speech, Ms. Horwath describes the sell-off as the "defining moment" of Premier Kathleen Wynne's tenure.
Ms. Horwath says the sale is not about helping build transit in Ontario. Rather, it's "about catering to a small group of powerful Liberal friends and insiders."
And after a federal election in which the word "progressive" was thrown around as the Liberals fought the NDP for the so-called progressive vote, and won, Ms. Horwath is steering away from that word in her speech.
Using it only twice, she instead focuses her message on people – including parents struggling to pay for child care, or health-care workers facing cuts and how those cuts will affect patients.
A senior NDP official says Ms. Horwath isn't dropping the word from the NDP lexicon. Instead, she is focused "on being progressive" rather than simply talking about it. The NDP is hoping the speech will highlight the fact that Ms. Wynne talks about being progressive, while she is cutting health-care costs and closing some schools.