NDP hopeful Mira Oreck predicts three-way race in Vancouver Granville

Mira Oreck, who wants to represent New Democrats in Vancouver Granville in this year’s federal election, remembers an evening in Montreal almost eight years ago.

The venerable Jack Layton was still around as the undisputed leader of the NDP at the time, steering the party in two following elections, including its stunning rise in 2011 to become the official Opposition for the first time in its history.

Oreck was in Montreal when three by-elections were held on September 17, 2007, and Layton’s prized recruit, Tom Mulcair, a former Quebec environment minister, took the traditional Liberal riding of Outremont.

“I happened to be there the evening that Mulcair won his by-election,” Oreck recalled in a phone interview with the Georgia Straight on Tuesday (June 30) shortly after she announced that she would be seeking the NDP’s nomination in Vancouver Granville.

“It was very clear to me that night that Mulcair will become leader,” the seasoned strategist and communicator went on. “And, personally, I haven’t wavered in that feeling since that first moment I saw him win the by-election.”

With polls showing that Mulcair, who became NDP leader in 2012 following Layton’s death, could become prime minister if elections were called today, that moment is significant for Oreck.

“I’m very excited that Canadians are starting to share my feelings and to recognize that he is ready, he’s ready to govern, and that the NDP is, you know, clearly in the position to compete and to win this election.”

According to Oreck, this year’s October 19 election is also an important moment because Canadians seem ready to end the “Harper decade” that started when Stephen Harper’s Conservatives took back the reins of power in 2006.

Currently director of strategic partnerships at the Broadbent Institute, a think-tank named after former NDP leader Ed Broadbent, Oreck has deep roots in Vancouver Granville.

“I really grew up in the streets of the riding,” she said, relating having been raised on 37th Avenue between Granville and Oak streets, right across from the VanDusen Botanical Garden.

She attended Shaughnessy elementary and Eric Hamber and Prince of Wales high schools.

The Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, where her family has a long history of chairing its board, is a few blocks from where she lived as a young girl.

Oreck has been involved in both U.S. and Canadian political campaigns. While based in New York, she helped create two popular videos for the reelection campaign of President Barack Obama, one of which was titled Wake the Fuck Up and featured American film star Samuel L. Jackson.

Back at home, she was part of the inner circles that helped launch environmentally minded businessman Gregor Robertson as a winning politician, first as an NDP MLA in Vancouver Fairview, then as mayor of Vancouver.

Oreck, who holds a master’s degree in urban policy, said she has learned one vital lesson in these campaigns: “You really cannot underestimate the value of being out on the doorstep and speaking to people. There’s nothing that is as critical or as valuable.”

She also related having worked the phones “for weeks” already and hearing what pollsters have determined in surveys about the ascendant NDP: “My phone calls are reflecting the polls.”

She anticipates a three-way race in Vancouver Granville, a new, upscale riding in the middle of five existing ridings held by Liberal, NDP, and Conservative MPs. Lawyer Jody Wilson-Raybould, who was also regional chief of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations, will run for the Liberals. Businessman and lawyer Erinn Broshko is representing the Conservatives.

According to Oreck, the election on the federal level will be fought on the basis of leadership. It’s a test that she said Liberals under Justin Trudeau failed when they supported the controversial antiterrorism legislation, Bill C-51, introduced by the Harper Conservatives, a measure opposed by Mulcair and New Democrats.

Oreck said: “Canadians are looking to determine who they can vote for that will replace Stephen Harper, and I think that many Canadians are starting to see what I saw in Mulcair, which is a strong leader who’s ready to govern.”