The truth is there's far more to democracy than what happens in a leadership race. It's supposed to be about representation. If our candidate represents the concerns of Quebeckers, they'll win. If they don't, they'll lose.
So please, please, please, stop feeding the narrative our opponents are using to provoke an NDP collapse.
It's not just a meme that our opponents are using; it's a reality we have to contend with.
In any normal leadership race, no party would even consider selecting a candidate that had almost no support in one of the major regions of the country. The only thing muddying this in our race is that 6 of the 7 candidates have negligible support in one region (5 if you consider Topp's support to be "significant").
That is a fact. And it is also problem.
Putting our heads in the sand and denying it will not make it go away. Repeating the excuse that it is just name recognition or hoping that the Québec media will "do their homework" and the province will suddenly warm to your favourite candidate at some point before 2015 will not make it so.
I understand that there are elements within the Party that are not yet used to the new Québec influence, but the fact remains that 6 of the 7 leadership candidates failed to connect with Québec.
If we were considering selecting a leader with nearly no support in the West or in Ontario, people would be up in arms! But for some reason, potentially having a leader with no support in Quebec is okay.
That, my friends, is pure folly!