OTTAWA — The NDP will return to the House of Commons without official party status at the end of May. The last time this happened was after the 1993 election — a time one former New Democrat MP remembers as “the Parliament from hell.”

Svend Robinson represented Burnaby, B.C., in the House of Commons from 1979 to 2004. He said the party’s devastating losses in 1993 led to a very challenging time in Parliament.

“I remember jumping up and down trying to get recognized by the Speaker from the very back corner of the House. We would get a few questions every week. That was it,” Robinson said.

“Committees, we had no status on committees whatsoever. So it was the same thing there. You could show up at a committee hearing, and if the chair decided to recognize you, you might get a question or two.”

In the last Parliament, the NDP enjoyed the right to ask questions daily in question period and held a seat on each House of Commons committee.

It lost those privileges when it elected only seven MPs in the general election last week. Official party status requires a minimum of 12 members of Parliament.

Robinson said the NDP caucus wasn’t able to exert “any significant pressure” on federal government policy over those four years from 1993 to 1997.

In a Wednesday news release, the NDP said it plans to “strategically use the balance of power it holds to push the government to deliver real results for people.”

Its priorities include advocating for “truly” affordable housing, expanding health care and “fighting for good jobs and better wages.”

While the 1993 NDP had to operate in a Parliament with a Liberal majority, Prime Minister Mark Carney presides over a minority government.

Jonathan Malloy, a political science professor at Carleton University, said he expects the NDP will wield some bargaining power, even though Carney has ruled out a formal working arrangement.

“It’s hard to know how much the Liberals want to do business with them. The Liberals can also do business with the Bloc Québécois. So the NDP would have a little bit of bargaining power, but not much,” he said.

The NDP’s loss of official party status also means a significant reduction in financial resources.

The New Democrats will miss out on millions of dollars in funding afforded to political parties that have more than 12 members in the House of Commons.

The baseline funding for an opposition party leader’s office is around $1.1 million, which increases depending on how many MPs are in that party’s caucus.

For example, the office of Andrew Scheer, the interim official Opposition leader in the House of Commons, will have a budget of nearly $1.3 million because the Conservative caucus has more than 101 MPs. Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet’s office will receive baseline funding because there are only 23 MPs in his caucus.

Malloy said this lack of access to institutional funding will create a host of challenges for the NDP.

“It’s really hard to act cohesively the party. You have enough resources to operate as individual MPs, and that includes serving your constituency … but there’s just there’s nothing for the overall big picture stuff,” he said. “They’re going to really struggle to do more than the bare minimum.”

The NDP also will not receive funding to pay for House officer roles in their caucus, such as whip and House leader. The minimum budgets for those offices are around $148,000 and $111,000 respectively.

Interim NDP leader Don Davies said he’s committed to an open, grassroots review of the election result that will guide the party’s future direction.

“We need to take a hard look at how we got to where we are, and we need a clear view of where we’re going,” Davies said in a media statement. “We need to reconnect with working people and show them that the NDP is their party, the one that fights and delivers for them.”

Robinson said his best advice for New Democrats operating in this new reality is to remember that much of an MP’s job takes place outside Parliament.

He said that after losing seats in once-safe NDP ridings in Ontario and B.C., the party needs to reconnect with its traditional bases of support in the labour movement and progressive organizations.

“You obviously have to fight the good fight (in the House of Commons), but rebuilding the party is going to take place community by community, riding by riding, and strengthening … the grassroots of the party, which sadly have been allowed to largely wither and die,” Robinson said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 8, 2025

David Baxter, The Canadian Press

Several Ontario mayors have been calling on the province to ban financial incentives municipalities use to lure in doctors, saying the recruitment tactic is harming communities that can’t pony up the cash – especially those in rural and northern regions.

But Sault Ste. Marie Mayor Matthew Shoemaker is going even further, suggesting the federal government should outlaw the practice from “coast to coast.”

“I think it should be banned across the country actually,” he said in a recent interview.

Shoemaker said his city needs 40 more doctors, including 18 to practise family medicine, and while it does offer a moving allowance of up $10,000, it is not in a position to compete with municipalities that are offering doctors tens of thousands of dollars to relocate.

“We think incentives are bad and we don’t agree with them, and so we’re not at this point supportive of getting into a competition on incentives because it is a competition we will lose,” he said.

Shoemaker said he asked Ontario’s health minister to intervene and stop the practice during a meeting they had last August. But he said there seems to be no appetite for such a move in Ontario unless there is “more widespread acceptance of banning of incentives” across the country.

“We don’t want to become the place that is having all its doctors taken away from us,” he said.

A Ministry of Health spokesperson said the government has made big investments to connect more Ontarians with doctors, but didn’t directly respond to a question on whether it would consider banning municipalities’ financial incentives.

Shoemaker isn’t the only one raising concern over the use of incentive-based programs to address Ontario’s doctor shortage.

Todd Kasenberg, the mayor of North Perth, is also encouraging the province to ban cash incentives, which he calls a “mistake.”

“We’ve entered an arms race and typically there aren’t any winners in an arms race,” he said in an interview.

Kasenberg said around 3,000 of 17,000 people in his town north of London, Ont., are currently without a family doctor. With expected retirements in the next few years, the doctor shortage will be severe if officials can’t recruit fast enough.

“So it’s a substantial issue and met with a lot of frustration in the community, a lot of anxiety,” he added.

He said the town is expected to welcome four medical residents from Western University this year. Council approved spending $50,000 to provide housing support for those residents, even though Kasenberg said he was personally “uncomfortable” with the move.

He hopes the recruits will stay in town beyond their residency period.

London Mayor Josh Morgan and Peterborough Mayor Jeff Leal have also publicly criticized municipalities’ financial incentives for doctor recruitment.

Ontario’s long-standing shortage of primary care providers affects millions of patients in every corner of the province, but advocates say rural communities are hit harder because they have fewer hospitals and walk-in clinics.

Experts have long warned that hefty financial incentives offered to doctors are widening the health-care access gap between poorer rural towns and richer urban centres.

Some say while the incentives might work, particularly in recruiting new graduates and medical residents who have education loans to repay, they don’t serve to retain doctors in those communities.

“I think it is much more effective to be able to, from a retention standpoint, to support new grads by helping them to manage their schedule, add work slowly, avoid the risk of burnout,” said Dr. Sarah Newbery, a family physician in Marathon, Ont., a rural community 300 kilometres east of Thunder Bay.

“If they’re too busy from the get-go, they will not be easy to retain.”

Newbery knows a thing or two about retention – she was one of six young physicians who moved to Marathon nearly three decades ago and ended the town’s chronic doctor shortage.

At that time, Marathon was about to lose its only emergency department and the fate of the entire hospital was up in the air. The local physician recruitment committee even had burlap sacks ready to cover the hospital signs on the nearby highway.

“It was probably the most underserviced community certainly in the province, maybe in the country,” Newbery said.

She said the town gave the entire group $10,000 in bonuses — a little over $1,600 each — and housing support that included two years of free rent for some. But those incentives were not a deciding factor for Newbery and her partner to stay in Marathon for 29 years.

She said what kept that group of physicians in town was a collective commitment to provide better care for the community as well as an understanding of a healthy work and life balance. Marathon is home to six physicians now, and has only one doctor vacancy at a time when other rural communities are in a health-care crisis.

Instead of offering cash bonuses, Newbery suggested the money should be invested in making towns more welcoming and appealing to doctors in the long run.

Around 525,000 Ontarians who live in rural areas have no access to primary care, and that number is increasing four times faster compared to urban centres, according to data provided by the Rural Ontario Municipalities Association.

Christy Lowry, the association’s chair, said improving access to health care, recruiting physicians and medical workers, and making sure local emergency rooms remain operational are “top priority” for the association.

“All of those pieces are part of what we’re focused on right now, and we can see how the lack of these services are negatively impacting our communities and the well-being of our communities,” she said.

Lowry, who is also the mayor of Mississippi Mills, a rural community east of Ottawa, said while her town has a modern hospital with “tremendous service,” the shortage of primary care providers is a problem for residents, some of whom are travelling as far as Kingston to see their doctors.

The association estimates Ontario municipalities are spending nearly half a billion dollars on health care annually.

“Property tax dollars should be going to core municipal priorities. They were never designed to pay for health services,” Lowry said in a recent interview.

“The problem is there’s a shortage. (We) don’t have enough, so it becomes this competition between one community and the next.”

In northern communities, more than 350 doctors — including more than 200 family physicians — are needed to fill current vacancies, and that number is much higher if retirements expected over the next five years are factored in, according to the Ontario Medical Association.

The association’s former president, Dr. Dominik Nowak, said that’s “unacceptable.”

The shortage had led to fierce competition for physicians.

“There are winners and losers when we have a situation like this and oftentimes the communities that can’t afford to recruit and retain are northern and rural communities,” he said last month before his tenure ended.

Nowak said while municipalities should help create a welcoming environment for doctors and their families, ultimately it is the province’s job to ensure communities have proper access to health care.

“It’s a symptom of a larger problem,” Nowak said of incentive-based programs. “The larger problem is that family practice is no longer seen as a viable career choice for new graduates.”

The Ministry of Health said the province has added 15,000 doctors and increased the number of family physicians by 10 per cent since 2018.

Ministry spokesperson Ema Popovic said the government is adding close to 1,500 family doctors in rural and northern areas as part of two different programs, which include bringing in foreign-trained doctors and providing education funds for students interested in working in those communities.

She said Ontario aims to connect everyone in the province to a primary care provider by 2029 as part of a $1.8-billion investment.

The province recently said there will be “significant investments” in the Rural and Northern Physician Group Agreement primary care model. There will also be a new program called the Rural Emergency Medicine Coverage Investment Fund, which is meant to ensure appropriate doctor staffing levels year-round, and it replaces a now-expired temporary program that incentivized doctors to fill those shifts in rural and northern ERs.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 8, 2025.

Sharif Hassan, The Canadian Press

There is a street named after him in a British town.

A plaque at the local hospital tells the story of how the 29-year-old pilot saved many lives while sacrificing his own during the Second World War.

There are even talks of building a statue of Darlington’s “Gallant Airman” to honour his life and death.

But William Stuart McMullen, a Canadian pilot officer from Ontario, is little known in his own country.

The Scarborough native hasn’t received widespread recognition for the act of bravery that claimed his life, which did not occur on a combat mission but during a training exercise as he steered his plummeting plane away from a densely populated town.

Eight decades later, his family is calling on the Canadian government to honour a man who paid the ultimate price thousands of kilometres from his home, as his wife and a six-year-old daughter waited for his return.

“He saved the town. He saved his crew. Everybody is happy but him,” said Loring Barber, the airman’s grandson.

“How can you not honour him?”

McMullen’s only daughter, Donna Barber, is suffering from liver cancer and at 86, her children worry she may not live long enough to see her father recognized.

“She would definitely like to see it. She’s probably not going to get the amount of time she’s going to need,” Loring Barber said in an interview in his home in Toronto’s east end.

McMullen was flying a heavy British bomber known as a Lancaster over Darlington when it caught fire mid-air on the evening of Jan. 13, 1945.

He steered the bomber away from the town of around 60,000 people toward an empty field, and ordered his six crew members to parachute themselves out safely.

He was the only casualty of the crash.

“Pilot gave life to save people” was the headline in a local newspaper two days later.

The story of his heroism is well-documented in Darlington and it has been passed from generation to generation. Every year, members of the town mark the anniversary of his heroism by paying their respects at a memorial on the street that bears his name, near the site of the crash.

In Canada, however, his family fear they are the only ones aware of his sacrifice.

Lola McEvoy, the member of U.K. parliament for Darlington, is trying to change that.

This week, ahead of Thursday’s 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, she sent a plea to the Canadian government asking for McMullen to be recognized.

In a letter addressed to Ralph Goodale, the Canadian high commissioner in the United Kingdom, McEvoy wrote she believes the pilot is eligible for a posthumous honour such as a Medal of Bravery or a Star of Courage.

“I believe that his heroism for many years did not receive the recognition it deserves and am respectfully proposing that he be considered for a posthumous honour for his remarkable heroism,” she wrote. “His selfless actions spared the lives of potentially thousands of civilians he never knew, and exemplify the highest standards of courage and duty.”

McEvoy said she was moved by the pilot’s story, and was planning to speak with his grandchildren.

“I think when you hear about the bravery of this man and the bravery of that generation in World War II, it feels very close to people in Darlington and it’s incredibly moving to hear what he did for our town,” she said in an interview with the British Press Association.

Veterans Affairs Canada said in a statement to The Canadian Press that McMullen was awarded several medals for his service, including the 1939-45 Star, the France and German Star, the Defence Medal and the War Medal.

His mother and widow were also awarded the Memorial Cross in May 1945, it said.

“In 1950, as many recommendations for wartime service were still pouring in, His Majesty King George VI decreed that consideration would not be given for acts performed more than five years before the nomination, thereby putting an end to Second World War nominations. This principle has generally been applied since, in considering honours policy issues, proposals for new honours, and individual nominations for honours,” the statement said.

“McMullen was not nominated during this timeframe.”

Veterans Affairs said that five-year limit is still in place “to ensure that events are judged by the standards of the time, and that they are measured along with contemporary examples, and to ensure that previous decisions are not second-guessed and history is not reinterpreted.”

Canada played a significant role as part of the Allied forces that liberated Europe during the Second World War.

About 1,159,000 Canadians and Newfoundlanders served during the six-year war. Government data show 44,090 of them died, including 17,397 members of the Royal Canadian Air Force.

McEvoy said it is especially significant to recognize that contribution on Victory in Europe Day.

Nearly a week after McMullen’s crash, the Royal Canadian Air Force sent a letter to his widow informing her “with deep regret” that officer McMullen was “killed on Active Service.”

“I realize that this news has been a great shock to you, and I offer you my deepest sympathy. May the same spirit which prompted your husband to offer his life give you courage,” reads a letter provided by local historian Chris Lloyd.

Little is known about McMullen’s life before he died. His daughter was too young to remember much, her sons said.

Loring said he heard a story that his grandfather, who was a bush pilot before he joined the Air Force, once flew low over his wife’s workplace in Scarborough, a factory that produced ammunition and bombs.

“He was a bit of a hotshot, so he buzzed the plane to say, ‘Hi, honey,'” he said. It was a risky manoeuvre that nearly got him fired, said Loring.

The pilot’s other grandchild, Lucas Barber, said he also doesn’t know a lot of about his grandfather. Thinking about it feels like reading a “history book,” he said.

“Like, you know, you open the page up — oh, there he is,” he said.

He said he remembers the family receiving letters from people in Darlington, including schoolchildren. His mother would make the brothers write back.

Barber said it would be “huge” for his ailing mother to see her father further honoured.

“What’s stopping you? I don’t get it. If all these people over there (in Darlington) are doing everything (and) nothing’s happening here, I don’t get it,” he said.

“What is it, a piece of paper?” he added.

“Do it.”

— With files from Sam Hall in the United Kingdom.

This story was produced in collaboration with the British Press Association.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 8, 2025.

Sharif Hassan, The Canadian Press