Robert Chisholm withdraws from NDP leadership race

Nova Scotia MP and former Nova Scotia NDP leader Robert Chisholm withdrew from the NDP leadership race two days ago, citing his lack of French knowledge (Globe and Mail). Out of all of the candidates, I found him the most agonizing to watch in the first (and most recent) leadership debate, which was split into one hour of English-language debate and one hour of French-language debate. Robert Chisholm had an obvious earpiece to receive real-time translation of the questions, and he answered all of the French questions in English. The candidate who was next most painful was Martin Singh, who at least had some fluency despite an obvious accent.

(As a side note: My French is far from perfect, but I know enough to be able to assess others’ French. But even a unilingual anglophone can tell that Robert Chisholm did not have the French to be the leader of a party currently dominated by its Quebec caucus and seeking to form a future government.)

This answers a question I had been contemplating since finding out that the future debates would be entirely in English or entirely in French, which was “how is Robert Chisholm going to handle debates entirely in French?”