TORONTO, March 26 (UPI) -- Canada's opposition socialist party has elected a new leader who vowed to bring down Conservative rule in the next federal election.
At a leadership convention that concluded Sunday in Toronto, the New Democratic Party elected Thomas Mulcair after four ballots, Postmedia News reported.
The party had been under interim leadership since the death in August of leader Jack Layton. Under Layton, who died of cancer, the NDP became the official opposition party in Parliament for the first time.
In Mulcair's victory speech, he spoke aggressively about his plan to bring down the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the 2015 election.
"We're facing a government that's very tough, very well structured, and we've got to do the same thing," Mulcair said. "We've got to structure an official opposition that will bring the fight to them like they have never seen before."
In the March 2011 federal election, voters decimated the previous Liberal opposition as well as the separatist Bloc Quebecois, giving the NDP their first position as the official opposition in Parliament.
