WINNIPEG—New Democrat Leader Thomas Mulcair would pull Canada out of the U.S.-led mission in the Middle East if he’s elected, and tell the allies that Canada is an independent country with its own foreign policy.

“This is an American-led mission. Canada is free. We have our own foreign policy. We’ll have an independent foreign policy under an NDP government and we will put an end to Canada’s participation in the combat mission in Iraq and in Syria. We’re serious about that and we’ve been consistent on it and that’s what we’ve said since day one,” Mulcair told reporters Thursday at a campaign event in Winnipeg.

Canada has F-18 fighter jets taking part in U.S.-led coalition bombing campaigns in Syria and Iraq, and the Canadian military is also involved in training Kurdish peshmerga fighters as part of efforts to contain the militant group calling itself the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, or ISIL) that has seized large parts of both Middle East countries.

The current parliamentary mandate ends next March, but Mulcair, whose party voted against both the initial mission in Iraq last year and its expansion into Syria this spring, said he would not wait for it to end.

“We’re serious about that and we’ve been consistent on it and that’s what we’ve said since day one,” Mulcair said Thursday.

The NDP leader justified this decision by saying that the mission is not sanctioned by the United Nations or being conducted by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

“Multilateralism has always been part of the Canadian approach, but this is neither a UN nor a NATO mission,” Mulcair said.

But Mulcair then also said he would keep 200 Canadian soldiers in their training mission in the Ukraine, which is also being done apart from the UN and NATO.

“It’s a completely different situation. I think that the training mission in the Ukraine could and should be able to continue,” Mulcair said.

The Canadian Press reported harsh criticism of the plan from the ex-pat Kurdish community, which has been largely supportive of the Conservative government’s military intervention against the Islamic State.

“Stopping the bombing of ISIS? Stopping the training against ISIS? That is exactly what they want,” Yusuk Celik, vice-president of the Kurdish Youth Association of Canada, told The Canadian Press.

Celik also accused the NDP of playing politics with the horrifying photo of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed ashore in Turkey last week, without mentioning how his family had likely fled their hometown of Kobani due to ISIS.

“They’re saying, ‘Just give us his pictures for our political campaign, but don’t give us any of your other issues,” Celik told The Canadian Press.

Mulcair said Thursday the NDP would tackle the problem of ISIS in other ways.

“We also know there are several things that we can and should be doing with our allies, such as stopping the flow of foreign fighters, stopping the flow of arms, stopping the flow of money to ISIS and ISIL. You know, we should be doing something at home, which is combating radicalization, something that Stephen Harper has failed to do,” said Mulcair.

Mulcair, who has been facing many questions about how he plans to pay for his big-ticket promises and still honour a pledge to balance the federal budget next year, also said Thursday the NDP will release details of its fiscal plan before the Globe and Mail debate on economic issues Sept. 17.

“We are going to be putting out numbers. It will be fully costed. We are putting that out there so that everybody can see a full accounting of what we’ve been talking about, and I hope that the other parties will do it as well, because none of the major parties has done that so far, so we plan to do that between now and that debate a week from today,” Mulcair said.

Mulcair was in Winnipeg to announce a plan to create job opportunities and paid internships for youth at non-governmental organizations and in the private sector.

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“You deserve to be paid and you deserve to be safe in your workplace,” Mulcair said in the announcement at the Operating Engineers Institute of Manitoba Inc.

The NDP says it will commit up to $100 million every year to a pilot program it says would create 40,000 job opportunities for youth over the span of four years, which would be focused on the non-profit sector but also be available to corporations and small businesses.

It would use this money to leverage more investment from the private sector.

The NDP would also require all federal infrastructure projects at federally regulated airports, port authorities and Crown corporations that cost more than $10-million to hire apprentices.

It also promises to provide $5 million every year to municipalities and Indigenous governments so they can create 1,250 youth apprentices.