John Ivison: The swan song of NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh could find its audience yet
MONTREAL — There is an air of resignation, if not acceptance, about Jagmeet Singh these days.
He seems to know that his time in federal politics is coming to an end.
As he came down the steps of his campaign plane for the cameras, after landing in Montreal on Monday, he cut a dejected figure. I said to him that Justin Trudeau would have waved at the non-existent crowd. He laughed it off.
But in previous campaigns, he would probably have bounded down the steps with a grin on his face.
The playful optimism of the man who in 2021 tried out his long board on the airport tarmac in Halifax and did handstands on the wharf in Dartmouth, N.S., has disappeared.
He knows he’s about to take a beating and he spoke wistfully about missing his daughters, Anhad and Dani, who are back in British Columbia, as if he can’t wait for it all to be over.
Back in 2021, Singh had the wind at his back. There were large whistle stops where the crowd bounced around enthusiastically to Bunji’s “Ready Fi Da Road.“
The song has been dusted off again and was played on Sunday night when Singh visited the Toronto office of Spadina–Harbourfront candidate Norm Di Pasquale, but the effervescence has gone, like bubbly left out overnight.
The New Democrats are always the most fun in Canadian politics; they still believe it all. The arrival in Montreal was celebrated by an extended sing-along to Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.”
“It’s a beautiful day in a beautiful city in a beautiful life,” said NDP press secretary, Simon Charron.
Singh buoys his audience by reminding them that as the fourth party, New Democrats set the national agenda and pushed the Liberals to introduce a national dental care program that wasn’t even in their platform during the last election.
But it is the prime directive of any political party to elect members, and it is all but certain that the NDP will have fewer MPs in Parliament after April 28, and may even lose official party status — with fewer than 12 elected members. Singh’s own seat of Burnaby Central is at risk and it would perhaps be a blessing for all concerned if he lost.
There seems little prospect that the party will allow him to continue if the polls don’t shift, given his predecessor Tom Mulcair was forced out after winning 44 seats in 2015.
At the turn of the year, the NDP were five points ahead of the Liberals in one poll. The most recent Angus Reid Institute survey has the Liberals with 45 per cent support, compared to seven per cent for the New Democrats.
Singh has already been forced to acknowledge publicly that he won’t be prime minister. Now, he is being asked by reporters if he is preparing to resign.
For the record, he said he is not, and remains focused on the two remaining weeks of the election. But what else could he say?
He could hardly admit he was played by the Liberals, who gave him a “structural foundation” for a pharmacare program that will probably never be rolled out.
The NDP were the instigators of the dental program but have gotten none of the credit, despite Singh’s claim that he thinks “Canadians know what we did.”
Last September, Singh called time on the confidence and supply agreement with Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, claiming they were “too weak, too selfish and too beholden to corporate interests to fight for people.” He said Trudeau did not deserve another chance — and then promptly gave him one, by supporting the government in a non-confidence vote .
Singh’s brand was built on his sincerity, but badmouthing Trudeau while backing him in Parliament made the NDP leader look hypocritical.
The Conservatives have not helped, even though they need a strong NDP. Leader Pierre Poilievre ignored the lessons of 2015 that saw the Harper Conservatives kill the hopes of Mulcair’s NDP in Quebec by pushing a ban on the wearing of the niqab in official citizenship ceremonies, a move that helped the Liberals to win the election .
Poilievre used a question in the House of Commons to address the NDP leader as “a fake, a phony, a fraud,” and then launched an advertising campaign aimed at “sellout Singh” , that suggested that he had struck a deal with Trudeau to keep the government in power until he was eligible for a lucrative pension.
The smear worked: Singh is currently as unpopular as Poilievre. Both languish far behind new Liberal Leader Mark Carney, despite Singh’s claim that when the former banker was chair of Brookfield Asset Management it registered itself in a tax haven to avoid paying its “fair share” of taxes in Canada.
The NDP’s pre-election ad, “ Fighting for You ,” featured Singh sparring in a boxing ring. He maintains he is still a fighter and will never back down. But one of the two new ads the party released last week, “ We Choose ,” doesn’t feature the leader at all.
Sitting next to family in a downtown Toronto restaurant on Sunday, waiting for the NDP to hit town, I overheard the man lamenting to his wife: “The poor old NDP, they’re not even a party anymore, which kinda sucks.”
However, the New Democrats could yet play a role in this campaign by tapping into the feeling that Canada needs the NDP.
The party has released a video that makes the point: “Ottawa works best when one party doesn’t have all the power.”
It claims that both Poilievre and Carney plan to cut services, especially on health care. “That’s why we need more New Democrats in Parliament, to defend the things that make us Canadian,” Singh says.
The party is promising to bring in national rent control; to cap grocery prices; and on Monday said it would tie federal health transfers to the hiring and retention of more nurses.
On Tuesday, Singh appeared with a number of Montreal area candidates, saying he would retain the capital-gains tax hike that the Liberals introduced in the 2024 budget — and then promptly abandoned under Carney’s leadership.
Singh said the $19 billion the measure was projected to raise in revenue over five years would be reinvested in hospitals like Maisonneuve-Rosemont, which provided a backdrop to the press conference.
“The Liberals defended this idea, saying it is fundamental to building a more fair society and now they’ve flip-flopped on that,” he said.
The press release quoted former Liberal finance minister Chrystia Freeland saying the capital gains tax “is an idea that everyone who cares about fairness should support,” which was a nice touch.
At the announcement on Tuesday, veteran NDP member of Parliament Alexandre Boulerice said the French and English debates this week will allow Singh to show that there is no difference between Carney and Poilievre. “When (former prime minister Stephen) Harper asked Carney in 2012 to be his finance minister, that shows the distance between Carney and the Conservative party,” he said.
The NDP are now so far from power that talking about attracting investment and powering innovation are remote subjects of obscure curiosity, like eunuchs discussing OnlyFans.
But liberation from worrying about the revenue side of the equation has allowed Singh to focus on the spending side.
He said he is committed to making health care a top issue, which it is in just about every opinion poll despite not being on the agenda for discussion during the leaders’ debates . This is the first election in my time covering federal politics that the health-care issue has not been raised by the Liberals to bludgeon the Conservatives. The failure to do so, may offer Singh an opening. “It’s not about what’s helpful to me,” he said. “Canadians think it’s important.”
I asked Singh whether he thinks the polls have stabilized enough to make it safe for progressives who are worried about a Conservative win to “come home” to the NDP.
“That’s exactly what we’re going to say to people,” he said. “I think a lot of folks were really worried about the Conservatives and I think what people have seen is Pierre Poilievre, and his message and his approach … that he sounds all too similar to Donald Trump. I think more and more Canadians are saying: ‘No, that’s not for me.’
“(But), having turned your attention away from Pierre Poilievre, if you’re worried that you’re now hearing more and more about cuts coming from Mark Carney, specifically $43 billion in cuts to services — and he said it really clearly that he wants to cut spending in the operating budget — if you’re worried about those cuts, vote for New Democrats.”
Singh’s leadership may be ill-fated, but it is not inconceivable that he could win back some of the voters he has lost to Carney. On the verge of irrelevancy, Singh’s swan song could be a far, far better thing than he has ever done before.
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