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This week, David Moscrop took a look at the state of the NDP for The Walrus and wondered if perhaps Jagmeet Singh’s time is up, and that after the next election the party should start looking for a new leader because of how marginalized the party has become under his stewardship. It’s a good piece and well worth reading, but there are a few holes in the narrative that I think need a bit more exploration to show how the party got to the state it’s in today, after their all-time high of winning 103 seats and forming the Official Opposition in 2011. There are a lot of things that happened during those years that are instructive as to why the party remains stuck at a rump fourth-place result, with more than a quarter of its sitting MPs opting to either not run again or resign early.

One of the things the piece doesn’t really go into is the failure by the party to consolidate any of its gains in 2011. In fact, a certain arrogance settled into the NDP almost immediately, as they kicked long-time Liberals out of their offices in Centre Block, and generally behaved in a manner that lacked any of the kind of graciousness that generally follows an election when MPs shuffle around offices. Question Period temporarily became a back-patting exercise where the Conservative government and NDP opposition congratulated one another for essentially creating a two-party system with “real differences” that could be debated, rather than the mushy-middle Liberals, who were thought to be facing extinction, and where the Elder Pundits declared that they must merge with the NDP if there was to ever be a chance of defeating Stephen Harper and the Conservatives ever again. Of course, that wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now (as some people are already starting the “merger” calls yet again).

What happened in 2011 was something of a fluke, because Quebec as a whole decided to vote emotionally for “Le Bon Jack,” as Jack Layton was touring with his cane, and insisting that he had beaten cancer (when it turns out he hadn’t, and questions remain as to just what he knew about his condition at the time, which his family studiously avoided ever explaining after he died). Prior to that, most of the riding associations in the province existed on paper only, and they had absolutely no grassroots depth. A lot of candidates were only ever paper candidates who signed up to put their name on a ballot for the sheer sake of the party running candidates in every riding so that they could maximize their advertising spend under Elections Canada rules. They never stood for nomination (in spite of the party insisting that they always run open nominations in every riding), and a number of them had never even visited their riding until after they’d won. And yet, they did not feel the need to actually do the work on the ground once they had been elected. Riding associations remained largely on paper, and no real attempt was made to actually build grassroots organizations (though they did feel they needed to stand up a provincial wing of the party, which never really did get off the ground). If anything, the party’s central leadership was being even more rigidly command-and-control as they cooked up the “satellite office” scheme, where MPs had to turn over a portion of their office budgets for these “satellite offices” in the province, which turned out to be contrary to the rules, and why MP Lise St-Denis crossed over to the Liberals when she didn’t want to have any part of it (or the bullying that surrounded the demands).

The other lesson from Thomas Mulcair’s leadership was not just that he tried to move the party further to the centre by dropping references to “socialism” in the party’s constitution, or that he was essentially pledging the same sort of austerity that Stephen Harper was offering, but rather that there was a reluctance to do the actual work. It soon became apparent in the House of Commons that as an opposition party, the NDP were pretty weak and had to rely heavily on staff from the leader’s office to do a lot of the work for them, and as a result, they never developed much in the way of bench strength while they had the opportunity. It was no surprise that their seat count dropped from 103 to 59, with nearly all of their Quebec seats falling away to the Liberals and a resurgent Bloc that had managed to sort out its own leadership woes, and Mulcair tried to coast on his three good days in Question Period during the ClusterDuff that didn’t translate to an ability to perform in the leadership debates.

The lack of desire to do the work has been a hallmark of Singh’s entire leadership, starting from the fact that he couldn’t be bothered to even seek a seat for at least the first year of his leadership before it became clear to him that he had become a non-entity in the media and needed to be visible in the House of Commons. But even before that, there seemed to be this expectation on the part of the party that because he was younger and more progressive than Justin Trudeau, that somehow the progressive voters among the Liberals would just switch over to him because he was so attractive and charming, as though that was all it was going to take.

Meanwhile, since the start of COVID, the party has mostly just been patting themselves on the back for pushing on an open door, whether it was extending pandemic benefits that the Liberals were never going to cut short, or the Supply-and-Confidence Agreement that allows the NDP to try and take credit for things they have done absolutely none of the work to achieve, while Singh tries to play both sides and still talk smack about Trudeau while he votes to prop him up on every occasion. Along the way, they’ve allowed the Conservatives to swoop in and take on their blue-collar base while Singh and the party cater to increasingly niche urban progressive narratives that have a tendency to be alienating to those blue-collar workers who used to vote for the party in a number of regions.

It’s not just the lack of a strategic vision that Moscrop points to, or their failing attempts to recapture the narrative of class politics. It’s the actual grassroots work on the ground that the party can’t get their heads around, which manifests itself in how their ground game has collapsed in successive elections as the Liberals outpaced them. Singh is a problem for the party, but he is only part of the problem, and they need to have a look in the mirror and see the deeper cultural malaise in the organization if they want to have any hope of making future gains.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


Whatever other important expressions it has in our troubled times, democracy in countries like Canada is finally about regular popular elections.

(Or as the revolutionary 1649 text of modern “Westminster” parliamentary democracy has it, “the people” are “the original of all just power.” And “Parliament …  being chosen by and representing the people” has “the supreme power in this nation.”)

Moreover, on at least one of its diverse sides Canadian political culture sometimes seems to assume that the more elections a place has, the more democratic it is.

There have been eight federal elections in the 21st century so far. Just listing the years (2000, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2015, 2019, 2021) suggests that the Canadian people may well have another chance to chose a parliament in 2023!

Beyond such numbers, a former leader of the federal New Democrats (Tom Mulcair) has been advising : “Brace yourself because 2023 will likely be an election year.”

Meanwhile 49% of Canadians in a recent Ipsos poll think there at least ought to be a federal “snap election” in 2023.

It could be called according to all the rules by the minority-governing Liberals, whose March 22, 2022 “supply and confidence agreement” with the New Democrats may be wearing thin.

At the same time, only 43% of Ipsos poll respondents believe such a Canadian federal election will actually happen. And the sceptical 57% majority may finally prove correct.

For one thing, even if the New Democrats were to break their 2022 agreement with the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP together do not have enough seats in the current House to bring the Trudeau minority government down all by themselves.

That will or would require help from the Bloc Québécois — which is also a potential alternate pillar of a minority government led by a prime minister with deep roots (and a seat) in Quebec.

And then, beyond all such immediate parliamentary calculations, federal New Democrats are doing well in recent opinion polls. And Liberals are not.

The shrewdest course for Jagmeet Singh’s New Democrats in 2023 may just be to continue their 2022 agreement with the Trudeau Liberals (formally set to expire in June 2025).

Similarly, on current polling numbers PM Trudeau would be even more misguided to call a snap election in 2023 than he was in 2021!

Fortunately for those who take frequent elections as a badge of democracy, there will be three intriguing provincial contests in Canada in 2023 —  in Alberta at the latest on May 29, Prince Edward Island on October 2, and Manitoba on October 3.

There is some real chance that the NDP will win in both Alberta and Manitoba. And this could  finally mean NDP provincial governments in three of the four provinces of Western Canada.

At the same time again, two of the four latest Alberta opinion polls have Rachel Notley’s New Democrats ahead. Another two favour Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party.

Somewhat further east, even the Winnipeg Sun has noted that : “If the polls are any indication” all “signs point to a crushing victory for the NDP in the upcoming provincial election.” Yet “the NDP need to show Manitobans that they are ready to govern.”

An ultimate NDP victory in Manitoba could also bring some further reconciliation to Canadian provincial politics. Party leader Wab Kinew is originally “from the Onigaming First Nation in Northwestern Ontario,” and “the son of Tobasonakwut Kinew, a former local and regional chief and a professor of Indigenous governance at the University of Winnipeg.”

Prince Edward Island’s current provincial population is of course about the same as the Kingston Census Metropolitan Area in Ontario or the Abbotsford CMA in BC (170,000+).

The PEI provincial party system nonetheless has its own intrigue. It is more or less like Ontario’s, but with the Green Party playing the role played in Ontario by the NDP — and vice-versa! Recent polling suggests Conservatives will win a majority of seats in PEI in 2023 just like they did in Ontario in 2022.

There is always room for surprises in democratic politics — which is one reason elections remain interesting. This may be especially true in a year that could prove somewhat more rocky than usual economically.

Even without a federal election Canada could look somewhat different politically by the end of 2023, with mostly NDP provincial governments in “Western Canada” and mostly Conservative (or conservative) provincial governments in “Eastern Canada.”

Or not. Conservatives do lead in federal polling right now. And they could finally prove more resilient in both Alberta and Manitoba. We will know early on in the fourth quarter of the new year!

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.