Time expiring for Jagmeet Singh to show Canadians he can offer change

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OTTAWA — After federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh spent his fall struggling to prove he could be the change Canadians want, time is now ticking down for the leader of Canada’s New Democrats to show he can offer that, against the man expected to replace Prime Minster Justin Trudeau. 

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For strategists and former staffers, including his past communications director, that means rethinking Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as Singh’s biggest threat.

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“It would be worthwhile to spend some time defining Mark Carney before he is chosen as Liberal leader,” said Melanie Richer, who left Singh’s office in 2023.

“If he calls an election on March 10, it’s too late.”

That is the date Jennifer Howard, the NDP’s national campaign director, gave in a memo circulated to candidates and campaign teams last week as to when they should be prepared to fight an election, should Carney, the front-runner of the Liberals’ leadership contest, choose to trigger one instead of going to Parliament, once the race concludes on March 9.

Carney himself confirmed he was open to calling an early election.

Expectations that he may so do have only risen since polls began to show the Liberals surging in public opinion, the first signs the party may be climbing out of the hole it landed in under Trudeau.

Phillipe Fournier of the polling aggregator 338Canada.com said one survey suggests trouble could be brewing for Singh’s NDP if they see their support drop even further as voters turn to a Carney-led Liberal party, which some polls suggest may be happening, despite the fact the contest is not yet over.

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“The NDP would get really close to single digits,” he told National Post in a recent interview.

I don’t think they get party status with those numbers.

The New Democrats are trailing both the Liberals and Conservatives and hold fourth-place party status in the House of Commons, behind the Bloc Quebecois.

Abacus Data CEO David Coletto says New Democrats “should be just scared completely” about the idea of their support dropping and agrees they would risk party status.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat of a tariff war, coupled with Trudeau choosing not to seek re-election and Carney emerging as a fresh face, has left the main federal parties watching the political ground shift beneath their feet.

But even before that, the NDP were struggling.

Singh found the party dragged down by the supply-and-confidence agreement he struck with Trudeau after the last federal election in March 2022. In exchange for passing government bills — ensuring the Liberals’ survival in the minority Parliament — the NDP saw some of their priorities enacted into law, such as dental care, pharmacare and rental supports.

There was some hope the party’s fortunes would improve once Singh announced before the start of last fall that he had “ripped up” the deal, but those expectations never materialized in a significant way.

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The reason?

“They kept voting for them,” said Karl Belanger, a former NDP national director and longtime political staffer who left Parliament Hill in 2016. “They kept supporting them and keeping them in power, so that distance that they were trying to create was never established.”

At the same time, the federal Conservatives pummeled the freshly unshackled Singh with ads and attacks about him being a “sellout”  by voting with the government, which the NDP argued was to deliver programs and help to Canadians.

An NDP strategist, speaking on the condition of background in order to speak freely, said when the Liberals “coughed up the ball” the NDP simply “didn’t catch it.”

Richer said the pact with the Liberals ended up costing the party voters who switch between casting a ballot for them and the Conservatives, in ridings where both are competitive.

Those who switch between voting Liberal and New Democrat liked the deal, she said. Now that those voters see Carney as the Liberal option instead of Trudeau, they appear open to leaving.

“Do I think that’s a solid number? Do I think we’ve lost those folks for sure? Absolutely not,” said Richer.

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Carney is running his Liberal leadership campaign as an outsider, despite having advised Trudeau and served in a special role for the party.

Besides trying to appeal to Liberals concerned that the party did not prioritize the economy enough under Trudeau, the two-time former central banker is pitching himself to progressives who feel the Liberals did not live up its promises on climate change.

Emily Williams, a spokeswoman for Carney’s campaign, said he hosted an event with more than 1,000 people in Vancouver last week and staged another 500 person-event in Winnipeg and 400 in Kelowna. 

Belanger said the NDP must stop Carney from painting himself “as Canada’s saviour,” when the country is anxious because of Trump.

“They need to go after him,” he said. “They can’t let him … escape from his past, from his record, from who he is, from what he’s defending, from what he’s saying.”

Belanger pointed to comments Carney made about bringing government spending into balance within three years.

“That’s Liberal austerity, he says, “that’s what’s going to hit you.”

The Conservatives, who have also seen some of their support slide to Carney, released their first ad against him last week, while the Liberals took out one against Poilievre.

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Singh has so far attacked Carney along the same lines he has targeted Poilievre, saying both are leaders who choose to “stand with the billionaires” by making promises like repealing the capital gains tax hike, in contrast to the NDP, which Singh says stands with ordinary Canadians.

He also took aim at how Carney said he disagreed with the GST holiday the NDP helped pass, which ended Sunday.

Belanger says because Conservatives have been effective in attacking Singh for his expensive tastes, he believes it may be difficult for Canadians to see much of a difference between him and Carney on the issue of wealth.

“Jagmeet Singh wears a Rolex,” he notes.

For Brad Lavigne, who worked as former national campaign director when Jack Layton delivered the NDP its “orange wave” back in 2011, Singh still has time to tell Canadians who Carney is “through a progressive lens” and outline why he is the wrong choice for non-conservative voters hungry for change.

“When you’re defining your opponent, it is vitally important for it to be a critique that has an impact on the voter themselves,” he says.

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“If Mr. Carney is out of touch with the struggles of everyday Canadians, it has to be put through the lens of how (being out of touch) affects them … there has to be a little bit more depth.”

Singh has been pushing that the NDP want Parliament recalled to work on passing a support package for workers and other Canadians who could be hurt by Trump’s tariffs.

At the same time, he says nothing has changed about his intention to bring down the government at the first opportunity he gets.

But with the possibility of an election happening before that, Singh may have lost his chance.

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National Post

staylor@postmedia.com

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