NDP MPs in mutinous mood
Demoralized over Singh’s leadership
Ontario premier Doug Ford is proving an unlikely inspiration for disillusioned federal New Democrats.
There is a growing consensus among members of caucus that the party’s leader, Jagmeet Singh, will have to step down if he fails to win the byelection in Burnaby South, likely to be called early next year.
The fear among party veterans is that the Trudeau government will hold off on calling a vote until early spring, just in case Singh loses. With a general election scheduled for October, the Liberals are said to be hoping the tight time-frame would dissuade disgruntled New Democrats from turfing their preferred election opponent.
But the chatter among some New Democrats is that, if the Ontario Progressive Conservatives can throw their leader overboard four months before a general election and still win, why can’t they? (Patrick Brown was forced to step down in late January, Ford was elected leader in early March and Ontario Premier in June).
That the subject is even being discussed is evidence of how demoralized the NDP are right now. Financial results released this week for 2017 show the party at its lowest ebb in 16 years. A general election will cost $40 million — $20 million for the central campaign, $20 million for the ridings — and this is not a party that is raising anywhere near enough to fight a competitive campaign.
The party’s financial statement revealed negative net assets of $3.1 million. That doesn’t include the Jack Layton Building in downtown Ottawa, which the New Democrats could presumably re-mortgage to raise funds for a campaign. But it can only do that once.
The problem is (or was in 2017) more money going out than coming in; revenues were $5.9 million, versus expenses of $7.2 million. There is next to no money in the bank and the loss of the publicly funded per-vote subsidy, which used to bring in nearly $5 million a year, is still keenly felt.
Singh points to a slight uptick in fundraising in the first two quarters of this year but the party raised $9 million less than the Liberals last year and $14 million less than the Conservatives.
The reasons are obvious. While the Liberals and Conservatives have been vying for primacy in the opinion polls, the NDP has been becalmed at around 15 per cent support — almost exactly where they were when Singh was elected leader in October. He is judged by just 7 per cent of Canadians to be their preferred prime minister, according to this week’s Nanos Research tracker poll, leaving him statistically tied with the Green Party’s Elizabeth May.
In the wake of disastrous byelection results in Quebec, Singh admitted, “It’s clear we’re not penetrating, we’re not connecting with people.”
There is a very real prospect the NDP could be wiped out in a province where it held 58 of 75 seats after the Orange Crush election of 2011.
Veteran MPs — Linda Duncan, Irene Mathyssen, David Christopherson, Hélène Laverdière and Romeo Saganash — have seen where this is heading and decided not to run next year. They will follow Kennedy Stewart, the Burnaby South MP who is set to resign from his seat on September 14th in hopes of being Vancouver’s next mayor. Justin Trudeau has six months from that date to call a byelection, and senior Liberals suggest the vote will be held in the new year to minimize the prospect of Singh being usurped if he loses.
The Green Party’s May has said she will abide by the antiquated tradition of “leader’s courtesy” and not run a candidate in a riding where another party leader is trying to win a seat in Parliament. One senior Liberal downplayed the prospect of his party throwing the byelection to ensure a Singh victory, but it’s clear the Grits are happy with an NDP that is deficient in money and energy.
A party that is traditionally just happy and surprised to be in the House of Commons is in mutinous mood. Singh has brought in his own cadre of advisers who, veterans argue, have no roots in the party. They have chosen to confront an NDP government in Alberta that is fighting for its life — opting to be the party of environmentalists and downtown lefties, rather than the voice of progressive Prairie populism.
But Singh’s biggest problem is that, with the exception of his opposition to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, his positions are indistinguishable from those of the most progressive prime minister in two generations.
From universal pharmacare to investments in housing to clamping down on tax loopholes that benefit “the rich,” Singh has been beaten to it by the Liberals. He was elected as a leader who could compete with Trudeau on Instagram — personable, presentable, with a little sizzle. But his messaging appears to have been written in generic progressive “hope and change-ese.”
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: “Canada’s identity is based on inclusiveness and our unyielding belief in lifting each other up in response to attempts to divide us. This value is our North Star”. That comes from an oped Singh wrote for the Toronto Star last week, but it could as easily have been ripped from any speech Trudeau has given in the past five years. Voters, it seems, have a choice between Johnnie Walker Red Label or Johnnie Worker Red Label.
Can Singh win in Burnaby? The point was made with some force by one New Democrat that if he can’t win there, he can’t win anywhere. In 2015, Stewart won by 500 votes over a surging Liberal candidate, who increased support by more than 10,000 votes from 2011. This time there will be no Green candidate and all the anti-Trans Mountain support should coalesce around the NDP. There is a sizable South Asian population in the riding, even though this didn’t help Singh’s candidate in Scarborough Agincourt in a byelection last year — on that occasion, the NDP vote actually dipped from the 2015 election.
Singh’s staff say they are “very confident” of victory, based on the response on the ground. “We are talking about issues that matter to folks there,” said one NDP staffer.
A win will go a long way to salvaging Singh’s leadership. A seat in the House will raise his profile and he has political gifts that will appeal to voters who don’t know he exists right now.
But if he is going to make gains, he needs to wakeup to the fact that the general election campaign has kicked off already. He is in a political knife-fight and his best line of attack thus far has been to hit his opponents with a Hallmark card.
SINGH POINTS TO A SLIGHT UPTICK IN FUNDRAISING IN THE FIRST TWO QUARTERS OF THIS YEAR BUT THE PARTY RAISED $9 MILLION LESS THAN THE LIBERALS LAST YEAR AND $14 MILLION LESS THAN THE CONSERVATIVES. — JOHN IVISON