NDP GETS NEW LEADER
Singh wins on first ballot
Jagmeet Singh was declared the new leader of the NDP in a decisive victory after a single round of voting ended on Sunday.
The Ontario MPP was named leader with 53.8 per cent of the vote at a Toronto convention centre, during the finale of a drawn-out leadership campaign that began after current leader Tom Mulcair lost a vote on a leadership review in April 2016.
Singh, who is Sikh, is the first non-white leader of a major federal party in Canada. He is also only the third NDP leader to have been elected on the first ballot, after Tommy Douglas, the party’s first leader, and Jack Layton.
In his victory speech, Singh said he ran a campaign focused on inequality, climate change, reconciliation and electoral reform. “To make progress on these issues, to truly make Canadians’ lives better, we owe it to Canadians to form government. We owe it to them,” he told a cheering crowd.
Singh’s perceived rival, Ontario MP Charlie Angus, finished well behind him, with just 19.4 per cent of the vote. Manitoba MP Niki Ashton won 17.4 per cent, while Quebec MP Guy Caron finished in last place, with 9.4 per cent of the ballots cast.
In total, 65,782 of the roughly 124,000 NDP members voted, or 52.8 per cent, slightly lower than the turnout during the Conservative leadership race, when about 55 per cent of eligible voters cast ballots. Turnout for the first ballot of the 2012 NDP leadership race was about 51 per cent.
In an interview, Singh said he hopes to inspire a new generation of leaders “who didn’t see themselves reflected in government. I’m only here today because people before me have broken barriers,” he said.
NDP national director Robert Fox called the victory for Singh, a 38-year-old criminal lawyer, a “gamechanger” for diversity in Canadian politics.
“There are so many Canadians who sort of feel that they’ve been on the outside looking in, and he has kicked the door open and said, ‘Come on in,’ ” Fox said. “And for young brown men and women, for people of colour, for Indigenous Canadians, it really gives them a sense of opportunity, of openness, of prospects in 2019.”
Singh has positioned himself as a leader who can grow the party in the suburbs and among immigrant communities.
Gurnishan Singh, a volunteer on his campaign, said the victory will bring people from minority communities to the NDP “in masses.”
“A lot of individuals, especially new immigrants, they always have a little barrier, they don’t have a sense of belonging,” he said. “Seeing an individual like Jagmeet up on stage … really makes them feel like Canada is an inclusive country.”
With Singh’s victory, all three major parties are now led by men under 50 — in fact, at 45, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is the oldest.
Since joining the race in May, Singh has run a campaign often centred more on personality than policy. He was called out early on by fellow candidates Ashton and Peter Julian for not taking a strong enough stand against pipeline development, though he eventually released a climate change policy that outlined his opposition to the Kinder Morgan and Energy East pipelines.
He has also proposed a federal ban on racial profiling, which he reiterated on Sunday.
“It makes you feel like you don’t belong,” he said. “Like there’s something wrong with you for just being you.”
Singh also wants to scrap the Old Age Security program and to roll it together with several other seniors’ benefits into a single, means-tested program called the Canada Seniors Guarantee.
In September, Singh gained international attention and praise after a video of him responding to a heckler who accused him of ties to sharia law and the Muslim Brotherhood went viral.
But he has encountered more difficulty in Quebec, where doubts have surfaced about the ability of a turbanwearing Sikh to gain traction in a province skeptical of overt religious symbols in public life.
On Sunday, Caron said he believes Quebecers will rally to Singh as they get to know him.
The NDP now has roughly two years to build up its ranks ahead of the 2019 election. Singh maintains he’s comfortable without a seat in the House of Commons, though he will relinquish his seat in the Ontario legislature. He said he’s looking at a “dual-prong approach.”
Singh said he will make an announcement about who will lead the party on his behalf in the House of Commons very soon.
FOR YOUNG BROWN MEN AND WOMEN, FOR PEOPLE OF COLOUR, FOR INDIGENOUS CANADIANS, IT REALLY GIVES THEM A SENSE OF OPPORTUNITY.