WILL JAGMEET SINGH LIVE UP TO HYPE IN CANADA POLITICS?
TORONTO: In mid-December, the public policy research group Angus Reid Institute released a survey on the approval ratings of the leadership of Federal parties in Canada.
Jagmeet Singh, leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP) scored 39%, exceeding the figure for his Conservative counterpart but trailing the country’s Prime Minister and Liberal Party chief Justin Trudeau.
While that may be a positive driver heading into 2018, there are also signs for concern.
TORONTO: In mid-December, the public policy research group Angus Reid Institute released a survey on the approval ratings of the leadership of Federal parties in Canada. Jagmeet Singh, leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP ) scored 39%, exceeding the figure for his Conservative counterpart but trailing the country’s Prime Minister and Liberal Party chief Justin Trudeau.
While that may be a positive driver heading into 2018, there are also signs for concern. As the institute’s executive director Shachi Kurl said: “While these approval numbers should give him some reason for comfort, he’s also going to be judged, inevitably, through the more traditional metrics of political success.”
In four Federal by-elections to the House of Commons since Singh assumed charge, support for the party has collapsed. “There’s no question the NDP were the losers; they decreased their vote share in every single election. Which shows really there has been no upsurge in support for him,” Christopher Cochrane, associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto Scarborough, argued.
It’s still very early in his tenure as Singh himself commented to the media in Ottawa this month: “This is something that’s not going to happen overnight.”
The first challenge for Singh could be to find a way into the House of Commons. He is not an MP, and was a member of the Ontario legislature when elected to lead the NDP.
His party also holds no seats in the area he dominates, Brampton, a suburb of Toronto. But he may require a resignation from a plausible riding elsewhere to make his presence felt in Parliament. He will also need to rebuild a party that was “battered, bruised and chastened” after the 2015 elections, as Kurl put it,
“The party will have to figure out a way to present itself to progressive Canadians as a reasonable alternative to the Liberals,” Cochrane said.
That’s a task in itself since Trudeau leads the most left-of-centre Liberal government in a generation, occupying the space traditionally taken by the NDP.
As Kurl pointed out: “He still faces a very very strong brand in Justin Trudeau.”
While Singh’s election as the first visible minority to lead a Federal party in Canada was celebrated, just being a turban-wearing Sikh could prove a drawback in a province like Quebec, which propelled the NDP in 2011.