NDP and Green leaders look for a breakthrough. Our profile series continues,
OTTAWA—Jagmeet Singh thinks maybe the universe is telling him something.
When he was a teenager in Windsor, Ont., the future New Democratic Party leader drove an SUV with horrible tires. They kept going flat and he kept having to change them. Eventually he got pretty good at it.
Later in life, he noticed opportunities to use this skill. In 2012, Singh was in New York City with friends when they spotted a cab driver with a flat tire. Singh sprung to action, loosened the lug nuts and switched it out for him. He even popped his shirt off and flexed his arms while his buddy snapped photos.
A similar thing happened with swimming. Singh grew up with a pool in his backyard and took lessons for years. Now he says he can “basically tread water forever.” And that’s good, because apparently he’s used this ability to save people from drowning on three separate occasions — once in the Bahamas, once in Australia and once in the Credit River in Mississauga.
“Maybe the universe makes this happen when you’re good at something,” Singh reflected recently in a boardroom of the NDP’s Jack Layton Building in downtown Ottawa. “I always want to help out if I can.”
Now Singh is engaged in something else he feels he is good at: campaigning in a federal election, after Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau announced Canadians would go to the polls on Sept. 20. Many New Democrats credit Singh’s strong campaign performance with preventing electoral disaster in 2019, when expectations were so low for the party that Singh and his entourage danced in celebration at a Burnaby hotel ballroom after the NDP lost 15 of its 39 seats. At 42, he is battle-hardened from almost two years of political jousting in a minority Parliament, and riding a high with positive indications that many Canadians find him likeable — and an announcement just before the campaign launched that he and his wife, Gurkiran Kaur Sidhu, are expecting their first child.
This means Singh entered his second election campaign under a new kind of pressure. The party has more than twice as much money to spend, better polling results, and higher hopes it can recover seats lost since the “orange wave” of 2011.
It’s not enough to defend the territory anymore. Singh needs to expand it.
“I know with my heart that not just more New Democrats, but a New Democratic government, will make people’s lives better.”
JAGMEET SINGH NDP LEADER
A proud Sikh, Singh often credits his political abilities to the teachings of his
mother, Harmeet. These include the idea of chardi kala, which he defines as “defiant optimism” in the face of adversity, as well as the spiritual notion of “radical empathy,” where everyone is connected to the point that one person’s pain is felt by all of humanity.
His view of leadership is also informed by this tradition. In the Sikh context, Singh said the word for “leader” is mukh sevadar, which “literally means ‘servant.’
“It’s a different approach,” he said. “It’s not coming from the arrogance of being the one that calls the shots. It’s from the honour of being the one that’s been given the responsibility of serving.”
The way Singh and those close to him tell it, these concepts are lodestars for the NDP leader, in his political career and his personal life. He has faced significant difficulties in both, although he maintains his “worst day as an adult is far easier than my easiest day as a kid.”
Growing up in Windsor in the 1980s, Singh says he fought bullies on the playgrounds who hurled racist insults like “diaper head” and called him “dirty” for his brown skin. When he signed up for taekwondo to learn to defend himself, his coach sexually abused him — a trauma that, as Singh writes in his 2019 memoir “Love and Courage,” took him years to acknowledge and process.
Singh’s father also drank heavily. Eventually he lost his job, and Singh moved to London, Ont., with his younger brother, Gurratan, who attended high school while Singh majored in biology at the University of Western Ontario.
“One of the things I remember about him is … he was trying to keep his family afloat,” said Amneet Singh, a childhood friend of Gurratan’s, who recalls the future NDP leader coming home to make the boys pasta late at night after working late at one of his three jobs.
Singh eventually dropped plans to become a doctor and went to law school, figuring it was a quicker route to a higher income. He graduated from Osgoode Hall and worked for a few years as a criminal defence lawyer in the Greater Toronto Area.
By 2011, they were involved in activist circles based in Brampton, and Amneet and Gurratan convinced Singh to run for the NDP. For the next six years, Singh was the MPP for Brampton East, a time in which he gained a reputation for his strong social-media presence, flashy suits — something he’s described as a kind of “armour” against racism — and affection for bicycles.
Then, in 2017, he cruised to victory in the NDP leadership race, when he raised more money than all his opponents combined and won a majority on the first ballot.
Unfortunately for Singh, his momentum stopped there. Through 2018, his leadership was marred by a series of stumbles and difficulties.
Dozens of New Democrats from Saskatchewan revolted at Singh’s decision to boot one of the province’s few NDP MPs from caucus over allegations of sexual harassment. He caused a media furor by stating political violence in India was too complicated to denounce in a “simplistic manner.” And once, just before his party was trounced in a Quebec byelection, Singh missed his flight and had to drive himself from Ottawa just to make a late appearance.
In January 2019, Jennifer Howard joined Singh’s team as his new chief of staff. A former NDP finance minister in Manitoba, Howard had seen politicians bristle at criticism and reject their aides’ advice. When Howard met with Singh for the first time, she found he was refreshingly willing to take it.
“He was not naive about the challenges ahead, and he wasn’t closed to learning how to be a better leader,” Howard recalled. “He doesn’t always agree with the assessment or the advice … but I think it comes from a real, deep confidence that allows him to say, ‘Yeah, I could have done that better.’ ”
Singh said it helps to meditate. “I meditate regularly on not letting my ego get in the way,” he said. “If you’re free from ego, you’re in the moment, and in the moment you’re open to hearing people’s ideas, you’re open to hearing a new way of thinking, and you can let go of what you did in the past.”
Yet even while he is open to learning, those around him insist he has not fundamentally changed as a politician. Singh has always tried to appeal to voters in personal terms — he proposes universal pharmacare as a means to help an Edmonton woman named Shannon afford medication, instead of, say, a prudent move to pool national purchasing power.
The NDP’s basic pitch to the electorate also hasn’t changed under Singh’s leadership. Just as in 2019, he and the New Democrats want to convince voters that Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are beholden to the rich, and that only the NDP can be trusted to implement progressive policies — such as a one-per-cent wealth tax — to benefit all Canadians.
For Amneet, who is now the party’s digital director, this consistency is based on the belief that people simply like the NDP leader. “The more people get to know him, the more they gravitate toward his message, because they know that he is genuine,” he said.
One such person is Melanie Noto, a 40-year-old hairdresser from Brandon, Man. Never one for politics, Noto said she found “my guy” when Singh came along. It also helps that Howard, Singh’s chief of staff, is Noto’s cousin.
This summer, when Noto was preparing for open heart surgery, Singh sent her a video message of encouragement. It shows Singh in a pink turban explaining the concept of chardi kala. Noto watched the video over and over into the final moments before her procedure.
She is now such a big fan of Singh and his advice that she says she might get a tattoo of the phrase.
Marie Della Mattia believes Singh’s personality is a major part of what makes him a good politician, especially on the campaign trail. As special adviser, Della Mattia was with Singh all through the 2019 election and will be again for the current campaign.
“One of the things I hear more than anything else: he’s real,” she said. “The way he speaks to the people he loves and the way he speaks to everyone else is the same … He is himself everywhere.”
Whether Singh can finish the 2021 campaign with the same kudos remains to be seen. With a deeper war chest and a more experienced leader, his party expects the campaign to pick up more seats.
“I know with my heart that not just more New Democrats, but a New Democratic government, will make people’s lives better,” Singh said. “I’ve seen it. I tasted the difference we can make.”
Many readers will say he’s dreaming. And that’s true. Singh is a man who wonders if the universe set him up to change people’s tires.
One night in early August, Singh was driving from Toronto to Ottawa. When he’s on the road, he likes to make stops — often to jump in a lake or explore something interesting, he said.
And on this night he noticed a sign for a dark sky reserve, a place that’s free from light pollution that blocks out the cosmos.
“I pulled over and hung out there for a bit, because it was dark and I thought, ‘Cool,’ ” Singh said.
So, on the cusp of his second election campaign, and harbouring hopes for a breakthrough, the NDP leader gazed up and took in the stars.