HALF THE BATTLE
With two weeks left in campaign, we check in on where the parties stand,
HAMILTON—The few dozen people gathered in Sam Lawrence Park on Monday were excited about two things: the TigerCats’ upcoming Labour Day Classic against the dreaded Toronto Argonauts, and the fact that Jagmeet Singh was coming to town.
Andrew Mackenzie was among those waiting for him. Tall and friendly and clutching a coffee cup from Tim Hortons, he spoke through his orange “Love and Courage” face mask about his decades of support for the NDP, and how his father Bob was a local MPP for 20 years. Like many devotees of the New Democrats, Mackenzie said he’s feeling good about Singh’s chances in the federal election on Sept. 20. The party has more money, a more experienced leader, and polls projecting it is poised to pick up seats.
“We’re running a really good campaign,” said Mackenzie, who attributed that in part to Singh’s charisma on the hustings. “(People) see him as genuine and authentic.”
Moments later, Singh strode down a set of concrete stairs to his selected position at the edge of a bluff, where he faced a bank of cameras with the cityscape and its distant smokestacks behind him billowing white
smoke. Naturally, Singh spoke about this “worker city,” and how the NDP would implement 10-day sick leave for workers in federally regulated jurisdictions such as banks, telecoms and airlines. He also joked about his own, more ambiguous allegiances in the day’s big football game.
But more revealing was how Singh repeatedly went after Justin Trudeau and the Liberals. He said that, unlike the NDP, the Liberals can’t be trusted to implement $10-a-day child care. He accused Trudeau of “cynical politics” for waiting until an election to agree with the NDP on the need for paid sick leave. And even when asked about Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole’s aboutface on gun control, Singh went after Trudeau instead, accusing
the Liberals of breaking their 2019 pledge to create a mandatory buyback program for banned assault weapons — something Trudeau is now promising to do.
It is clear Singh’s NDP sees the Liberals as their main opponents for the home stretch of this 36-day federal campaign. With two weeks to go until election day, the party hopes to capitalize on what New Democrats see as disillusionment with Trudeau after six years of Liberal government, and to rally progressive voters to Singh and his “likeable” political persona.
“The veneer of the Justin Trudeau Liberal brand has been irreparably damaged,” said Matthew Green, an incumbent New Democratic MP running again in Hamilton Centre. “People feel cheated and they’re looking for an alternative.”
Charlie Angus, a veteran NDP MP seeking re-election in Timmins—James Bay, argued progressive voters are turned off by the Liberals’ “broken promises” on issues like changing Canada’s voting system and ensuring there was clean drinking water on all First Nations reserves by last March.
This, combined with what Angus described as bafflement over how Trudeau called a snap election during the COVID-19 pandemic, is the opening for the NDP, he said. It’s also why Angus believes the perennial threat to NDP success at the federal level — left-leaning supporters voting Liberal to prevent a Conservative victory — will be diminished in this election.
“We’re not feeling the bite of the classic Liberal push to try and pull away New Democrat, progressive voters,” he said.
It helps that the NDP has more money to use on its campaign this time than it did in 2019. The party spent around $10.5 million during that contest, while its budget for this one is at least $24 million.
Anne McGrath, the party’s national director, said the NDP is on track to add seats to the 24 it had before the election was called, and that several more ridings were being added the their list of targets through the first three weeks of the campaign. That includes two ridings in Nova Scotia, and several more in the Prairies and British Columbia, she said.
An important way to actually win there, McGrath said, is to make sure NDP supporters actually vote in this “pandemic election.” That’s why, from the very start of the campaign, the NDP has pushed to ensure people are ready and willing to cast ballots, especially in “regions where we are competitive,” McGrath said. That includes a website — HowToVote.ca — that the NDP launched during the campaign.
“The biggest thing is that people need to know that they can and should vote, and that there’s a good reason to vote,” she said.
The optimism from inside the party belies the fact that the NDP remains significantly behind the Conservatives and Liberals in the polls. Still, when asked whether he would support a Conservative government — which Singh previously ruled out — the NDP Leader has recently refused to answer, stating instead that he is pushing to win power himself at the head of a New Democratic government.
For Green, the Hamilton Centre incumbent, there is “still a lot of campaign left.” And that means, regardless of what polls say and pundits predict, it’s too soon to draw conclusions about what is going to happen.
“If we can keep the momentum up, we’re going to surprise a lot of people who may have underestimated the moment in time that we’re in right now, and the support that we have across the country,” he said.