The NDP Wildcard

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HERE'S MY TAKE

So does the NDP matter?

By the time you read this, it should be clear whether the U.S. tariffs will come into effect today or on March 1st – as of Friday noon there are conflicting reports and a remaining uncertainty. In the meantime, attention is being paid to some of the longer-term reverberations of all of these events on Canadian politics. In particular, the spotlight has fallen on the New Democratic Party (NDP) after party leader Jagmeet Singh opened the door to helping the minority Liberal government pass tariff-response legislation before joining the other opposition parties to defeat that same government on a confidence vote. This opened Mr. Singh to criticism from both inside and outside his party as a weak and unreliable leader.

The trajectory that brought us here makes this predictable. Mr. Singh has been NDP leader since 2017. It took two years before he won a by-election and seat in the House of Commons and in two federal campaigns, the NDP has gone from the 44 seats he inherited to 25 seats. He signed a supply and confidence agreement in 2022 that enabled the minority Liberal government to function as if it had a majority. His argument has been that he was winning policy victories, including dental care and pharmacare, but his polling support has not improved. In the summer of 2024, he ripped up that agreement with a scathing rebuke of the Liberals and their unworthiness to stay in office. However, when several opportunities came in the fall session of Parliament, he did not follow through on actually voting non-confidence in the government. Instead, he tried to make a virtue of not letting Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre call the shots. Mr. Singh is now seen as the boy who cried wolf.

So why does this all matter? Well, at the moment, Canada lacks a stable central government that can deal with the challenges of the new U.S. administration. We’re in that predicament because of the parliamentary deals that Mr. Singh and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have made.

Electoral success factors differently in the NDP’s DNA than it does in the other parties. The NDP was born through fusing three strands of thought: trade unionism (“the voice of the working class”), the social gospel (“social justice and solidarity”), and academic left-wing thinking (“big government and redistributive economics”). Today, the social gospel and trade union strands (at least the private-sector union component) of the party seem to have mostly withered. Instead, the federal NDP is dominated by a particular stream of progressive social justice thought. Regardless of how much other parties (and especially the Liberals) compete for the support of those voters, there is within the core NDP activists a very strong “we are not Liberals” mindset, which is part of what makes the cooperation between these parties complicated.

Almost instinctively, the NDP acts more as a movement than as a political party trying to win power. We even see this in the Liberal-NDP supply and confidence agreement. The NDP was ready to make deals and embed policies and programs tying their brand with supporting a very unpopular Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. More than any other political party in Canada, the NDP has historically had a clear sense of programmatic goals and, agree or disagree with them, they were more coherent as a movement. It seems different provincially, where the NDP has successfully formed governments in six provinces. What’s more, in Saskatchewan, British Columbia, and Manitoba, they have been either the government or the second party for most of the past 50 years. However, federally, the NDP has never achieved that status, and the ethos required for a political party to be seen as ready to govern doesn’t seem present.

All of this means that at the best of times, the NDP is running election campaigns as a third party, arguing for “strategic voting” in order to maximize its political leverage in the legislature. New Democrats seem not to be running for government, but for the chance to influence government. This week, that instinct saw Mr. Singh willing to make an exception to his stated disdain for the Liberals by offering to cooperate with them to pass “protection for workers” before then defeating the same government. Mr. Singh doesn’t seem worried that every about-face regarding defeating the government seems to be more damaging to his credibility. But progressive pundit Max Fawcett noticed. He described Mr. Singh’s stance this week as a “catastrophic” mistake that puts them “at risk of being wiped out.” Friday’s Angus Reid Institute poll suggests national support for the NDP may be as low as 13%. A dozen seats is the minimum for a party to be recognized in the House of Commons, which affects not only how much time its caucus gets to speak but also staffing budgets and committee participation.

From a conventional political analysis, the NDP may have missed a golden opportunity. Had it forced an election in the fall, the outcome might well have been a majority Conservative government with an NDP official opposition and the Liberals reduced to third or fourth place in Parliament. Following Mr. Trudeau’s resignation notice, the Liberals’ polling bump seems to be coming mainly from NDP voters. Given that the NDP does best when election campaigns are about social values or policy and it does worst when the discussion turns to economics and trade, the prospects for a campaign favourable to the NDP seem unlikely. If the ballot question does end up being about who can best deal with U.S. President Trump, the NDP doesn’t seem to be even a consideration for voters not already in its camp.

So will one of the casualties of the current shifting ground be the practical demolition of the NDP as a federal political force? What would be the consequences?

Without the pressure from the left, the Liberals may turn into a more centrist party, taking their left flank for granted. On the other hand, in 2015 Justin Trudeau came to power by outflanking the NDP on the left, promising deficits and social spending at a time when NDP leader Thomas Mulcair was promising balanced budgets and fiscal prudence. So, it’s just as possible the Liberals would become a genuine left-wing party (as they have governed in the past decade) with the future of Canadian politics more closely resembling a two-party left-right divide.

This in itself would have political implications and wouldn’t necessarily be good for those on the political right. Without the NDP attracting left-wing votes from the Liberals, the Conservatives might have more difficulty forming a government. (Similarly, but in a totally different context, U.S. President Trump and Republicans generally might not enjoy having Canada as a 51st state, given that our electorate’s political leanings would presumably heavily favour the Democrats.)

The political spectrum is changing. It is not unreasonable to expect that the events of the next few years will see a restructuring of the Canadian political left similar to the recent restructuring of the Canadian political right. Going from a united Progressive Conservative party led by Brian Mulroney in 1984 to a Conservative Party of Canada led by Stephen Harper in 2006 required many twists and turns. Back in 2011, my colleague Michael Van Pelt and I mused that the left might be facing its decade of dissensus, but our analysis clearly did not take into account the political phenomenon of Justin Trudeau. Now that his flame has fizzled is that dissensus about to sort itself out? Will the present confusion only hasten this process? Mr. Singh’s decisions over the past year clearly have significant consequences for his party and his political future. They may shape the political options available to all Canadians in future elections.

 The Captain and Compass Search 

The present uncertainty regarding Canadian domestic and trade affairs will not be resolved until after the federal election. Until then, this Insights section will provide a brief punditry take on “the week that was.” 

• Measuring Momentum. Liberal leadership contender Mark Carney seems to have about double the cabinet and caucus endorsements that his closest rival, Chrystia Freeland, has. Most Liberals seem to conclude that Mr. Carney provides them with the best opportunity in the next election. So far, the campaign is almost entirely focused on winnability rather than on any specific platform or vision for the country.
  
  
• Counting to 400,000. The estimated Liberal membership was 80,000 to 100,000 people before Prime Minister Trudeau’s resignation-timing announcement. On Thursday, the party announced that 400,000 were eligible as of the cutoff date. In every leadership campaign, but especially one as short as this one, preexisting, thick social networks are usually key to managing a significant number of sign-ups. The Liberals have committed to a careful verification process but in light of the Hogue Commission report that leadership campaigns are particularly vulnerable to foreign interference, the party will need to pay special attention to which groups were involved in signing up members for the leadership.
  
  
• Cabinet Government. Chrystia Freeland indicated that should she be elected, she would cut the size of the federal cabinet in half and similarly shrink the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). She also promised to return to a more cabinet-driven (rather than PMO-driven) decision-making model. It is noteworthy that several previous prime ministers (including Chretien, Martin, and Harper) began their governments with streamlined cabinets only to see them bloat during their time in office. However, full marks to Ms. Freeland for promoting this during the campaign since it means fewer perques to hand out to the very supporters whose endorsements she is seeking. There’s no way of knowing if this is a factor in her surprisingly small caucus support.
  
  
• Then There Were Five. Seven candidates filed by the January 23 deadline day to become an official candidate for the Liberal leadership. Two campaigns have since ended. On Thursday, MP Jaime Battiste withdrew from the race to support Mr. Carney. Earlier, the party summarily disqualified Ottawa-area MP Chandra Arya, though the lack of explanation for the decision raised questions about Arya as an MP.
   

WHAT I’M READING

Happy Tariff Day...?

Today is the day that threatened American tariffs on Canadian imports were supposed to come into effect, although as of Friday noon, there were some suggestions that there might be a month’s reprieve. It seems improper not to include any references in a weekly newsletter of this sort on what is likely a major date in a very consequential chain of events affecting Canada-U.S. relations. So, we watch with interest to see whether Canada’s response will require the recalling of Parliament and, if that happens, whether the result will be retaliatory tariffs or an election. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have some tricky needles to thread.

Canada’s Sovereignty

Andrew Potter’s essay on theline.ca tells a most helpful story as to how Canada historically morphed from being dependent on the British to guarantee our sovereignty to becoming reliant on the Americans to do so (in exchange for Canada’s contribution to continental defence). However, Potter bluntly notes that starting with Pierre Trudeau (and on through every prime minister since) we “started acting as moralizers and scolds to our allies abroad, while flagrantly, even boastfully, free-riding when it came to both collective and continental defence.” He argues that this decades-long drift lies at the heart of revived dreams of an American annexation of Canada.

AI Disruption

I’m no expert in AI, but it seems significant that Chinese tech start-up DeepSeek is trying to compete with American AI options at a fraction of the cost. The markets were spooked as leading AI stocks lost over $1 trillion of market value. This development is certain to provoke a political response given the $500 billion of infrastructure President Trump announced at his inauguration.

Cultural Christianity

James Wood provides some interesting perspectives on the rise of “cultural Christianity” and the various views on how to interpret the “vibe shift” regarding religion, specifically following the U.S. presidential election. He rightly highlights “category confusion” – a significant point I made last summer in my essay on the four ways that Christian Nationalism is failing. His take is more sympathetic than mine regarding the extent to which the cultural plausibility of the gospel is changing in the present political context. Still, he is quite right in concluding that the fruits of the gospel harvest are thankfully in the hands of God.

MEANINGFUL METRICS

We Are All Getting Older

Visual Capital’s graph of the week often tells me things I didn’t know, and this week was no exception. While Canada’s aging problem is serious, it is nowhere near the top of the list. The United Nations defines “super-aged societies” as those where more than 20% of the population is over the age of 65. At 20.3%, Canada just makes the list, but there are almost 40 societies where the problem is more intense. Monaco leads the list at 36%.

TAKE IT TO-GO

Holocaust Remembrance

Instead of the usual lighter take, let me close this week’s newsletter by noting Holocaust Remembrance Day which took place this past week, marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. It’s important every year, but especially now, given a level of anti-semitism on our streets not experienced in my lifetime. Sadly, this is being met by less than clear thinking about both the history of the Second World War and the theology of the dignity of every person as an image-bearer of God, even within faith communities.

Last week, freelance journalist Susan Korah reached out to follow up on an informal conversation we had in my office a few years back about a copper kettle on display there. The kettle was a gift to my grandparents in the Netherlands from a Jewish family they sheltered during the war. This column in the Catholic Register shares the story as I’ve pieced it together.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” goes the saying. On this issue, it seems especially urgent for us to keep the lessons top of mind, even as the generation that experienced it personally is no longer around to tell the story.

Hope you have a great week. I’m looking forward to being back in your inbox next Saturday morning.