New Democrats poised for modest gains

VANCOUVER—Jagmeet Singh and the federal NDP are gearing up to return to Ottawa with the prospect that, after campaigning for 36 days with a deeper war chest and a more experienced national leader, not much really changed.

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals were projected late Monday night to form another minority government, while the NDP’s position of influence in Parliament — one of three parties with enough seats to hold the balance of power — was on pace to remain roughly the same.

In an interview with the Star as results trickled in, NDP national director Anne McGrath expressed anger that Trudeau called an election during the fourth wave of COVID-19, and questioned whether the Liberals would try to work with opposition parties after triggering an election to win a majority.

“They don’t like having to work with opposition, they don’t like having to answer questions, they don’t like having to think about other things besides their own agenda,” McGrath said.

“Even if they’re in a minority, they’re going to want to operate that way.”

Shortly before midnight in Ontario, national results from Elections Canada showed the New Democrats leading in 28 federal ridings with a slightly higher share of the national popular vote counted so far than the 16 per cent it earned in 2019.

Since the beginning of the campaign, McGrath and other NDP officials expressed confidence the party would add seats to the 24 it held when Trudeau called the snap election on Aug. 15, though one top official told the Star on Monday that the NDP lowered its sights from the 40 ridings it hoped to win at the beginning of the campaign.

Still, any gains at all would mark the first time since the “orange wave” under Jack Layton in 2011 that the NDP picked up seats in a federal election.

In pursuit of that goal, Singh spent the last days of the campaign on an offensive sprint across the country to ridings that were held by Liberals and Conservatives. Along the way, he played video games for an online audience of more than 60,000; did hand-stands at the Halifax harbour; visited an Indigenous residential school cemetery outside Regina; spoke with burned-out health workers in pandemic-striken Edmonton; and danced in the aisle of his big orange tour bus while tired journalists tried to keep their eyes open en route to Vancouver.

Throughout the campaign, polls found Singh was the most likeable political leader, and the NDP’s challenge throughout had been to try and leverage that affinity into support at the ballot box.

The party budgeted more than twice as much money for this campaign as the $10.5 million it spent in 2019, releasing TV commercials made with ad agencies in Toronto and Montreal and travelling more with a chartered plane to tour the country and visit 51 ridings along the way — and several of them more than once.

Everywhere he went, Singh stayed focused on a making a double argument to voters. He alleged over and over that Trudeau has failed and can’t be trusted to do better, while the NDP would actually enact progressive policies that the party argued are in the best interest of most Canadians.

After bouncing through clusters of placard-waving New Democrats outside campaign offices and in open fields during the last week of this pandemic election, Singh’s routine stump speech underscored the same alleged Liberal failings on issues like Indigenous reconciliation, affordable housing and climate change.

Using the slogan that “better is possible,” Singh’s pitch to voters was that the NDP would be different.

Through increased taxes on corporations and the wealthy, Singh pledged massive government spending over the next five years. This included $14 billion to build 500,000 affordable housing units; $38.5 billion for universal pharmacare; and $18.4 billion on income supports for seniors and people with disabilities.

The NDP argued that new taxes will help pay for such programs. That includes the party’s annual one-per-cent tax on household net worth that exceeds $10 million; higher income taxes for corporations and people who earn more than $214,000 per year; and a special “excess profits” tax on companies that earned significant money during the pandemic.

Despite what the polls suggested, Singh never conceded during the campaign that the NDP could not win the election. He stated several times that his ultimate goal was to become Canada’s prime minister.

Yet Singh also said he ultimately wanted at least enough New Democrats elected to advocate for the party’s policies in the next Parliament. It was an implicit call for greater NDP influence in another minority legislature, and on the eve of election day, Singh gave his clearest indication yet of what it would take for either the Conservatives or Liberals to earn his support: tax the rich.

“Our number one priority is making sure that the billionaires pay their fair share, so we can invest in all the solutions that we need to make sure people’s lives are better,” Singh said.