NDP Electoral Disaster

On election night, the NDP faced it’s worst performance in Canadian electoral history - including the performances of it’s predecessor, the CCF. With 6.5% of the popular vote and 7 seats it has lost it’s official party status, not a position of strength to say the least.

Party leader Jagmeet Singh offered a teary-eyed concession speech announcing his intention to resign when a new interim leader was chosen. Even as someone who is critical of the him and the party’s politics, it was hard not to feel sorry for him. He lost his own riding with 19% of the popular vote to the Liberal party, performing worse than most other incumbent NDP MPs.

This is not entirely his fault - his riding boundaries changed since the last election, which favoured middle-class Burnaby voters who typically vote Liberal.

Ironically, ‘strategic voting’ led to many voters splitting to the Liberals in NDP-held ridings, causing a Conservative to be elected. Such exceptional examples include Windsor West, London-Fanshaw and North Island-Powell River.

The NDP and Liberals do not simply split the vote. Ironically, many NDP voters split to the Conservatives, especially in working-class and rural areas and among youth. Although some loss can be attributed to vote-splitting to stop a ‘lesser-evil’ (who for some would actually be the Liberals!), this merely serves to deflect liability.

They ran an awful campaign. Their policies did not have any real core appeal to any group of people, not even union workers and youth who traditionally are a key component of the NDP’s coalition. During a time when people feared becoming the ‘51st state’ and the cost-of-living worsening from the Trump tariffs, the party offered no distinct, bold, radical solutions to define themselves.

Their campaign promises were weak and vague:

Promising to build 3 million homes by 2030 by awarding municipalities for exceeding construction targets and incetivizing private developers. No mentions of a social housing system, merely ‘non-market’ and ‘affordable’ housing. What this actually means is up to interpretation. Plenty of non-market housing is deeply unaffordable.

On climate, far and away a vital issue amongst youth especially, was hardly mentioned on their platform, beyond some committment to invest in renewables and a ‘non-emitting electricity grid’ by 2040. Hardly a serious climate solution.

Their position on the trade war and Trump was hardly better than the Liberals - in fact, something shared in common with the rest of their platform. The biggest difference was an improvement on the current Employment Insurance system.

Good jobs and Canadian sourced materials were a core part of their platform - again, something they shared with the Liberals. Throughout the campaign they parroted the nationalist expressions of both Liberals and Conservatives. Lacking any differentiation from the other parties and particularly the Liberals was the key to their disastrous performance.

Several critical blunders also lost people who wanted to stick with them, despite pressures for strategic voting. During the debates, rather than use the moment, when millions were watching him, to define the party and stick out to Canadians, Singh instead decided to interrupt and generally be a nuisance in the debate.

Not that I care about Poilievre’s feelings, however there was certainly an aura of confusion amongst many about Singh’s behaviour (and to my knowledge, he has not done this in previous debates). Furthermore, he could have utilized the platform and publicity these debates provided in a more efficient way.

There was also a high profile dropping of an influencer, Jessica Wetz, after comments of hers surfaced comparing Israeli politician’s genocidal rhetoric about Palestinian children to the holocaust.

Also, most of them are landlords. So, fuck them.

But the NDP’s predicament did not arise out of nothing. It reflects the party’s historically recent transformation from a social democratic party with a militant base of workers leading up to the 80s, to today where it effectively stands as the left-wing of the Liberal party.

There is no better capturing of this than their deal with the Trudeau government, the supply-and-confidence-agreement.

The Lousy Deal

In 2022, Pierre Poilievre became Conservative leader of a platform of right populism. He rode a wave of polarisation from the ‘freedom convoy’ earlier in January that year.

During this time, the NDP had already tied the knot with the Liberal party (Singh literally called their agreement a ‘marriage’) by signing the deal with the Liberals.

In return for supporting Trudeau’s government against non-confidence motions and in their federal budgets, the Liberals promised to ‘work towards’ passing several of the NDP’s priorities. Such was the supply-and-confidence agreement, which wound up not being worth the paper it was written on.

With the threat of an election eliminated, the Liberals continued to engage in prolonged ‘negotiations’ with the NDP. In the end, a means-tested dental coverage (“dentalcare”) and limited pharmaceutical coverage (“pharmacare”). Neither were integrated into our universal healthcare system (we remain the only G7 country with Universal healthcare, but not universal pharma or dental). Anti-scab legislation was passed, fining employers for hiring scab workers during a strike.

Since the March 2022 deal the NDP tied itself politically to the Liberals, with Singh defending them as their ‘partners.’ Without a left-wing to channel in to, the mass anger at the increased inflation and pre-existing cost-of-living and the still lingering COVID pandemic would all file into the Conservative party, which promised change from the status quo - even if it was pretty awful.

Throughout this time Singh continuously denied or refused to say for certain that the deal would be ripped up. Up until the Summer of 2024, negotiations were ‘making progress’ and piecemeal legislation was a ‘victory.’ All of the sudden one day, the Liberal ‘partners’ were turned into ‘the party of big business’ who would never ever do all the cool stuff they promised to totally do for realzies.

Now, what exactly changed from every other time the Liberals stalled and dragged their feet cannot be known for certain. However, we can make an educated guess that the NDP saw an unpopular Trudeau government, a 20-point lead by the Conservatives, and the NDP stagnating in polling at 19-21% (relatively tied with the Liberals) and did the math.

What many leftists predicted came to fruition - although not how we expected. The Liberals did take credit for dental and pharamceutical coverage, but it was not Poilievre, but Carney who harnessed a desire for change and especially security from Trump’s threats against Canada.

Although you and I know that the NDP and Liberals are somewhat different, imagine you’re a regular person looking at these two parties over the past few years. How could you possibly take Singh seriously when he promises to be different from the Liberals after supporting Trudeau’s government for years?

Does the NDP have a future?

Canadian Dimension’s Sid Ryan argues that unions and the NDP must return to ‘CCF roots.’ This is no doubt going to be echoed by much of the NDP rank-and-file, who lean further left than the bureaucracy of the party and the unions.

How can this be done? At this point in time, it is unlikely. No mass movement exists that is powerful enough and willing to go into the NDP and challenge the bureaucracy with the aim of snatching control from it. Even if one existed, how likely would it be fro them to try this?

Although it nominally waves the banner of being the ‘party of ordinary people,’ the actual policies of the party, the things it does or promises to do in power, often betray the very same people they claim to support. In the 90s, Bob Rae’s NDP government imposed the ‘social contract’ on to unions, effectively placing the costs of a recession on to Ontario workers.

For years the BC NDP has supported sending the RCMP to attack Land Defenders against LNG pipelines, infamously those opposing the Trans Mountain and Coastal Gaslink pipelines.

If that didn’t anger the environmentalists enough, they would also be frustrated by the federal and all provincial NDP’s support for expanding fossil fuel extraction and pipeline development.

Labour unions have had to strike to receive even the barest concessions from NDP governments in all provinces where it has held power. Federally, it weakly opposes attacking worker rights and unions in parliamentary statements and election speeches, but has done nothng to actively struggle to oppose them - most notably, the times the Liberal government (their ‘partners’) put down labour strikes.

Assuming everyone who has been betrayed by the party wanted to go back into it, leading a movement of people to try and take control of the party, what would realistically happen?

In 2022 the BCNDP faced a leadership election. Anjali Appdurai, a well-known activcist and environmentalist in BC surprisingly ran, against the expectations taht the housing minister David Eby would be acclaimed without challenge. One of her staff members offered to pay for memberships for low-income people (letting poors into the NDP? disgusting), which the party apparatus used to bar Appadurai - despite the fact that she denied people these offers.

After Israel moved in to Gaza in October 2023, Ontario NDP MLA Sarah Jama made statements opposing the gneocidal invasion and siege on Palestinians. This was met by a censure vote brought on by Ford’s supermajority Conservative government, supported by ONDP leader Marit Stiles. Jama was later ousted from NDP caucus.

I could go on. Enough bad will has been generated to make joining the party toxic for many leftists, even if they might hold their nose and vote for them, for example, the ‘vote Palestine’ movement often endorsed NDP candidates in this election.

Even if some leftists lost their senses and joined this nightmare orange lib bureaucracy, the leadership would crush them or block their efforts to move forward. Although reforming an existing party can seem appealing, the reality is far more difficult.

You are going to be fighting against an entire right-wing apparatus that will be determined in forcing you to tow the party line. They control much of the campaigning, the funding, policies and statements, effectively everything that makes the party function.

It is hard to imagine this party’s base of support recovering even to it’s 2021 levels. NDP vote share sunk amongst key demographics. This could be the second ‘orange crush,’ an inversion of the first, which many consider their high point.

Don’t Bank on Carney

Capitalist-Imperialist extraordinaire and speculative financier Carney will inevitably disappoint and people will once again become disenchanted with the Liberals. ‘Team Canada’ will almost certainly wither away when people realize life is still getting more costly, jobs are still becoming harder to find, the climate is nearing a phase of total breakdown.

Will Carney deliver on standing up to Trump? Canada does not have the trade leverage of the United States. If the existing tariffs are added upon further, it’s possible Carney would be forced to conceed, though by how much is unclear.

Politicians, media and big business outlets often proclaim now Canada’s need to diversify markets. This easy statement betrays the actual costs of replacing our primary trading partner, given the amount of intanglement between Canada and the U.S..

What Does the Future Hold for the Canadian Left?

If things continue as they have for the past decade, a far-right Conservative government is ensured. It’s not enough to simply vote for Liberals to stop the Conservatives every time, even if they are indeed scary.

Already there is discussion of the NDP using it’s seven seats to hold the balance of power against the Liberals, despite their further political marginalization. Although right now a Liberal-Bloc deal seems more likely, the possibility of the NDP once again propping up the Liberal party shows how stubbornly they insist on refusing to learn any lessons from their defeat.

Perhaps the NDP will become a bigger force in the next election. It is likely that the party experiences a round of internal reforms similar to the 90s, which will bring it further right in an attempt to supplant the role of the Liberals as the center party in Canadian politics.

Regardless of what they do, the Canadian left needs to learn it’s own lessons. Relying on the NDP to be marginally better than the other right-wing parties has not solved any of the crises we face, to the point that people are more willing to vote for the Liberals to stop the Conservatives.

The NDP likely has no future, at least not as a genuine force on the left.

People already organize outside that party. Many have very little to do with it. Many more organizations will crop up with similar perspectives.

Combined, the strength of these various groups in some sort of coalition, some sort of party, or otherwise just an organization that can be used to advance social causes as a whole (rather than having all these smaller organizations splitting resources), should be an ideal.

A short-term task of this organization would be to eviscerate the NDP and supplant it. Long-term, it would seek the challenge the capitalist system.

This seems far away at the moment. The forces of the left and the working-class are small. The masses have not yet realized the real power we can hold and exercise beyond voting and protesting. But, this is already on a trajectory to change, as we’ve seen in the increased protests, strikes and polarization of the past decade.

Will the NDP play a role in these struggles? It’s unlikely. For now at least, they’re not worth much more than a protest vote.