Can Canada’s Left Survive Trump’s Second Term?
Can Canada’s Left Survive Trump’s Second Term?
The NDP helped build Canada’s welfare state. Now, under pressure from Donald Trump’s tariffs and a shifting political terrain, the party risks electoral annihilation as voters split between technocratic centrism and right-wing populism.
With all due respect to NDP voters, in December the Liberals were set to lose 100 seats and the NDP was polling to gain zero of them.
It isn't Trump's fault that the NDP support is falling, it's the NDP leadership's fault for not changing anything when the writing has been on the wall since at least 2023, and in my opinion as far back as the 2021 election.
The NDP needed to make changes then, and now they're going to get crushed because nobody in the driver's seat acknowledged that. They needed a clearer message, they needed better leadership, and they needed to prove that an NDP plan could be affordable and promote economic growth, and frankly I still am not convinced wealth taxes would.
I spent the last twenty years strictly voting NDP and I agree. This is the first time I won't be voting NDP federally, just two months after my first time not voting NDP provincially. They really need to up their game. I'm just grateful my riding is split between NDP and Liberal so I don't have to worry about a blue win either way.
I'm in a tight blue/red riding so I'm forced to vote strategically. Normally I'd vote NDP but I'm also extremely disappointed in Singh as leader.
Same here. I’ll be writing them to let them know that they lost my vote not from strategic voting but from a poorly explained and promoted platform. I want them to succeed but they need a leadership change and the resolve to reach toward more aggressively progressive goals.
Sorry, the NDP can't be "the left" when they've not had socialism as a core part of their party identity for years now. They have to find some other grift now that they've ignored both what the country needs as well as the people that have supported them for decades.
I can't keep voting NDP when they spit in my face and let Singh continue as leader after proving he doesn't have what it takes. They are in a grave of their own making and it's hard to feel bad for them. If you want to be the left, fucking act like leftists.
Many saw the move as a revival of the party’s identity, and some even speculated that the Liberal government might fall and the NDP could mount a breakthrough campaign.
Even as I saw the government forcibly end the workers' strike and the NDP break the confidence agreement over it, I saw it at the time more as political maneuvering, than an actual revival of the party. I wanted Singh and MPs to stand with striking workers literally rather than just figuratively. They say a lot of nice words like "we will fight for you", but are always light on details about what they would do if they were in power, and we have not seen concrete action taken yet either (I get that legislature wise that's not entirely their fault).
The Gaza/Free Palestine problem is also an Achilles' heel wedge issue destroying the party as well. Canada and by extension the NDP can do little about that besides posturing, while it is both in International courts and being massively funded by the US. Most of our energy should be on problems we can solve rather than those we can't, and we shouldn't shun people completely because they don't come with picture-perfect views on one issue or another, since that is what gets exploited by bad-faith actors and trolls.
I have real hope in the BCNDP, ABNDP, SKNDP and MBNDP for having actual ideas to solve actual issues of inequality, homeless and the housing crisis, healthcare. The ONDP is on the right track but still quite irrelevant..., and Singh seems to be following in their path rather than Western NDP style which I think we need some aspects of again. Tommy Douglas, a prominent Saskatchewan CCF leader and Premier after all.
In an election where the two leading parties are refusing to even acknowledge that genocide is being committed by a "friend" and ally, a country to which we continue to sell arms, I'd argue that the NDP's stance on Gaza is probably the only thing they've done right in this election. Your suggestion that Canada can't do anything is just plain wrong. We should, for example:
I'm all for trying to build a "big tent" party with a diversity of views, but that should stop at genocide enablers and apologists.
That's a sound plan IMO and I'm in support of doing all of that. We can act in this way, but during the campaign the parties have been pressed to make a unilateral declaration on how the state will be organized, which is not within their capability.
Also note that Canada has already paid a toll with our aid workers being killed by Israeli forces, so we still have to keep that in mind as we proceed.
Party leaders can indicate their ideal goals, but there's nothing any of the leaders can promise about the fate of Palestine itself, or whether it is free and democratic, or if a despot gets installed, since it relies on so many factors outside our control.
I’m not a Federal NDP supporter, but what I always appreciated about Layton is that I knew where he stood on a major issue without him saying a word. He had a clarity, set of values and perspective that I understood even if I didn’t agree. I’d say the exact same thing about Broadbent. Mulcair and Jagmeet are different beasts and to me, it’s very simple what happened. They had an idea that the most important thing is to be in power, to become populist and adopt whatever idea and policy that seems like a winner and in that pursuit have become a nothing party. They’re still consistent on easy issues, when the matter is controversial, they scurry away from taking a stand and adopt some nonsensical position they believe will be popular often violating those core tenets.
The NDP has a place they can go back to and rebuild support. From that core, perhaps the most they ever become is the opposition, but a powerful voice, an important voice and a consistent voice instead of this current slop. A great or good leader can revive the NDP.
Should the CPC be served the resounding loss that is now forecast by the polls, it is the conservative reform alliance party that faces an existential crisis. A merger of conflicting core ideals, values, and a sociopathic pursuit of power have resulted in Pierre Polievre. They have no core set of beliefs or values to fall back on, only each other’s knives. There will be a window for an insane cult hero to save the CPC at Canada’s peril, but hopefully it’s the end of the road and they break apart into their factions and become something of value.
Nobody's being held to account for their lip-service promises of electoral reform.
Until we have PR, such is the fate of our three-party system. None of the parties are progressive or even anti-conservative as a result. So fuck them all in the 🐐 🍑
We don't have a left in Canada. At least if you're talking about amongst parties that have more than five seats before this election.
The NDP hasn't been leftist in the slightest since Jack Layton died. Half the time they're more right than the Liberals, who are proud center right with their left leaning policies to promote right leaning goals. Having a couple of left leaning policy amongst a swarm of right leaning ones doesn't make you leftist at all. Just more than than the borderline neo-Nazis that the Cons have become (and arguably always have been).
What's with all the NDP hate here? They gave many Canadians free dental and many other (left-leaning) things through their coalition with the Liberals. I take issue with the premise of this post. Yes, the NDP are going to lose votes this election, but it's not specifically because they screwed up. It's because a lot of us are in a situation where the anti-vote for CPC pushes voters to vote Liberal when they would otherwise vote NDP.
I don't know if this is a trend that will continue. But if the Liberals had changed our voting system (like they promised) to something other than FPTP, no one here would need to cast anti-votes or strategic votes anymore. Or at least less often.
I'm lucky that in my area, my anti-vote, strategic vote and heartfelt vote all land on the same party. But most Canadians aren't.
"Canada's left" is a long way from where the NDP stand.
The Liberal party is absolutely the Progressive Conservatives of 1980. The NDP are a mostly-ineffectual version of the Liberals of the same era. The Green Party needs to get their leadership shit in order to take on the coherent left role.
The CPC is now in the same category as the PPC or Christian Heritage party - racist nutbars who deserve to be forgotten except as a historical footnote.
Let's not worry about 'fixing' the NDP as a left party, accept who they are, and filling the hole they left when they slid right.
Bullshit its Trump, people are fed up as they stood by as the Liberals did mass immigration, breaking up unions, and ignoring the growing cost of living as Jagmeet attempted to attain his pension while stomping on Canadians throats.
This disgusting incarnation of the NDP pushed UN defined modern slaves to work at Tim Hortons, this is Jagmeets faux socialist party, something designed by a self-proclaimed lawyer in a rolex and BMW:
https://www.ndp.ca/news/ndp-critic-immigration-calls-out-conservative-leader-harmful-policies
A 500$ dental plan funded with debt and future austerity doesnt make up for everyones rents doubling and wages being stagnant when a hamburger now costs 21$. Tiny pittances here and there is a joke and its clear that the NDP has been co-opted by the rich to depress salaries.