By Pepper Parr
September 5th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
It is getting tricky.
Yesterday Jagmeet Singh tosses Trudeau overboard to create opening against Poilievre
A new poll today shows Singh tops Poilievre as most favoured leader; Poilievre lags his party while Singh leads his.
The material from this article comes from Data Shows, a column written by Tom Parkin who is a principal with Impact Strategies where the mission is to provide research and communications support to clients focused on solving the economic and public policy challenges facing Canada today. He sates that: “For my clients, I develop data-driven research reports, policy reviews and polling analyses.”
Do you see a lot of trust or confidence on any of these faces: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Pierre Poilievre, Leader of the Conservative Opposition and Jagmeet Singh, leader of the NDP party
Over the past two years Jagmeet Singh extracted a series of policy wins out of the Trudeau Liberals, with dental care and pharmacare being the most well-known.
Today Singh pivoted from extracting new programs from Trudeau to protecting them from Pierre Poilievre.
Poilievre is the most hard-right Conservative leader Canada has ever seen. Yet if an election was held today, he would easily become prime minister and those policy wins would be cut.
And the Trudeau Liberals can’t stop him. To a great degree, antipathy to Trudeau is the fuel driving Poilievre’s support. In a fight between Trudeau and Poilievre, the Conservatives win.
In an Angus Reid poll released today the Liberal held just 21 per cent support. To beat Poilievre, a different fight is needed.
In tossing Trudeau overboard, Singh has opened a new political dynamic in which Singh can take the attack to Poilievre without the Justin Trudeau acting as deadweight on him or fuel for Poilievre.
Liberal party national campaign director Jeremy Broadhurst
Trudeau has an additional problem; the Liberal party’s national campaign director, Jeremy Broad is reported to have told the Prime Minister he is quitting. Jeremy Broadhurst privately told Prime Minister last month he is leaving, according to several Liberal sources.
It’s impossible to say whether Singh can be successful in stopping Poilievre and putting himself in the prime minister’s chair. He’s got a distance to go and just a year to do it But it’s got to be tried, and for two reasons it’s now possible.
First, the major policies extracted from Trudeau are now mostly in place. The dental care plan is in operation. The anti-scab bill is law. The pharmacare plan has passed the Commons and is in the Senate. To a large degree, the work of the confidence and supply agreement is done.
Second, it’s possible because of the opening Singh created today — and there are reasons to be optimistic, Singh can take advantage of it.
Today’s Angus Reid poll again showed Trudeau holds low favour with Canadians — only 30 per cent. But more important, at 36 per cent, Poilievre’s favourable rating trails his own party, suggesting some Conservatives supporters could be peeled away from the hard-right leader.
Most significantly, Jagmeet Singh received the highest favourable score at 37 per cent, suggesting that, with Trudeau out of way, Singh has big potential to raise his party’s support level.
Singh’s goal has got to be to engineer a head-to-head battle with Poilievre. And he has some material to work with.
Polls consistently show Singh’s dental and pharmacare plans are popular. In contrast, Poilievre cutting them won’t be.
Across the wide range of problems Canada faces, Singh can create a competition of visions that Trudeau has been unable to articulate for many years due to scandal and corporate control over him. To the degree Singh’s contrasts with Poilievre become crisper and clearer, Singh can peel support from the Conservatives over worries about Poilievre’s hard-right politics and cuts.
And there’s the likability factor. Singh is a decent person. Poilievre is unpleasant.
Finally there is the issue of timing. In responding to today’s news, Poilievre continued to challenge Singh to force an immediate election.
Can Jagmeet Singh do it?
But no one should expect Singh to force an election on the timing Poilievre prefers. Singh should force an election when it benefits his NDP and won’t put Poilievre in the PM’s office, obviously.
How long that takes or whether Singh can do it before the next schedule election is unknown. But we are now in a different dynamic, one where Poilievre faces an opponent who is stronger, popular, and not beholden to the corporate interests that held Trudeau back.
For those fundamentally opposed to Poilievre’s politics, today is a hopeful and refreshing change.
Both Justin Trudeau’s Liberals & Jagmeet Singh’s NDP promote big government and both frankly seem to be economically-illiterate. I have never heard them propose serious measures to address our nation’s rapidly falling productivity (GDP per capita), which ultimately determines Canadians’ standard of living. Author and rail history expert Tom Parkin should refrain from trying to railroad us into fearing Pierre Poilievre for taking a fiscally responsible approach to running our country. Do any Gazette readers actually think that the CRA needs 59,000 employees, for example, and that no “cuts” to our bloated civil service are warranted?
The NDP have the inherent luxury of being able to stand for everything, support everything, and with the full knowledge that they have zero chance of forming a government federally anytime soon. Much of Singh’s popularity is derived from simply being a “hail fellow, well met”. Unfortunately, true leadership actually requires a leader to say “no” once in a while, and to convey tough and unpopular messages.
Bob Rae learned that lesson the hard way. BTW…he’s now a Liberal.
Ontario is the great decider in Federal elections.Most Ontario voters had a dose of incompetent NDP once with Bob Rae and Don’t what a rerun.
Quebec has enough political parties as it is .
The Last thing we need is the NDP running the country.
Singh is desperate it’s his third election. There is zero chance he will be Prime Minister.
The NDP & Liberals are justifiably seen as the same light by most Canadians and will split the votes in many urban ridings.
Is it not obvious to many Canadians that the desperate Liberal political strategy is to repopulate smaller centres across Canada with millions of newcomers at the expense of the country’s social net and infrastructure as they have been consistently slipping in overall levels support election after election.
I read recently that there is new federal plan to immigrate (unvetted?) and integrate young students to Canada from global French speaking communities. Not to Quebec but to everywhere else in Canada to what they say preserve the French culture.
Belly laugh eye roll. The true #purelaine look down their noses at Acadians etc.
The dialects and culture of these young students from Africa/Haiti etc. is hardly consistent with Quebecois values and culture.
You are being duped, willingly in many cases.