New NDP leader doesn’t have luxury of biding his time

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on October 14, 2017.

Newly-minted federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, who soared to victory on the first ballot of his party’s leadership race with more support than all his opponents combined, is in no rush to run for a seat.

The Ontario legislator said that after he resigns his provincial seat in Toronto, he wants to seize the opportunity to travel across the country and raise his public profile.

This is all well and good, but if SIngh wants to be an effective leader of a third party that can bring his party out of the wilderness, he needs to find a constituency to represent as soon as possible.

Travelling across the nation to reach out to various communities and representing a specific constituency are not mutually exclusive.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who’s represented the Montreal-area riding of Papineau since 2008, did precisely that, which is in large part how he was able to take the Liberals from third to first place in 2015.

If Singh truly wants to emulate Trudeau in reaching out to constituencies across Canada, he needs a home base from where he can build upon his popularity.

True, Singh is very well-known and popular in Brampton, Ont., where his provincial seat is, but he needs a seat in the House of Commons if he’s going to spend some time directly taking on Trudeau and Conservative leader Andrew Scheer.

It’s one thing to be a likable person, as Singh no doubt is, but quite another to advocate policies that resonate with Canadians. It helps to be present in parliament to engage in regular policy debates and hold the government of the day to account.

Singh’s decision not to seek a seat until closer to 2019 appears to be largely based on the perception that former leader Thomas Mulcair was a great performer in parliament, but when it came time for the election in 2015, nobody cared.

Indeed, Mulcair was called one of the greatest opposition leaders in Canadian history by former prime minister Brian Mulroney, who, of course, is no NDP partisan.

When it came time for the election, however, Mulcair tried to drop his “Angry Tom” persona, acquired through his prosecutorial performance in parliament, and attempted to cultivate a kindler, gentler image that came off as entirely phony.

The issue wasn’t that Mulcair spent too much time in parliament, where he was excellent, but that he flubbed on the campaign trail.

Singh appointed fellow leadership candidate Guy Caron, perhaps the most wonkish of the hopefuls, to be the NDP leader in parliament in the meantime. Caron is highly intelligent and capable, and his background as an economist would make him a great choice for finance minister if Singh formed government, but the party didn’t elect him leader.

While the late Jack Layton, who like Singh had a strong base of support in the Greater Toronto Area, didn’t have a federal seat when he won the NDP leadership in 2003, he was operating in a vastly different context.

At the time of Layton’s leadership win, the NDP appeared to be a spent force. The New Democrats had 13 MPs, just barely qualifying for official party status, compared with 44 today. They were the fourth-place party, compared to being a stronger third party than the Liberals were in 2011.

Layton had little to lose by biding his time. Singh doesn’t have that luxury.