The new Democrats did not make their way in the federal elections. Now they need to find out why

OTTAWA – Crossing southwestern Ontario on the back of a campaign bus on the last Tuesday of the election campaign, the new Democrats were feeling fearless.

Buoyed by the energy of the crowds at the Jagmeet Singh rallies and an ambitious offensive strategy, the party’s senior advisers and staff enthusiastically discussed his growth-focused drive.

They readily mentioned the regions and districts where they hoped to break new ground and rekindle previous victories, and they saw an opportunity to make it happen.

That didn’t quite work.

Despite entering the campaign with high hopes, more money, an overall beloved leader, and a possibly persuasive case that the new Democrats made a difference through the COVID-19 crisis in the last minority Parliament, the party won. only one seat in this election.

Now the federal NDP is in a familiar place: backed in a corner of the House of Commons with deputies in their twenties. The magic of the Layton era, when the party seemed tantalizingly close to power, is nothing more than a nostalgic memory. And now it is sifting through the rubble, looking for a way to break away from its traditional position as a federally led party as well.

“There are things we can learn from for sure and we want to hear from people in terms of how I can improve and how we can improve in those closed races,” Singh told the Star on Tuesday.

“What needs to be done to close those gaps and to be able to bring these fighters to Parliament?”

The party is just beginning to contemplate the answer to that question. This week, Singh announced that he had appointed Bob Dewar, brother of the late Paul Dewar, who was an NDP MP in Ottawa, to lead an internal “report” on the campaign that just ended. But in a series of interviews with key NDP figures this week, Star was able to outline an initial analysis of what went wrong in Singh’s party.

“I’m sure there are things we can improve … but I don’t think there’s a big mistake I can point to,” said Jennifer Howard, Singh’s chief of staff, who reprized her 2019 role as NDP. this year’s national campaign manager.

In an interview this week, Howard noted that by increasing the size of its caucus by one seat, to 25 deputies, the party finally reversed a trend that had seen it lose a significant number of seats in the last three elections.

Nationwide, the NDP also increased its share of the popular vote, from around 16 percent in 2019 to nearly 18 percent this time, while Liberals, Conservatives and Greens saw their share of the vote drop.

There were certainly challenges. But for Howard, they were mostly circumstantial. He said it was more difficult to get in touch with voters this time due to the pandemic, leading campaigns in some urban areas, such as the dense conduction of the Toronto Center, not to poll residents of condo towers due to COVID fears. -19.

And while the NDP continued to criticize Justin Trudeau (Singh accused throughout the campaign that liberals were false progressives who would continue to fall short of left-wing priorities like economic equality and climate action) Howard said most of the voters simply decided they didn’t want a change. .

NDP National Director Anne McGrath, who was a key architect of this year’s campaign effort, acknowledged that winning just one more seat “certainly fell short of our expectations.”

McGrath also admitted that the party has work to do in the areas of the country that have the most seats. For example, the NDP was excluded from Toronto and its surrounding suburban communities for the third consecutive election, and was unable to add to its only seat in Quebec, a province considered by McGrath and others in the party as crucial to any legitimate chance for power. .

“Quebec and Ontario are areas where we felt there were opportunities that were not taken advantage of,” said McGrath.

Jessa McLean, an outspoken internal critic of the party who unsuccessfully ran for president earlier this year, says organizing the campaign locally was a “disaster.”

McLean, the director of the NDP’s riding association in York-Simcoe, Ontario, told the Star in an interview this week that the party was too slow to approve candidates and did not provide enough resources to help local campaigns.

“We were hampered by the party,” said McLean, who says she was not consulted before a candidate was named in her leadership after the campaign began.

“That makes it impossible for the locals to create a campaign,” he said.

While local fundraising is the responsibility of each riding association, McGrath said there were many constituencies that were able to organize strong campaigns with the support of the party. But he acknowledged that some regions lacked “basic organization,” mainly in the form of paid campaign staff working in districts where the NDP felt it could win.

Part of the reason for that, McGrath said, was the financial situation Singh inherited when he became leader in 2017, forcing the NDP to “seriously reduce staffing” as it focused on improving fundraising. and the payment of debts.

That resulted in a campaign budget of about $ 25 million this year. And while that was more than double the $ 10.5 million the NDP spent in the 2019 election, it was not enough to get the party’s electoral machine up and running before this year’s campaign, McGrath said.

For the next campaign, the party must make sure it has the money to hire organizers and select its candidates “much earlier,” he said.

“We were very focused on making sure we had the resources for the campaign, but you also have to have the resources between campaigns,” McGrath said. “That’s what I think is at the top of my (priority) list right now.”

Alexandre Boulerice, the deputy leader of the NDP and its sole MP in Quebec, said the party’s effort in that province was also affected by a lack of campaign volunteers and organizing staff.

“It’s a different kind of resource investment,” he said. “You can have, I would say … a little less advertising on Facebook and a little more organizers in the field.”

In Boulerice’s mind, the party also failed to deliver a strong “final argument” to voters. Many people like Singh and the party’s platforms, like taxing the rich and bringing in pharmaceutical care, but the NDP didn’t show them exactly how it would enact such ambitious policies in government, Boulerice explained.

“We no longer have to introduce Jagmeet,” Boulerice said. “But what exactly will the NDP do? I think (in) next season, this is what we need to focus on: what will we do for you and exactly how.”

One area where the party could have done a better job presenting its policy was climate change, said two defeated NDP candidates who agreed to speak on the condition that they were not named.

That’s because of the NDP’s “mixed messages” on climate, said one candidate, noting Singh’s position on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion (the NDP opposes but would not necessarily cancel the project) and the BC NDP’s stance on the old growth record.

The second candidate said they were repeatedly asked by voters about an analysis published by Marc Jaccard, a climate policy expert at Simon Fraser University, who gave the NDP poor marks for failing to adequately explain how the party would achieve its promise to cut. Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions beyond what the liberal government has promised to do.

But Laurel Collins, who was re-elected for the second time in Victoria, BC, defended the NDP’s climate plan and rejected suggestions that its policies were too vague or that the Liberals won over more voters concerned about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. greenhouse.

“It’s very frustrating. I will not take lessons from the liberals, who continue to fail on the climate record, ”Collins said, pointing to the Trudeau administration’s failure to cut subsidies to fossil fuel companies and the fact that Canada’s annual emissions have actually increased. slightly since the Liberals arrived. to power in 2015.

“It was very clear that the NDP came up with a bolder and more ambitious plan.”

However, even Singh admits that the way the party’s broader goals were communicated could have been improved.

“That knowledge, or knowing our plan, was something that perhaps … people were not so clear, even though we had a clear plan,” said the leader.

“So I think it’s something we can work on more (in) to make sure people know: ‘Yeah, we have a plan. We have a solid plan for many of the problems that people face. ‘

In the end, this election was a “building campaign” for the NDP that halted the downward trend the party has experienced since 2011, Howard said.

Now the party just needs to make sure it evolves into something better.