Can Canada’s NDP Step Back From the Brink of Electoral Ruin?
The leadership race in Canada’s New Democratic Party has exposed fractures between workers and professionals and between leader-driven branding and party democracy. Its survival as a serious left-wing force depends on successfully navigating these divides.
If NDP leadership candidates are serious about reconnecting with workers and getting them to the polls, public ownership and economic inequality must remain front and center. (ndpcanada / Instagram)
In March, Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP) will elect a new leader. This April, the federal party suffered its worst election showing ever, winning a mere seven seats. Leader Jagmeet Singh promptly resigned. Five candidates have registered in the race to replace him, including current member of parliament (MP) Heather McPherson, activist and filmmaker Avi Lewis, union leader Rob Ashton, social worker and town councilor Tanille Johnston, and Tony McQuail, a farmer and former party candidate. Montreal activist Yves Engler is running but has yet to register with the party.
To get a sense of the state of the race to date and where it might be headed, Jacobin writers David Moscrop and Edgardo Sepulveda examine four aspects of the party and the leadership competition. They take up the historical context, how candidates are addressing environmental, economic, and industrial policy, the class and cultural dynamics at play, and the state of party democracy.
Edgardo Sepulveda: As someone who works with numbers, I compiled data from 1962, the year after the NDP’s founding, to track its electoral success as a percentage of seats in parliament. Figure 1 shows that its current seven seats represent only 2 percent of MPs in Ottawa.
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