A 'game-changer': Jagmeet Singh 'kicks the door open' and wins NDP leadership
Singh, who is Sikh, is the first non-white leader of a major federal party in Canada
NationalPost.com
Oct. 1, 2017
Maura Forrest
Jagmeet Singh was declared the new leader of the NDP in a decisive victory after a single round of voting ended on Sunday.
The Ontario MPP was named leader with 53.8 per cent of the vote at a Toronto convention centre, during the finale of a drawn-out leadership campaign that began after current leader Tom Mulcair lost a vote on a leadership review in April 2016.
Singh, who is Sikh, is the first non-white leader of a major federal party in Canada. He is also only the third NDP leader to have been elected on the first ballot, after Tommy Douglas, the party’s first leader, and Jack Layton.
In his victory speech, Singh said he ran a campaign focused on inequality, climate change, reconciliation and electoral reform. “To make progress on these issues, to truly make Canadians’ lives better, we owe it to Canadians to form government. We owe it to them,” he told a cheering crowd.
Singh’s perceived rival, Ontario MP Charlie Angus, finished well behind him, with just 19.4 per cent of the vote. Manitoba MP Niki Ashton won 17.4 per cent, while Quebec MP Guy Caron finished in last place, with 9.4 per cent of the ballots cast.
In total, 65,782 of the roughly 124,000 NDP members voted, or 52.8 per cent, slightly lower than the turnout during the Conservative leadership race, when about 55 per cent of eligible voters cast ballots. Turnout for the first ballot of the 2012 NDP leadership race was about 51 per cent.
In an interview, Singh said he hopes to inspire a new generation of leaders “who didn’t see themselves reflected in government. I’m only here today because people before me have broken barriers,” he said.
NDP national director Robert Fox called the victory for Singh, a 38-year-old criminal lawyer, a “game-changer” for diversity in Canadian politics.
“There are so many Canadians who sort of feel that they’ve been on the outside looking in, and he has kicked the door open and said, ‘Come on in,’” Fox said. “And for young brown men and women, for people of colour, for Indigenous Canadians, it really gives them a sense of opportunity, of openness, of prospects in 2019.”
Singh has positioned himself as a leader who can grow the party in the suburbs and among immigrant communities. Gurnishan Singh, a volunteer on his campaign, said the victory will bring people from minority communities to the NDP “in masses.”
“A lot of individuals, especially new immigrants, they always have a little barrier, they don’t have a sense of belonging,” he said. “Seeing an individual like Jagmeet up on stage … really makes them feel like Canada is an inclusive country.”
With Singh’s victory, all three major parties are now led by men under 50 years old — in fact, at 45, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is the oldest of the three.
Since joining the race in May, Singh has run a campaign often centred more on personality than policy. He was called out early on by fellow candidates Ashton and Peter Julian for not taking a strong enough stand against pipeline development, though he eventually released a climate change policy that outlined his opposition to the Kinder Morgan and Energy East pipelines. He has also proposed a federal ban on racial profiling, which he reiterated on Sunday.
“It makes you feel like you don’t belong,” he said. “Like there’s something wrong with you for just being you.”
Singh also wants to scrap the Old Age Security program and to roll it together with several other seniors’ benefits into a single, means-tested program called the Canada Seniors Guarantee.
During the campaign, Singh led the pack in fundraising, with the most recent data showing he’d raised about $618,000 up until mid-September, compared to $374,000 for Angus, $250,000 for Ashton and $188,000 for Caron.
He was the only candidate to release membership numbers, claiming to have signed up 47,000 new members by the August deadline. In the end, 35,266 voters cast their ballots for Singh, while Angus won 12,705 votes, Ashton won 11,374 and Caron won 6,164.
In September, Singh gained international attention and praise after a video of him responding to a heckler who accused him of ties to Sharia law and the Muslim Brotherhood went viral.
But he has encountered more difficulty in Quebec, where doubts have surfaced about the ability of a turban-wearing Sikh to gain traction in a province skeptical of overt religious symbols in public life.
On Sunday, Caron said he believes Quebecers will rally to Singh as they get to know him. “I will help him to get known as widely as possible, but I think people, by getting to know him, will adopt him very fast,” he said. “He’s very likable. He strikes the right chord with the population.”
The NDP now has roughly two years to build up its ranks ahead of the 2019 election. Singh maintains he’s comfortable without a seat in the House of Commons, though he will relinquish his seat in the Ontario legislature. He said he’s looking at a “dual-prong approach.”
“We’re going to use the House as a place where we hold the government to account,” he said. “And I will use my position to go out into the community and hear people’s concerns, listen to what Canadians have to say.”
Singh said he will make an announcement about who will lead the party on his behalf in the House of Commons very soon.
Liberal MP Adam Vaughan, who attended the event, said he doesn’t believe Singh poses much of a threat to the governing party.
“I didn’t hear much today that makes me worried,” he said. “In fact, I heard almost nothing today about what he promises to do.”
Vaughan suggested Singh doesn’t have the same kind of broad appeal as the prime minister. “I’ve walked downtown Toronto streets with a guy called Justin Trudeau,” he said. “I’ve seen real charisma.”
But Olivia Chow, former NDP MP and former leader Jack Layton’s widow, said she believes the NDP will unite behind Singh. “We have a fearless and loving leader, a leader that gets it, a leader that will make sure that no one is left behind.”
