Good morning. Once buoyed by progressive promise, the NDP now risks becoming obsolete – more on that below, along with the Pope’s legacy and the actual power of Buy Canadian. But first:
Today’s headlines
- Former world junior players accused in Hockey Canada sex-assault case are set to stand trial
- A Conservative candidate has been targeted by election interference from China, Canada’s election-threats watchdog says
- Harvard University sues the Trump administration to halt a US$2.2-billion grant freeze
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh in Nanaimo, B.C., yesterday.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
2025 election
How the orange wave crashed
Five weeks ago in Montreal, at his first official stop of this election campaign, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh made an appeal to the voters poised to abandon his party for Mark Carney’s Liberals. “People who are afraid of a Pierre Poilievre government might think they have no choice but Carney,” Singh told them, then compared that choice to picking between “a house with a leaky roof or a cracked foundation.” One was patched together with empty Conservative promises, he said; the other was rotting from the inside after years of Liberal rule. “Now, those houses are not the same, but neither will hold up when the storm hits.”
That particular analogy hasn’t resonated much with Canadians. As U.S. President Donald Trump huffs and puffs and threatens to blow our house down with punishing tariffs and annexation talk, the federal election campaign has overwhelmingly turned into a two-way race. At least 80 per cent of the vote is likely to be cast for the country’s two main political parties – the first time that’s happened in nearly 70 years.
According to the latest tracking, conducted over the long weekend, by Nanos Research for The Globe and Mail, the Liberals can count on the support of 44 per cent of decided voters, while the Conservatives have 36 per cent. (The full methodology can be found here.) No party has dropped in the polls as precipitously as the New Democrats. After being practically tied with the Liberals in December, the NDP lost half its support and currently hovers around 10 per cent. That would amount to its worst share of the popular vote in a quarter century.
Slouching toward Burnaby
The halcyon days of 2011, when Jack Layton led the NDP to 103 seats and Official Opposition status, seem a distant memory now. It’s mostly been a steady decline ever since, The Globe’s Gary Mason writes in his new report: 44 seats under Tom Mulcair in 2015; 24 in 2019 and 25 in 2021 under Singh, who became leader eight years ago. This time around, there’s mounting concern not only that the NDP could forfeit official party status – 12 MPs are needed in the House of Commons – but that Singh could lose his own seat in Burnaby, B.C., as well.
Pollsters, pundits and party insiders largely blame the U.S. President for these dismal fortunes. “If this election comes down to trade issues and staring across the desk at Trump,” former NDP MP Nathan Cullen told Mason, “then it’s going to be hard for the NDP, because trade is not historically one of the party’s strong points.” Plenty of erstwhile NDP supporters have determined they want Carney to be the one staring Trump down. Innovative Research Group, a public opinion survey company, found that 35 per cent of the NDP’s 2021 vote has now shifted to the Liberals – including Mulcair, who wrote a much-circulated editorial last month urging New Democrats to back Carney and not split the progressive vote.
Not everyone was pleased with the supply-and-confidence deal between Singh's NDP and Trudeau's Liberals.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
But Trump’s trade war isn’t the only culprit here. The NDP lost the support of many within and outside the party when it chose to prop up Justin Trudeau’s highly unpopular Liberal government with a supply-and-confidence agreement in 2022. Although Singh insists the pact was worthwhile because it pushed through dental and pharmacare coverage, voters don’t seem inclined to give him much credit for that. Instead, Mason writes, the agreement helped obscure the two parties’ progressive brands: What exactly was the difference between Liberals and New Democrats anymore?
Then there are the NDP voters throwing in with the Conservatives this election – 14 per cent of them, according to Innovative Research Group’s latest tracking. The Tories have long targeted the party’s blue-collar voters, but that strategy ramped up under Poilievre, whose affordability sales pitch and anti-woke rhetoric has started to break through. Brad Levigne, who managed Layton’s 2011 campaign, told The Globe that this “grievance style of politics” is very divisive. It’s also “attractive to people who feel their party isn’t speaking to their concerns because they are too focused on class issues rather than day-to-day living issues.”
Not done yet
When he launched his election campaign in March, Singh maintained he was in it to win it, not to buoy another Liberal minority government: “I’m running to be prime minister of this country,” he said. That messaging has changed over the past few weeks, however; Singh told The Globe recently that “you don’t become a New Democrat because you assume you’re going to be in a position of power.” Rather, he argued, “people become New Democrats because they believe we are going to use our power to do important things.”
Maybe he’ll have a bit more power than expected when the final votes are tallied on Monday night. Last weekend in Halifax – a riding that was a NDP stronghold through six elections before the Liberals picked it up in 2015 – 29-year-old Abbey Frias cast her early ballot. She had been prepared to vote strategically for the Liberals, but after a steady stream of polls put them in the lead, Frias felt encouraged to go with the party better aligned with her beliefs. She voted NDP.
The Shot
‘In this time of war and brutality, he had a sense for the most fragile.’
A nun in St. Peter’s Square in Rome yesterday.Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters
Tributes poured in around the world for Pope Francis, who died of a stroke yesterday morning at the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta. In Paris, Notre Dame Cathedral’s bells rang 88 times, once for each year of his life. In South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa praised the pontiff’s commitment to social justice. And in Canada, Indigenous leaders remembered his historic apology for the Catholic Church’s abusive treatment of at least 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children in residential schools. Here’s more on Pope Francis’s legacy and the ancient rituals to choose his successor.
The Wrap
What else we’re following
At home: Hudson’s Bay would like to auction off thousands of historical artifacts and pieces of art. Government organizations have concerns.
Abroad: U.S. President Donald Trump defended his Defence Secretary after reports revealed that Pete Hegseth shared military attack plans in yet another Signal chat.
Gold, anyone? The U.S. dollar tumbled again yesterday as Trump called Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell “a major loser” for refusing to lower interest rates.
Zero bucks given: Angry consumers are increasingly turning to boycotts to flex a bit of power – but does Buy Canadian actually work?