Back in the summer, the Conservative Party of Canada spent millions of dollars on an attack ad against NDP leader Jagmeet Singh. The ad showed Mr. Singh on the cover of a fake magazine called “Luxury Pensioner Monthly,” and rattled off some of the finer goods – Rolex watches, a BMW and a Versace bag – that the progressive leader had paired himself with over years. “But now he’s got a problem,” the narrator said. “He needs to delay the election ‘til next year when he qualifies for his $2-million pension.”
The narrator continued: “So he sold you out, signed on with Trudeau to raise taxes, crime and housing costs.”
At the time, the strategy made sense: the Conservatives were roughly 20-points ahead of the Liberals and itching for an election, but the NDP was still propping up the minority Liberals with its supply and confidence agreement. The CPC had (and still has) buckets of money, so there was little risk in parting with some of it to try to shame the NDP out of its alliance, while also attempting to dissuade disaffected Liberals from standing with the NDP.
There was no way to foresee the tumult that would ensnare and upend the Canadian political order in 2025, but suffice to say that if they could, the Conservatives would surely spend many more millions now to advertise what a great guy Mr. Singh is, and how he will be your progressive champion in Parliament, and how he probably uses coupons at the grocery store just like you. The Conservatives’ numbers this election are better than they have been in any election since 2011, but if the NDP’s numbers stay where they are, that won’t matter: Mr. Poilievre will lose. He needs a stronger NDP to pull from the Liberals’ support.
A combination of factors explain why the NDP is currently polling in the single digits. Liberal leader Mark Carney has reinvigorated his party, and he has essentially given permission for soft-Liberal voters who couldn’t stomach another Justin Trudeau term to return the support they loaned to Mr. Singh late last year back to the Liberal Party.
There’s the Trump factor, which has been a defining issue this election, and for which Mr. Carney, with his air of erudite sobriety, is clearly seen as the better option compared to the guy making TikToks and complaining about grocery CEOs. There’s the matter of strategic voting, which is a factor in every election, but appears to be one of foremost prominence this time because of the gravity of the economic threat posed by the U.S. And there’s the fact that poll after poll shows that this is an election where Canadians want change, and they perceive the change candidates as Mr. Poilievre and Mr. Carney – not Mr. Singh, who could be seen as merely an extension of the Trudeau Liberals. That’s the image that Mr. Poilievre was trying to sell, anyway, until he suddenly wasn’t.
Mr. Singh has long struggled to lead and define his party all on his own, but there was a point during that struggle when the Conservatives decided to swoop in and exploit the identity vacuum to their advantage. They told Canadians that “Sellout Singh” was not a leader; that his party was “work[ing] for the Liberal Party instead of working for their own constituents.” They said he was not a serious negotiator; that he was simultaneously attacking the government, and also propping it up. “It is like a parallel universe every time the NDP leader stands up and attacks the very government he’s a part of,” Mr. Poilievre said in the House of Commons in Oct. 2023.
In November, 2024, Mr. Poilievre took Mr. Singh’s own words – that Mr. Trudeau was “weak,” “selfish,” and “beholden to corporate interests” – and turned it into a motion that included non-confidence, which effectively forced Mr. Singh to either bring down the government, or have the party vote against his own words (the NDP chose the latter). That was just one example of many of the Conservatives undermining, attacking and humiliating Mr. Singh. The NDP leader has never projected much of an air of leadership, but Mr. Poilievre took that weakness and blasted it through a megaphone.
The great tragedy for Mr. Poilievre during this campaign is that he has, paradoxically, achieved many of his goals. He wanted Mr. Trudeau gone, and he’s gone. He wanted to axe the carbon tax, and it’s been axed. He wanted Canadians to see Mr. Singh as an impotent extension of Mr. Trudeau, and they do. But none of this has happened the way Mr. Poilievre envisioned, and none of it has served his political interests – quite the opposite, in fact. No one could have predicted how dramatically the political environment would shift in 2025, but suffice to say if the Conservatives could go back in time, they’d keep those couple extra million dollars in their party coffers and their thoughts on Mr. Singh to themselves.