42nd & Grace

It’s a leadership race that could make or break the party. It’s a contest to decide whether principles trump politics. This is a battle that will settle what the heart of the party is. At the end, will the party belong to a small, faithful cadre or will newly planted roots flourish? And the leading candidates all lack the stature usually associated with the top job.

No, we’re not talking about the Conservative Party of B.C. here. Instead, this is the challenge that faces Canada’s NDP.

A once forceful political entity has been in freefall for awhile, so those who blame President Trump’s re-emergence for the electoral disaster of a year ago are indulging in some wishful thinking.

Over the past decade, the NDP has seen its share of the popular vote decline. After peaking with Jack Layton, the drift began under Tom Mulcair and accelerated under Jagmeet Singh. It culminated in the embarrassing 2025 election where only just over six per cent of the population marked a ballot for the New Democrats.

As someone who grew up in Ontario in the 1980s, the NDP were a different proposition. Led by Ed Broadbent, the party was progressive in a way that doesn’t seem to fly federally anymore. A professor from Oshawa, Broadbent never lost that touchstone that was his community. Oshawa was home to General Motors and the party reflected those roots born in the union movement. It was a party about fairness, protecting workers and providing what seemed like common-sense solutions. He was a major player, even without ever holding sway in a minority Parliament. Broadbent did it by tapping into the zeitgeist of the era.

Slowly, though, the New Democrats have morphed from a party of working people into a party of causes. People forget that here in British Columbia, seats now considered solidly Conservative and before that Reform were once coloured orange on the map. From Skeena to Kamloops to the Okanagan and across Vancouver Island, the NDP were a force. Until they weren’t.

It’s not for me, a non-party member, to judge the decisions they made. But by appealing to a sliver of the population and becoming the party that lectures, the New Democrats became increasingly irrelevant. This allowed Reform and now the Conservatives to become the voice of working people, not the elites. Whether you believe it doesn’t matter; it worked as people who focused on paying bills tuned the NDP out.

So far, the race hasn’t exactly inspired this focus on purity politics is over. The party itself got things going badly by insisting leadership candidates must collect 500 signatures from party members, with at least 50% coming from members who do not identify as a “cis man.” There’s so many better ways to phrase that and accomplish the same goal.

Then there was a debate on ‘purity tests’ and whether that was a hint to some within the party to quiet down. And there has seemingly been more debate over Gaza than how to expand the party base.

Now, maybe the party doesn’t want to expand its base. Maybe it believes that they can win by ignoring the majority of voters. History suggests otherwise. John Horgan was successful because he found that balance, speaking to people’s needs and better angels. Manitoba’s Wab Kinew seems to have a similar approach, as did Rachel Notley in Alberta and Darrel Dexter in Nova Scotia.

And it’s important the NDP not wither and shrivel into a ‘woke debate’ club. This is the party of Tommy Douglas, David Lewis and Ed Broadbent. It’s a party that was a force of ideas. At a time when we risk further falling into political polarization, the NDP is a safeguard against politics based on a singular view.

It’s your party. Do what you think is best. But Canada needs a strong third party and, hopefully, the NDP is up to the challenge.