The downtown riding of Toronto-St. Paul’s has been a safe Liberal seat for more than three decades, with the Conservatives coming in second and the NDP usually a distant third. Nonetheless, the New Democrat vote will bear close watching in a by-election there that must be called now that incumbent MP Carolyn Bennett has retired.
The results in Toronto-St. Paul’s could tell us much about the political future of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and Jagmeet Singh’s NDP. It could even signal whether there is any realistic prospect of the New Democrats one day overtaking the Liberals as the dominant progressive party.
Yes, that seems unlikely. But it seemed unlikely in 2011, before the NDP under Jack Layton vaulted into Official Opposition. And the two parties today are ideologically far closer than at any time in the past. If the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre do form government after the next election, then we will once again be hearing calls to unite the left. And they will make more sense than they ever have before.
As we approach 2024, the Liberal decline in popular support has them getting precariously close to the NDP in popularity. The polling aggregator and analyzer 338Canada.com has the Conservatives at 39 per cent, the Liberals at 26 per cent, and the NDP at 20 per cent.
If an election were called tomorrow, the dynamics of the campaign could well push the NDP ahead of the Liberals. Voters appear to be determined to see the back of Mr. Trudeau. The closer the two parties get to each other in popular support, the less credible becomes the old Liberal warning that progressive voters must rally to their party to ward off the Conservatives.
My colleague Lawrence Martin recently pointed out that the NDP under Jack Layton had one major advantage that Mr. Singh lacks. Mr. Layton was able to galvanize support in Quebec. The New Democrats under Mr. Singh have made no inroads, and there are no signs they will.
But Mr. Singh has one advantage Jack Layton didn’t have. Under their supply-and-confidence agreement, in which the NDP keeps the Liberals in power in exchange for concessions, Mr. Singh has pushed the Liberals to enact the most socially progressive programs in generations. A national dental care program. A national pharmacare program. Federal support for long-term care. Some of this agenda is already rolling out now; some will arrive in 2024. The cost to the public sector is eye-watering: more than $4-billion annually for dental care and up to $13.4-billion a year for pharmacare.
But if you are a progressive voter, you must extend full credit to the NDP for pushing the Liberals toward commitments they would otherwise not have made. And if the Liberals really are not that much more popular than the NDP, then why not vote for the party that made these new programs possible?
A forked road confronts the NDP. On the one hand, third parties that prop up first parties in minority governments typically do not fare well in the next election. Bob Rae’s Ontario NDP paid a political price for its accord with David Peterson’s Liberals in the 1980s; In Great Britain, Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats were hammered in the 2015 election after entering into a coalition in 2010 with David Cameron’s Conservatives.
And B.C.’s Greens did not profit in the 2020 election from their supply-and-confidence agreement with the NDP.
But Mr. Trudeau is deeply unpopular. The NDP supply-and-confidence agreement is leading to major new policy reforms. Could the progressive vote shift?
Toronto-St. Paul’s could be an early indicator. Provincially, the NDP took the riding away from the Liberals in 2018 and held it in 2022. If the NDP vote in the federal by-election rises and the Liberal vote falls, then that suggests more winnable downtown seats might become available to the NDP in the next election: Toronto-Danforth, Trinity-Spadina, Parkdale-High Park, Ottawa Centre, Surrey Centre, Burnaby North-Seymour, and more.
Provincially, the Liberal Party is virtually extinct west of Ontario. The NDP forms the Official Opposition in Ontario. The Liberals are dead in the water in Quebec. In Atlantic Canada, they govern only in Newfoundland and Labrador. And Olivia Chow, who was Jack Layton’s wife, is mayor of Toronto.
Anything is possible in 2024. Keep your eye on Toronto-St. Paul’s.