NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has been campaigning in British Columbia – the province home to half of the party’s seats – since Friday.
Asked repeatedly over the long weekend about spending some of the final days of the 2025 federal election in potentially at-risk ridings the party currently holds, Singh responded by stating who wouldn’t want to be enjoying the west coast’s early spring.
“We want to spend our time in beautiful parts of our country where we can let Canadians know that they’ve got someone on their side,” Singh said Sunday.
But, on Monday night – at his first and so far, only rally of the campaign – Singh had a new message for B.C. voters.
“In this election, British Columbians will decide what happens next, whether Mark Carney gets a supermajority, or whether there are enough New Democrats in Parliament to hold the line,” Singh said. “To fight for public health care… to make sure working and middle-class people don’t get pushed out while millionaires and billionaires cash in.”
While he has spoken repeatedly about what is at risk for Canadian progressives, that comment was the closest Singh has gotten since touching down in the province on Friday to articulating what’s at risk for the NDP in this election.
Throughout this race, Singh and those around him have suggested national polling isn’t capturing the NDP’s regional support and have not directly expressed concerns the New Democrats could be about to lose their biggest foothold and with it, potentially official party status.
‘We might lose some seats’
Though, while the campaign may not be ready to talk about the party’s need to rebuild come April 29, some attendees at the rally were.
“I think the party is going to need to take an internal look at itself anyway. This is a good opportunity for us to reexamine how we do things,” said President of CUPE’s British Columbia and Yukon Division Karen Ranalletta. “I do think that there is an opportunity to continue to build on what we’ve already got.”
Asked if she’s worried about the party failing to elect enough MPs to maintain official party status in the House of Commons, Ranalletta said the 2025 campaign has been “a very strange election with very strange external factors happening.”
“We’ve got good ground game, New Democrats know how to organize. We know how to get to our people on the doors, and if we can have conversations with voters, I know we can encourage them to put the NDP back [in Parliament].”
Parker Mazal, who is involved with the Simon Fraser University NDP and was wearing an orange button with candidate Avi Lewis’ name on it, said he would have liked to hear Singh start making the case to voters about electing more new democrats, earlier in the race.
He “absolutely” thinks there will need to be a party reset after the election.
“I know a lot of left-wing voters that are very disenfranchised with the NDP, and I think the party needs to shift further to the left,” he said.
But, while other supporters indicated this could be a do-or-die election for the NDP, Mazal said he doesn’t think that’s necessarily the case.
“No, I think we can come back, but it’s going to take a lot of rethinking,” he said. “We might lose some seats. I don’t think we’re going to quite lose party status.”
He said from what he’s seeing in B.C., where there are strong New Democrat candidates running, the polls aren’t picking up what he’s hearing on the ground, but it may not be enough.
“I think we’re going to have a good fight ahead of us… But it’s not going to be as good as the last election,” he said.
Ex-MP recalls losing party status
Ahead of Singh’s rally speech, former and longtime NDP MP Libby Davies have the crowd of around 370 people a bit of a history lesson.
“Who remembers 1993? 1993, what happened? We lost party status,” she said.
“I got elected in 1997 and in that four years, some really bad stuff happened in Ottawa,” she added. “There was some real shit that went down, I’ll tell you.”
Davies went on to talk about how the Liberal government went to the right, and programs the NDP are still fighting to rebuild, were lost.
“They balanced the budgets on the backs of poor people, and you know why they did that? Because we weren’t there,” she said.”
NDP candidate Tanille Johnston – who campaigned alongside Singh on Monday in an effort to hold on to the riding against controversial Conservative contender Aaron Gunn – was the first New Democrat on the ballot to express this directly to reporters travelling with Singh’s campaign.
“In North Island – Powell River, the strategic vote … is the New Democratic Party… We are the party that keeps out Conservatives year after year,” she said.
Signs expressing this sentiment, that “B.C. votes NDP to stop Conservatives,” can be seen across Vancouver Island.
“A vote for the Liberals here in Nanaimo—Ladysmith is a vote for the Conservatives. The Liberals have not had a representative here since 1940,” NDP incumbent Lisa Marie Barron told reporters on Monday.
“So, if you vote Liberal in this riding because of our first-past-the-post system… the votes for the Liberals will be lost, and then the Conservatives would win.”
It’s possible the message is starting to seep through to voters, since the debates and as Carney’s lead has been maintained, the NDP have seen a small bump in their polling numbers, according to Nanos Research.
But whether it’ll be enough to secure the party enough seats to have leverage in the next Parliament, remains to be seen. Singh is heading back to redouble campaign efforts in other provinces over the next few days, but will be back in Burnaby for election night.(CTV)