Wealth tax, nurses Singh's priorities

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says his party will have the leverage to pressure the minority Liberal government on priorities like a wealth tax and support for health workers, despite a disappointing election result Monday that saw the party's seat count stall.

“I'm ready to get back to work. We had the same position in the last Parliament and we were able to secure a lot of really important victories,” such as forcing the Liberals to increase pandemic wage supports, Singh said in a news conference Tuesday. “We're going to continue to do that work. And we're confident that we'll be able to do that.”

But it's not quite clear how leverage will work out when Parliament resumes, according to polling analyst Éric Grenier of the website The Writ. The Liberals don't want to call another election anytime soon, and that could mean they're “more willing to put the ball in the court of the opposition to kind of get behind them or be the ones who caused the election.”

Alternatively, the Liberals could be “humbled” if there are questions around Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's leadership.

Peter Graefe, an associate political science professor at McMaster University, said Singh could have more bargaining power this time around. Postelection, it may be harder for the Liberals to find common ground with the Bloc, making the Trudeau government “a bit more necessarily reliant on the NDP this time.”

“Coupled with the fact the NDP seems to be more organizationally solid than they were coming out of the 2019 campaign, and financially capable. … those are all features which would lead you to believe that Mr. Singh may have a bit more leverage, and negotiations probably will be a bit more tense,” Graefe predicted.

Throughout the election, the NDP hovered at around 20 per cent support, and ahead of voting day Monday, projections showed they could pick up a dozen seats. Instead, the party received just under 18 per cent of the vote. At press time, the NDP had been elected in 24 ridings — the same number as in 2019 — and was leading in one more, again putting them in fourth place behind the Bloc.

Singh told reporters that he feels secure in his leadership of the party, despite the lacklustre results, and that he doesn't feel like he's hit his ceiling as a leader.

Grenier said Singh's leadership seems to be “not really in any danger,” adding former NDP leader Jack Layton also only made incremental gains in his first couple of elections.

Singh said Tuesday one immediate priority heading back to Parliament will be support for overworked, burnedout health care workers like nurses. “Nurses have been crying out for a long time that the situation is really bad, it's at a disaster point. And so that's going to be something we'll work on right away,” he said.