I have a far simpler explanation for the demise of the NDP. The federal NDP, at least in the past decade, has been a peacetime, "nice to have" party. So when things are going well and most Canadians are in the higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, there is a space for NDP's luxury beliefs of climate change and wokeness and unions. When shit hits the fan, like it did with Trump tariffs, nobody considers the NDP as a necessary part of the response, and they are the first to be ditched. And considering peacetime is not expected for the next few years, the NDP is pretty dead.
I think I agree with this in the big picture sense, but I'd just note that I think all of our parties have been peacetime parties for generations. Go back and read the campaign platforms from any federal election of the last few decades. Look at the challenges of today. The older platforms are bonkers. It's like reading a West Wing script.
Agreed. Though we have to acknowledge the spectrum of these platforms - as opposed to a binary peacetime/wartime position. And however we look at it, the NDP has been on the wrong end of that spectrum.
I think in this case, their (deserved) political banishment was massively over determined by several factors, including incompetence, their "no enemies to the left" surrender to the most obnoxious activists, bad leadership, bad consulting advice, etc etc etc.
Wow, Israel-haters Heather McDonald and Avi Lewis and fully out antisemite Yves Engler - that's who running for leadership? This answers Mitch's question. The NDP plans to identify as the anti-Jewish party.
We keep reading about "peak woke", that the ugly, divisive race and gender wars and cancel culture are flaming out.
If true, that is a serious problem for the federal NDP, as much of the brain trust seems more aligned with the faculty crowd that are heavily invested in "wokeness" than the working class people who never made time for wokeness in the first place.
Politics is a serious exercise in crystal ball gazing and positioning a party to be in the middle of emerging trends. If the NDP chose a new leader who is satisfied with their current position in the race and gender wars and doubles down on the effort, that could be the obituary for the NDP if the trend moves in the opposite direction. The economy is at a precarious position, with thousands of jobs being shed through trade disruptions and this is the perfect opportunity for the NDP to regain traction in the national conversation. People losing good paying jobs is where the action is going to be, and the perfect opportunity for the NDP to shed itself from the faculty lounge dead end it is mired in.
The NDP does best when some voters perceive Cons and Libs as both indistinguishable and opposed to them. That could be faculty lounge types if Carney really pivots from progressivism or, more likely, Canadian born working class (not civil servant/NG) voters crushed by mass immigration and taxes. The latter group is much more like traditional NDP union voters, and could be reached with non-libertarian, "Canadians first" messaging.
Unfortunately the people who actually run the NDP despise those people.
Of course, most of the Canadian born working class are not unionized and are pretty skeptical about new government programs to deliver services, both big changes from the 1960s. So there is no going back to the Tommy Douglas NDP.
The question posed in this article is practically a rhetorical one and the answer is clear - the NDP is clearly entrenched in the faculty lounge, and will probably go further down the path from what I know of the main apparent contenders for leadership. They've lost all credibility with the working class, most of whom they despise for being dirty and not on board with the latest and most rarefied forms of identity politics. The NDP is about to completely disappear up their own backsides.
And for cripe's sake, they just ran an election where most of their voter base and no small number of their MP's seemed to buy another party's propaganda campaign so thoroughly that they prioritized keeping the other-other party out of power more than they prioritized staying alive as a movement. How does a party *dismiss themselves as being an unnecessary luxury*?? But somehow the NDP did. If they aren't willing to endure the possibility of a Conservative government, where the NDP gains seats, as a necessary part of laying groundwork to eventually replace the Liberals as the left-wing option in Canadian politics, they might as well just roll up their tent and join the Liberals.
This is an excellent column. Until the last federal election, I voted, donated and volunteered for NDP at all levels. I voted CPC in the last election for two reasons: 1) the CPC campaign spoke to the economic issues that I care about; 2) the NDP became anti semitic and focussed on identity politics. The NDP candidate in my riding focussed her entire campaign on Palestine. They did not want my vote.
We lived in a very NDP riding but noticed that many of our stanch previously NDP-supporting friends switched to the Conservatives, who ended up winning the riding. Yeah, the antisemitism in the NDP is deeply troubling.
The NDP had a miraculous change for a pivot to supplant the Liberals as Canada's center-left party in 2011, and then ended up squandering that chance by embracing the "Leap Manifesto" after the disappointment of seeing Trudeau win a majority in 2015 with a progressive platform the NDP was denied. The Layton era is going to look like the "dead cat bounce" of a party that's resumed its trajectory of decline established by Broadbent, McLaughlin, and McDonough.
The NDP hasn't really been a party of labour since the 1960s or 1970s: the party itself kept following the increasingly radical trajectory of the left while rank and file members of organized labour first wondered at it all like Archie Bunker, then started drifting towards right wing parties like the PCs, Reform/Canadian Alliance, and the Conservatives who better reflected their cultural attitudes. To the extent they've retained the support of organized labour, it's institutional muscle memory on the part of unions, the fact that union leadership is increasingly unrepresentative of its members, plus the fact that the most powerful unions represent public sector jobs that are sharply different than the blue collar industrial jobs of the past.
The NDP doesn't really want to make the compromises needed to win power, and would rather engage in navel-gazing ideological exercises like limiting the number of "cis-gender males" supporting leadership candidates rather than try to appeal to a larger bloc of voters. That's fine - let them head down that path, and maybe they'll have the good grace to just dwindle into irrelevance and fade away instead of saddling Canadian politics with another profoundly silly and irresponsible leader propping up a weak minority government.
The current information landscape makes it so much easier to retreat into an increasingly tighter and tighter information bubble-- the NDP being a great example of the isolated Japanese solider on a remote island still fighting the war in 1955..... Their focus to a self loathing electorate of identity politics, (oppressor / oppressed) wont ever go away. Its more psychology than sociology in that respect. There is that great Orwell essay about a certain segment of the left in 1941 England where he wrote
"England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box. "
The current NDP wants to appeal to that lot where they rapturously celebrate the self torture of Canada as the modern geocidal state. Hopefully that continues to be a populace that can only elect them to 10 seats.
I agree with Mitch Heimpel's analysis that the NDP must choose a clear path to recover its relevance, as attempting to straddle both populist working-class roots and urban cultural elite priorities has fractured its identity. The party’s dismal 2025 election performance, with only seven seats and no competitive runner-up ridings, underscores the urgency of this decision. Returning to Tommy Douglas’s vision—emphasizing economic democratization through the cooperative movement—could be a compelling way forward. It aligns with the NDP’s historic strength in unionized, working-class communities while offering a distinct, principled alternative to the Liberals and Conservatives. By championing cooperative models, the NDP could rebuild trust in resource towns and urban centers alike, focusing on economic justice over divisive cultural politics. For more, check out my Substack or my book on revitalizing cooperative economics. https://thegreatcanadianreset.substack.com/p/a-third-way-for-canada
Absolutely true. In 2016, CBC quoted Mulcair saying party polls showed a 20% drop in Quebec in the two days after he came out strongly for the niqab. The NDP had been well ahead before that with the Liberals in third. There was a strong 'unite the anti-Harper' vote. When Quebec left the NDP for the Liberals, English Canada saw a possible split vote allowing Harper back in, and followed suit. That's how Trudeau came from behind to win.
I think Mulcair would have won in 2019: The bloom was off Trudeau and Scheer was unpopular. The NDP were seen as normal under Mulcair and had a strong support base to build on. But Avi Lewis and the Leapers split the party and did him in; now, it's hard to see how it comes back any time soon, if at all.
The Leapers are today's Waffle. It's hugely ironic that Lewis is behind the Leapers, while his father devoted himself to eliminating the latter. (Splitters, dammit.)
I think Mitch has captured the reason the Alberta NDP has now created the option to NOT be a member of the federal party. While I supported Rachel's practical approach the federal party's hard left approaches to climate and energy has given them but one bastion in Alberta which certainly has a significant faculty association base.
My disappointment in Naheed's inability to capitalize on this, or even advise the recent membership of this change, continues to grow. His absence/silence is also disappointing.
This column perfectly encapsulates my thoughts about the current Federal NDP (and the ON NDP for that matter). I continue to think the NDP made a huge mistake in choosing Jagmeet Singh as leader over Charlie Angus. (Even though these days I find myself disagreeing more with Charlie than agreeing with him, sigh . . . ) But Charlie has the working-class roots the NDP needs in a leader. And has the toughness needed to hold governments to account.
I've never been an NDP party member, but have voted for them both Federally & Provincially more often than not. If an election was held tomorrow the NDP wouldn't be getting my vote (& didn't last time either).
I agree things look pretty bleak for the NDP - the ever wily Liberals have borrowed convenient policies from the Tories and the Dippers and continue to reside in power and look set to remain for at least a year or two more (I cannot imagine them winning five in a row - almost unprecedented - last time was Mackenzie King).
The culture war bit associated with the leadership contest is an interesting move. Almost no normal human being is particularly exercised by the matter, believing in a world of 'live and let live' and treating all decently. No great need to go to the barricades on the matter of minimizing the malign influence of 'cis males', whatever that means. Probably a WASP capitalist. We need capitalists, more than we have to hand. They need not be WASP males, but that would be OK as well.
It reminds me of Michael Foot's 1983's Labour policy platform in the disastrous campaign of 1983 that gave Thatcher her second majority. It has entered the accounts of election campaigns as 'the longest suicide note in history', filled with tone deaf goofy policies to gladden the hearts of the Marxist warriors in the then Labour ranks. Ordinary Brits laughed. So did Thatcher. The NDP are in danger of providing the materials for a second chapter in any book on political self-indulgence with this approach.
While not of the same existential concern, taking up the cudgels of a 'culture war' by either the Tories (or the NDP) won't work in my view. Its time is past. We are in too much economic and geopolitical trouble to pay attention to such political gewgaws. Focus on what really matters and go from there.
Oh yes, and continue to treat all folks of whatever identity decently. They're our neighbours and deserve respect and compassion.
I have a far simpler explanation for the demise of the NDP. The federal NDP, at least in the past decade, has been a peacetime, "nice to have" party. So when things are going well and most Canadians are in the higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, there is a space for NDP's luxury beliefs of climate change and wokeness and unions. When shit hits the fan, like it did with Trump tariffs, nobody considers the NDP as a necessary part of the response, and they are the first to be ditched. And considering peacetime is not expected for the next few years, the NDP is pretty dead.
I think I agree with this in the big picture sense, but I'd just note that I think all of our parties have been peacetime parties for generations. Go back and read the campaign platforms from any federal election of the last few decades. Look at the challenges of today. The older platforms are bonkers. It's like reading a West Wing script.
I still remember the NDP pledging to pull Canada out of NATO back in the '80s. Always a serious party...
Agreed. Though we have to acknowledge the spectrum of these platforms - as opposed to a binary peacetime/wartime position. And however we look at it, the NDP has been on the wrong end of that spectrum.
The demise of the NDP has little to do with Trump and a lot to do with their own incompetence and activism in all the wrong areas.
I think in this case, their (deserved) political banishment was massively over determined by several factors, including incompetence, their "no enemies to the left" surrender to the most obnoxious activists, bad leadership, bad consulting advice, etc etc etc.
Sure. All of these can be blamed solely on the NDP, though :-)
Wow, Israel-haters Heather McDonald and Avi Lewis and fully out antisemite Yves Engler - that's who running for leadership? This answers Mitch's question. The NDP plans to identify as the anti-Jewish party.
We keep reading about "peak woke", that the ugly, divisive race and gender wars and cancel culture are flaming out.
If true, that is a serious problem for the federal NDP, as much of the brain trust seems more aligned with the faculty crowd that are heavily invested in "wokeness" than the working class people who never made time for wokeness in the first place.
Politics is a serious exercise in crystal ball gazing and positioning a party to be in the middle of emerging trends. If the NDP chose a new leader who is satisfied with their current position in the race and gender wars and doubles down on the effort, that could be the obituary for the NDP if the trend moves in the opposite direction. The economy is at a precarious position, with thousands of jobs being shed through trade disruptions and this is the perfect opportunity for the NDP to regain traction in the national conversation. People losing good paying jobs is where the action is going to be, and the perfect opportunity for the NDP to shed itself from the faculty lounge dead end it is mired in.
The NDP only cares about the unionized workers (although they don't do much for unionized workers 🤷♀️). I'm here for the complete demise of the NDP.
The NDP does best when some voters perceive Cons and Libs as both indistinguishable and opposed to them. That could be faculty lounge types if Carney really pivots from progressivism or, more likely, Canadian born working class (not civil servant/NG) voters crushed by mass immigration and taxes. The latter group is much more like traditional NDP union voters, and could be reached with non-libertarian, "Canadians first" messaging.
Unfortunately the people who actually run the NDP despise those people.
Of course, most of the Canadian born working class are not unionized and are pretty skeptical about new government programs to deliver services, both big changes from the 1960s. So there is no going back to the Tommy Douglas NDP.
The question posed in this article is practically a rhetorical one and the answer is clear - the NDP is clearly entrenched in the faculty lounge, and will probably go further down the path from what I know of the main apparent contenders for leadership. They've lost all credibility with the working class, most of whom they despise for being dirty and not on board with the latest and most rarefied forms of identity politics. The NDP is about to completely disappear up their own backsides.
And for cripe's sake, they just ran an election where most of their voter base and no small number of their MP's seemed to buy another party's propaganda campaign so thoroughly that they prioritized keeping the other-other party out of power more than they prioritized staying alive as a movement. How does a party *dismiss themselves as being an unnecessary luxury*?? But somehow the NDP did. If they aren't willing to endure the possibility of a Conservative government, where the NDP gains seats, as a necessary part of laying groundwork to eventually replace the Liberals as the left-wing option in Canadian politics, they might as well just roll up their tent and join the Liberals.
This is an excellent column. Until the last federal election, I voted, donated and volunteered for NDP at all levels. I voted CPC in the last election for two reasons: 1) the CPC campaign spoke to the economic issues that I care about; 2) the NDP became anti semitic and focussed on identity politics. The NDP candidate in my riding focussed her entire campaign on Palestine. They did not want my vote.
We lived in a very NDP riding but noticed that many of our stanch previously NDP-supporting friends switched to the Conservatives, who ended up winning the riding. Yeah, the antisemitism in the NDP is deeply troubling.
NDP, the No Democracy Party, is leftofascist racist garbage.
The NDP had a miraculous change for a pivot to supplant the Liberals as Canada's center-left party in 2011, and then ended up squandering that chance by embracing the "Leap Manifesto" after the disappointment of seeing Trudeau win a majority in 2015 with a progressive platform the NDP was denied. The Layton era is going to look like the "dead cat bounce" of a party that's resumed its trajectory of decline established by Broadbent, McLaughlin, and McDonough.
The NDP hasn't really been a party of labour since the 1960s or 1970s: the party itself kept following the increasingly radical trajectory of the left while rank and file members of organized labour first wondered at it all like Archie Bunker, then started drifting towards right wing parties like the PCs, Reform/Canadian Alliance, and the Conservatives who better reflected their cultural attitudes. To the extent they've retained the support of organized labour, it's institutional muscle memory on the part of unions, the fact that union leadership is increasingly unrepresentative of its members, plus the fact that the most powerful unions represent public sector jobs that are sharply different than the blue collar industrial jobs of the past.
The NDP doesn't really want to make the compromises needed to win power, and would rather engage in navel-gazing ideological exercises like limiting the number of "cis-gender males" supporting leadership candidates rather than try to appeal to a larger bloc of voters. That's fine - let them head down that path, and maybe they'll have the good grace to just dwindle into irrelevance and fade away instead of saddling Canadian politics with another profoundly silly and irresponsible leader propping up a weak minority government.
The current information landscape makes it so much easier to retreat into an increasingly tighter and tighter information bubble-- the NDP being a great example of the isolated Japanese solider on a remote island still fighting the war in 1955..... Their focus to a self loathing electorate of identity politics, (oppressor / oppressed) wont ever go away. Its more psychology than sociology in that respect. There is that great Orwell essay about a certain segment of the left in 1941 England where he wrote
"England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box. "
The current NDP wants to appeal to that lot where they rapturously celebrate the self torture of Canada as the modern geocidal state. Hopefully that continues to be a populace that can only elect them to 10 seats.
I agree with Mitch Heimpel's analysis that the NDP must choose a clear path to recover its relevance, as attempting to straddle both populist working-class roots and urban cultural elite priorities has fractured its identity. The party’s dismal 2025 election performance, with only seven seats and no competitive runner-up ridings, underscores the urgency of this decision. Returning to Tommy Douglas’s vision—emphasizing economic democratization through the cooperative movement—could be a compelling way forward. It aligns with the NDP’s historic strength in unionized, working-class communities while offering a distinct, principled alternative to the Liberals and Conservatives. By championing cooperative models, the NDP could rebuild trust in resource towns and urban centers alike, focusing on economic justice over divisive cultural politics. For more, check out my Substack or my book on revitalizing cooperative economics. https://thegreatcanadianreset.substack.com/p/a-third-way-for-canada
Absolutely true. In 2016, CBC quoted Mulcair saying party polls showed a 20% drop in Quebec in the two days after he came out strongly for the niqab. The NDP had been well ahead before that with the Liberals in third. There was a strong 'unite the anti-Harper' vote. When Quebec left the NDP for the Liberals, English Canada saw a possible split vote allowing Harper back in, and followed suit. That's how Trudeau came from behind to win.
I think Mulcair would have won in 2019: The bloom was off Trudeau and Scheer was unpopular. The NDP were seen as normal under Mulcair and had a strong support base to build on. But Avi Lewis and the Leapers split the party and did him in; now, it's hard to see how it comes back any time soon, if at all.
The Leapers are today's Waffle. It's hugely ironic that Lewis is behind the Leapers, while his father devoted himself to eliminating the latter. (Splitters, dammit.)
No, the NDP would not have won the election. Official opposition at best.
I think Mitch has captured the reason the Alberta NDP has now created the option to NOT be a member of the federal party. While I supported Rachel's practical approach the federal party's hard left approaches to climate and energy has given them but one bastion in Alberta which certainly has a significant faculty association base.
My disappointment in Naheed's inability to capitalize on this, or even advise the recent membership of this change, continues to grow. His absence/silence is also disappointing.
Faculty lounge.
I wonder if there is room in Canadian politics for a “rights and freedoms” party?
I’m not advocating something akin to US Libertarian ideology, which boils down to “rights for the richest, screw the rest”.
Instead, it would be focused on strengthening protections against state actions that harm individuals and minority groups (however construed).
The trick would be to advocate these things without giving free rein to hate groups and racists. These are easy enough to discern.
A tall order, and perhaps too difficult to build a new party on…?
This column perfectly encapsulates my thoughts about the current Federal NDP (and the ON NDP for that matter). I continue to think the NDP made a huge mistake in choosing Jagmeet Singh as leader over Charlie Angus. (Even though these days I find myself disagreeing more with Charlie than agreeing with him, sigh . . . ) But Charlie has the working-class roots the NDP needs in a leader. And has the toughness needed to hold governments to account.
I've never been an NDP party member, but have voted for them both Federally & Provincially more often than not. If an election was held tomorrow the NDP wouldn't be getting my vote (& didn't last time either).
Charlie seems to have gone off the deep end, though.
I agree things look pretty bleak for the NDP - the ever wily Liberals have borrowed convenient policies from the Tories and the Dippers and continue to reside in power and look set to remain for at least a year or two more (I cannot imagine them winning five in a row - almost unprecedented - last time was Mackenzie King).
The culture war bit associated with the leadership contest is an interesting move. Almost no normal human being is particularly exercised by the matter, believing in a world of 'live and let live' and treating all decently. No great need to go to the barricades on the matter of minimizing the malign influence of 'cis males', whatever that means. Probably a WASP capitalist. We need capitalists, more than we have to hand. They need not be WASP males, but that would be OK as well.
It reminds me of Michael Foot's 1983's Labour policy platform in the disastrous campaign of 1983 that gave Thatcher her second majority. It has entered the accounts of election campaigns as 'the longest suicide note in history', filled with tone deaf goofy policies to gladden the hearts of the Marxist warriors in the then Labour ranks. Ordinary Brits laughed. So did Thatcher. The NDP are in danger of providing the materials for a second chapter in any book on political self-indulgence with this approach.
While not of the same existential concern, taking up the cudgels of a 'culture war' by either the Tories (or the NDP) won't work in my view. Its time is past. We are in too much economic and geopolitical trouble to pay attention to such political gewgaws. Focus on what really matters and go from there.
Oh yes, and continue to treat all folks of whatever identity decently. They're our neighbours and deserve respect and compassion.