45model minority · reportageFEBRUARY 2018leader elected on the first ballot in a leadership
vote since the party’s founder—an impressive feat,
especially considering his initial polling was weak.
But that victory alone will not be enough. “When-
ever I’ve met Jagmeet or met some of his team,
there’s a confidence that they’re ready to win,”
Girn said. “That group wants him to be prime
minister, and that’s how they define success.”
Winning the next federal election will be ex-
tremely challenging for Jagmeet—and not just for
reasons related to identity politics. The NDP came
in second in the 2011 national election and third in
2015, in which the party was leading for much of
the campaign. It has formed governments in six of
Canada’s ten provinces, and it currently controls
Alberta and British Columbia. But the party, often
called “the conscience of Canada,” has never
won federally. Jagmeet is thus looking to be two
“firsts”—the country’s first prime minister from a
visible minority, and its first prime minister from
the NDP.
“The NDP is kind of behind the liberals and the
conservatives in organisation building,” Subra-
manian said. “In the next election, chances are
against an NDP prime minister or Jagmeet Singh
as prime minister.” Most experts I talked to were
similarly sceptical about Jagmeet’s odds. To win,
they said, he would have to combine unprece-
dented youth turnout with both a strong showing
from Canada’s visible minorities and the NDP’s
traditional working-class base. There are reasons
to doubt things will all come together. Bird, an
expert on voting patterns among Canada’s vis-ible minorities, predicted that having a person
of colour as party head would lead to an uptick
in support for the NDP among these groups. But
she cautioned against automatically assuming
that most Indo-Canadians, or even most Cana-
dian Sikhs, would support Jagmeet. His eco-
nomic progressivism, for example, may dissuade
wealthier Indo-Canadians who prefer lower
taxes and fewer regulations. “These are divisions
and confrontations within any community,” she
said. “No one leader is going to be able to satisfy
everybody.”
It is also unclear if Jagmeet’s efforts to open the
party to new constituencies while preserving its
roots will succeed. Canada’s unions and minor-
ity groups have long had close ties, but there are
early reports of Jagmeet rankling his own party’s
union over working hours. Similarly, he has been
criticised for a progressivism that has, at times,
seemed uncritical.
But what is perhaps most concerning is his
party’s underwhelming recent track record.
Though the NDP leader himself has favourable ap-
proval ratings, according to the CBC’s poll tracker,
the party’s polling numbers have worsened since
he took charge. A 23 January estimate projected
that the NDP would win 15.6 percent of the vote
and 19 out of 338 parliamentary seats, far less than
the 44 it currently has. Were that to happen, it is
likely Jagmeet would suffer a fate similar to that of
his predecessor, Thomas Mulcair, who was forced
resign after losing more than half of the record
high 103 seats the party won in 2011.below: Canada’s
prime minister
Justin Trudeau
received a standing
ovation after
delivering a formal
apology for the
Komagata Maru
incident in the
House of Commons
on Parliament Hill in
Ottawa on 18 May
2016.chris wattie / reuters