LILLEY: Jagmeet Singh's NDP lose all credibility backing Trudeau

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This week, Jagmeet Singh called Justin Trudeau “cowardly” over his position on the railway work stoppage. Last week, Singh was saying life for Canadians under Trudeau has gotten much worse.

But don’t expect the NDP Leader to do anything about a government he clearly doesn’t think is working for Canadians.

Singh has been complaining about Trudeau’s Liberal government for more than a year, warning how bad the government is for Canada and then propping Trudeau up. As the junior partner in the Coalition of Weasels – as Warren Kinsella dubbed their agreement – Singh gets to denounce his boss, Trudeau, while making sure he keeps the PM in power.

It’s one of the reasons the NDP under Singh have lost all credibility and are struggling in the polls despite the Liberal collapse.

For the past year, the Liberals have been losing voter support, dropping from roughly 30% a year ago to as low as 23% voter support now. According to poll aggregator 338Canada.com, the Liberals sit at 24% voter support based on an average of recent polls.

And the NDP?

They remain at 18%, the same level of support they had in the last election. That would be the election that saw the party win just 25 seats.

If the Liberals are falling, shouldn’t the NDP be rising?

That would be the conventional wisdom, which views both the Liberals and NDP as progressive parties and assumes their voters are as well. But rather than leaving the Liberals and heading to the NDP, voters instead have been shifting towards Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives.

As the Liberals have fallen by an average of six points over the last year, all of that support has gone to the Conservatives. While they sat at an average of 36% support a year ago, Poilievre and his team have an average of 42% support now.

This is a failure of Singh and the NDP to connect with average Canadians at a time when they are looking for an alternative to the current government.

It’s not just polling, it’s fundraising as well where the NDP continues to trail badly. In the latest quarterly fundraising tally from Elections Canada, the NDP raised just $1.3 million compared to $3.8 million for the Liberals and $10.7 million for the Conservatives, who took in more money than all other parties combined.

At a time when the cost of living, housing, immigration and health care are top issues for voters, Singh should be punching through – but he isn’t. Instead, according to a recent Abacus Data poll, voters see the Conservatives as the best party on all these issues. The best the NDP can do is to tie them on healthcare.

With the Trudeau Liberals demanding binding arbitration, Singh said he would pull his support for the government. Except, nobody believes Singh will pull his support.

Now with the Canada Industrial Relations Board ordering workers back on the job as of Monday morning, Singh will be put to the test but don’t expect him to stand on principle.

He hasn’t done it any other time – be it on delivering a pharmacare program, the government’s stance on the war between Israel and Hamas, or even on the cost-of-living issues he claims to understand. Singh is the boy who cried wolf and he’s done it so many times that it’s hard to fathom that he would do it now.

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Of course, Singh also has 2.1 million reasons not to pull the plug until at least January 2025. That’s when Singh’s pension kicks in after six years of service in Parliament. And although he can’t collect until age 55, the total value of the pension is estimated at $2.1 million.

Singh is definitely full of bluster and complaints about the Trudeau government – his problem is no one takes him or his party seriously anymore.

blilley@postmedia.com