EDITORIAL: More empty rhetoric from Jagmeet Singh

Article content

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has turned crying wolf about provoking a federal election into an art form over the past two-and-a-half years, while propping up the Liberals.

His media conference Thursday explaining his reasons for “ripping up” his supply and confidence agreement with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was more of the same — empty rhetoric, short on substance.

Road-testing the themes he will use in the next election, Singh said Trudeau and the Liberals are selfish cowards who refuse to stand up for ordinary Canadians and will always cave in to greedy CEOs and corporations.

He said Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives are even worse because they would dismantle cherished programs like medicare and destroy protections for Canadian workers, in order to make those CEOs and corporations even richer.

Singh argued that only the NDP will fight for ordinary Canadians.

But he then refused to answer the obvious question his rhetoric raised.

That is, if things are so terrible, why wouldn’t he commit now to help bring the Trudeau government down at the first available opportunity when Parliament resumes later this month, by voting non-confidence in the Liberals?

The reason he wouldn’t do that is obvious.

The reality is that if a federal election was held today it would, according to numerous polls taken over the past year, result in a crushing Conservative majority government with the NDP and Liberals fighting for scraps.

That’s what made the political bravado Singh displayed on Thursday in announcing his split from the Liberals so empty.

The tell was that Singh would only say that tearing up his deal with Trudeau makes an earlier election “more likely” (that is, before the fall of 2025, under the now-defunct Liberal-NDP deal) as if he’s somehow been a bystander on when that election will occur.

In fact, Singh propped up the Liberal government for two-and-a-half years, despite his numerous empty threats to bring it down if Trudeau didn’t do what the NDP wanted on issues such as dental care and pharmacare.

Singh’s threats were empty then — and remain so today — because forcing an election now would, according to the polls, result in fewer seats for the NDP than the 24 it now holds, in an election the NDP doesn’t want.