Singh and Trudeau: Why Not Try the BC Way?

“You don’t have to choose between Mr. Delay and Mr. Deny.” Well, now Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the federal NDP, must make that choice.

It’s obvious Mr. Deny, a.k.a. Andrew Scheer and his Conservative party is no real choice, given that “deny” is no real policy to deal with climate change.

So Singh must look to help Mr. Delay sustain a minority government led by Prime Minister (still) Justin Trudeau. Singh will have other reasons to chide Trudeau for delaying tactics. The Liberals persistently have dragged their feet on the implementation of full pharmacare, probably due to the lobbying power of big pharma companies.

A couple of months ago, as an old NDP warhorse, I was asked to do a fundraising pitch in Penticton for NDP MP Richard Cannings right after Singh spoke. Looking at the smiling leader I told the audience that, like a lot of Canadians, I didn’t know Jagmeet Singh but his speech zeroing in on two topics, climate change and pharmacare, appealed to young and old nicely.

That day the national media (not The Tyee) were writing the poor guy off. I thought that was a mistake, and I listened to some of the old-timers in the audience recall a moment during the 1991 provincial election. During a key debate, Gordon Wilson, a relatively unknown candidate leading a lagging, upstart Liberal party, looked into the camera and then at the two major party leaders and basically mocked them. It rocked his party into the Official Opposition. I guess Singh was listening!

The road ahead for Singh and his NDP has two forks, maybe three.

The first is the road to a coalition, which would include some NDP ministers in a Trudeau Liberal government (Don Davies would be an excellent minister of health). Trudeau’s father, Pierre, offered that to the NDP in 1980 because he had no seats west of Winnipeg and wanted NDP support for his constitutional patriation and Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The NDP turned him down but did leverage a better charter and recognition of aboriginal rights for their support.

The second road is support in the House on a day-to-day basis dependent on what bills the government introduces.

A third road and the best, I believe, would be to follow the example of the BC NDP/Green accord where both parties looked realistically at the issues they campaigned on and incorporated them into a written agreement with actual formal consultation required.

The issues the federal NDP campaigned on and Singh would be aiming to have in such an agreement likely would include pharmacare, housing, student loans, tax loopholes and emissions targets.

Negotiating such a document would be tough but possible, despite the Liberals’ reputation for arrogance towards the opposition in the day-to-day House business. It’s worked in B.C. to get an agreed-on climate change policy and has given us a degree of stability, which Canadians crave these days. As far as I know it’s never been done federally.

We NDPers always say: Liberals are progressive in opposition but conservative in government. Singh can change that and judging by the road he took in his remarkable campaign, he’s the person to do it.