COLUMN: Think Again – The federal NDP faces an existential crisis

The 2025 federal election was the NDP’s worst electoral showing in its history. With only seven seats in the House of Commons, the NDP doesn’t even have official party status.

Not only will the NDP not get the parliamentary resources that official parties receive, but its MPs won’t even be able to participate regularly in Question Period or have guaranteed spots on parliamentary committees. This will obviously make it hard for the NDP to get any media attention.

Even what little leverage the NDP has in this Parliament doesn’t amount to much. For example, interim NDP leader Don Davies recently announced that his party would vote against the federal throne speech. However, when the time came for the vote, the NDP let the speech pass “on division,” which means that its MPs didn’t even bother to force a standing vote.

To make matters worse, NDP MPs couldn’t even choose an interim leader without exposing their internal divisions. After Davies was announced as interim leader, three NDP MPs sent a sharply worded letter to their party executive expressing disappointment over being left out of the process. It’s more than a little absurd that the NDP is now led by a leader who was actively opposed by three out of seven MPs (one of whom is now the leader himself).

To be fair, the NDP has come through tough times before. In the 1958 election, when John Diefenbaker won a crushing majority, the CCF (predecessor of the NDP) won only eight seats, but rebounded to win 19 seats in 1962. Similarly, the NDP was reduced to only nine seats in 1993 but came back in 1997 to win 21 seats. Thus, it’s possible that the NDP will rebound once again.

However, there’s good reason to believe that the NDP’s disastrous electoral showing will be more permanent than before. That’s because federal politics has largely realigned back to a two-party system. This is bad news for the NDP, since this means voters won’t take them seriously.

The reality is that former NDP leader Jagmeet Singh was an absolute disaster for that party. By propping up the Liberals in exchange for some nebulous policy gains, Singh essentially sent the message that left-leaning voters were better off just voting Liberal since the NDP wasn’t serious about winning elections. The fact that Singh openly admitted that keeping the Conservatives out of power was more important to him than a strong electoral showing for his party cemented his status as an irrelevant politician.

In addition, the NDP abandoned its traditional voter base. Instead of standing up for well-paying union jobs through supporting the construction of new oil pipelines and other major national infrastructure projects, the NDP chose to cater to urban progressives by embracing woke identity politics. As a result, the federal NDP is no longer a serious contender in places like Saskatchewan where it once had rock solid support.

If the NDP is serious about coming back from the electoral precipice, it needs to refocus. Instead of holding out hope that it could hold the balance of power in this minority Parliament, the NDP must clearly state what it stands for. The NDP can either go back to its traditional social democratic roots by embracing policies that lead to well-paying jobs, or it can focus on catering to urban progressive sensibilities.

Former NDP leader Tommy Douglas wouldn’t recognize the party that he once led. That’s because the NDP doesn’t know what it stands for anymore. Until it confronts its existential crisis, expect to see the NDP drift in the political wilderness for many years to come.

Michael Zwaagstra is a high school teacher and deputy mayor of Steinbach. He can be reached at mzwaagstra@shaw.ca.