Finally, Jagmeet Singh is a member of Parliament.
Nearly 17 months after Singh became the leader of the federal New Democratic Party (NDP), he was elected as an MP when he won a by-election in B.C.鈥檚 Burnaby 麻豆视频 constituency.
The riding is a long ways away from Ontario, where Singh had served as a member of the provincial parliament.
His decision to wait so long to get elected to Parliament was bizarre. Rather than cut a deal with one of his MPs to step down so that he could run in an NDP-friendly riding and get into the House of Commons as quickly as possible, he sat on the sidelines.
Singh said he was waiting for a riding where he felt a genuine connection with the people of the constituency. It shouldn鈥檛 take 17 months for a party leader to find that electoral district.听
And while Singh played the waiting game, he took the party to the brink of political irrelevance.
Had he found an opportunity to run federally, and been elected as an MP right away, he and his party would be far more relevant. He could have been standing before the media and criticizing the federal Liberals for their mistakes. (And there have been lots of mistakes). And he would have had greater opportunity to bring forward his party鈥檚 ideas.
Instead, those opportunities have been virtually monopolized by Andrew Scheer of the federal Conservative Party.
Support for the NDP is way down. His approval ratings are low. Electoral support for the party as a whole has diminished. Financial donations are sliding, too.
If he didn鈥檛 win the by-election, he would have likely found himself without a job, which would have been a shocking turn of events for a politician who came in with so much potential.
The moves he has made, such as turfing Regina鈥檚 Erin Weir from caucus, have often been panned.
Singh is undeniably talented. He鈥檚 bright, articulate, charismatic, stylish and engaging. He has a lot of the skills that a political party would covet in a leader.
It鈥檚 unfortunate that there are some who would not vote for him because of his religion or his skin colour. He should be evaluated based on his abilities, not on his beliefs.
But his religion is not the reason why his party鈥檚 popularity has plunged.
It鈥檚 because he did absolutely nothing in his first 17 months as the party鈥檚 leader.
This is the party that became the official opposition in 2011, following a brilliant campaign by the late Jack Layton. This is the party that was leading the polls at one point during the 2015 federal election. They finished a distant third, but they were still relevant.
But since a certain faction of the NDP gained influence in 2016, and ousted Tom Mulcair as party leader and passed the unrealistic Leap Manifesto, the NDP has been sliding in the polls.
Now it seems like the only hope for the NDP to have any true power and influence in Ottawa, at least in the short-term, is for a minority government to be formed, and for that government to strike a coalition with the NDP. That would at least allow the NDP to implement some of its ideas.
(Don鈥檛 laugh; given the state of the polls, that鈥檚 a more realistic option than some might think).
Without that, the NDP will be at its lowest level of significance since the 1993 federal election, when they won just nine seats and lost their status as an official political party.
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