The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Why is the NDP's Support Collapsing?

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

Since Trump's trade war began we have seen an unprecedented political swing in Canada. The Liberals have surged in the polls and what was once a sure thing for the Conservative Party is no longer. But what about the NDP and Jagmeet Singh? Are they headed towards a historically poor showing on April 28th? Could they lose official party status? And what does it all mean for the future of progressive politics in Canada?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Renew your 2.0 TVO with more thought-provoking documentaries, insightful current affairs coverage, and fun programs and learning experiences for kids. Regular contributions from people like you help us make a difference in the lives of Ontarians of all ages. Visit tvo.me slash 2025 donate to renew your support or make a first-time donation and continue to discover your 2.0 TVO. Since Donald Trump's trade war began, we have seen an unprecedented political swing here in Canada. The Liberals have surged in the polls and what was once a sure thing for the Conservative Party is no longer. But what about the NDP and Jagmeet Singh? Are they headed towards a historically poor showing on April 28th? Could they lose

official party status? And what does it all mean for the future of progressive politics in Canada? Let's dig into that with, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Shachie Curl, president of the Angus Reid Institute. In the nation's capital, David Moskrob, freelance journalist and author of Too Dumb for Democracy, Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Make Better Ones. And with us in studio, Kim Wright, principal and founder of Wright Strategies and an NDP strategist. Welcome all. Thank you so much for joining us in studio and online. Let's start this discussion with two numbers. This is from Shachi's polling from Angus Reed. At the end of last year, the federal NDP was pulling at 21% support.

Fast forward yesterday and they are down to a whopping 7%. Shachi, I'm going to start with you. How should we understand what's happening here? Well, I mean, basically what we're seeing is the NDP's lunch get eaten by the liberals. The party's support base is being hollowed out and we have seen a dramatic stampede of NDP supporters abandon the NDP, at least for the time being, and I'll circle back on that, in favour of the liberals. So what's going on on that front? Well, there's a couple of factors. First of all,

with Pierre Poliev finishing last year with a 20 plus point lead, I think a lot of centre-left voters have made decisions around trying to create an anybody but conservatives or anybody but Poliev situation. And they are choosing to vote strategically and with their feet for a left of centre or a centrist candidate that they feel would be best to block Poliev. There's also just the practicalities of the fact that many current NDP voters are actually not really enamoured of the choice that they have in Jameet Singh. When we asked NDPers last December,

well before Trump, well before the tariff threats, well before the trade war, what they thought about their current leader, did they think that the NDP would be doing better under a different leader? Fully 56% said, yeah, we actually do think the party would be doing better under a different leader. So some of this is leadership.

We've seen Singh's own favorability numbers trend down and downward over the last two years. That continues. And some of this is really just the perennial issue of where does the left of centre vote sit in Canada. And we saw same parallels in 2015 where the NDP vote actually abandoned Tom Mulcair and went over to Justin Trudeau and the Liberals deemed him to be progressive enough for their choice. And, you know, somewhat ironically, the fact that we're seeing NDP voters abandon saying for a central banker who's making a lot of noises about fiscal discipline,

let's see if that holds. What's really important is the central left vote is very mutable. It moves around, it changes. And I'm not entirely sure on the Tuesday after the Sunday election writ drop that those votes are locked in, but that's certainly where they are at the moment. All right. On Sunday, the NDP sent out an email saying, when it comes to selecting candidates,

it is entering the race with a record-breaking momentum. How would you characterize the state, the NDP are entering this race in? So there's a couple of things that are quite great. We're already in, New Democrats actually go through nomination meetings for their candidates. It's not anointments and appointments like other parties are allowed to do. You can't just wave a bibbidi-bobbidi-boop magic wand and here's all your candidates. So that does take a little longer.

But it was, we started the writ issuance and show it to Steve Pagan, it's never a writ drop. But that we had about 230, 240 candidates that were already getting ready to knock on doors and already had been knocking on doors, so great momentum start. I'll also give people a bit of history that going into the 2011 campaign, Jack Layton was somewhere in that 10, 11 percent range

at the start of that campaign and ended up living in Stornoway come the end of the election. So strange things happen, wonderful things can happen on the campaign trail. It really just depends on how these candidates all show up during the campaign. Do they have momentum? Do they have candidates? Are they able to weather the storm? And what we've seen out of Mr. Carney and his inability to answer simple questions like what's in your portfolio?

How many millions and millions have you made off of buying up real estate and charging outrageous rents to homeowners, including here in Toronto. How do you expect people to believe you're accountable when you won't be accountable on the basic things like how much money do you have, where are you invested, and where are your ethics obligations? Those are problematic things for Mr. Kearney going into this and it's why some of those progressive voters who might have been like, oh, okay, not Trudeau, great, let's check out the new guy, kick the tires and go,

oh wait, he's not one of us, he's not part of our team, where do we go? So then we start to look at, as we saw in the Ontario election, the voter efficiency of new Democrats is extraordinary. Bonnie Cromby was at 30% on election night, didn't have a seat for herself and only had 14 seats. And Marit Stiles has 27 MPPs and is the leader of the official opposition. 21% to 7, that's a pretty big drop. So what we're seeing, and you would have seen, and I'm sure people were on this program saying, Marth Stiles is going to get no seats. And here she is with 27 in official opposition.

So there is a voter efficiency that I'm certain that every pollster will tell you doesn't actually get picked up in those big top line numbers. And I know this because we see it in campaign after campaign. Jigmeet is a seasoned pro. He knows what it's like being on those campaign, the campaign trail every day and in the scrutiny of media every single day. He's so incredibly focused on who he's in it for, why he's doing this and he has people who run up to him every day talking about their experience of getting dental care.

A program that the Liberals told us said they will absolutely not be able to do in anything less than seven years, and maybe not even then, and we shouldn't hold our breath. And now millions and millions and millions of Canadians are having these programs and access to these services they wouldn't have but for the adults in the room, Jigmeet Singh and the new Democrats. All right. You mentioned the pollster. We will get to Satchi shortly, but I want to get David into this. How would you characterize the state of the NDP right now?

On a wing and a prayer? I mean, it's true. Things can happen. Lots of things can happen. We've seen the NDP collapse in 1993 to whatever it was, nine seats. We saw them soar to official opposition. Campaigns matter. That point is important.

Not long ago, many of us, including myself, were saying, look, the liberals are cooked. They're done. Pierre Polyev is the next prime minister of Canada. Now they're like, well, okay, fine, but events. But let's talk about that event. The thing that's shaken up Canadian politics and its elections, Donald Trump. If the liberals are looking back and saying, well, why do we go from nowhere to somewhere? The answer is, well, Justin Trudeau

leaves. But Donald Trump starts talking like William McKinley or James Monroe. Someone must have told him who those people were. Someone must have given Donald Trump a President's First President's book, and he learned of these figures. And now we're having to deal with this annexation threat. And that's upended our politics. But now the NDP are caught in this situation where we've got a polarized red blue race. And they're kind of nowhere. And in political science, we talk about Duverger's law. It's very, very nerdy and arcane and no one outside of political science likes it, but it's kind of important. And it says basically that in a first past the post system like ours, you sort of get a two-party system, you're meant to, except for there's all these exceptions where you don't get that. And in Canada, we're one of those exceptions. We don't really have that polarized two-party system like they do in, say, British Columbia

in the provincial party system, but we don't have that federally. But every so often in elections, we kind of get a simulacrum of it, which is what we're having now. And someone in that situation needs to be pushed out. And right now that's the NDP. So it's going to be difficult for them, though not impossible to say, no, no, no, we have a value proposition here. We offer something. In fact, we're different. And you no, no, we have a value proposition here. We offer something. In fact, we're different. And, you know, this might be getting a little slightly ahead of us here, but I'll just note it, if I'm the NDP, I'm fighting like hell to get that across by

saying like, look, there's two Tories running for the prime minister here. We're the different ones. The question is, will voters hear that if their question is who can best deal with Donald Trump? All right, Shachi, I'm going to come to you. I want you to pick up on what was said here, but also curious. Do you think when we talk about that voter efficiency, do you think it's likely the NDP could finish with fewer than 12 seats and lose official party status? So it's not for me to take what Kim refers to as top line polling numbers, even at the

metro level or at the urban level, and then layer seat projections onto what we're seeing in aggregate data. But I will say this. When we talk about, oh, it's impossible to figure out the NDP's efficiency at the ground level, I go back to and look at some of the data that we released yesterday showing, number one, the NDP in third place provincially here in the province of British Columbia as an example.

Okay, well, what does that really mean? Show us what it looks like in Metro Vancouver, which has traditionally been a stronghold for the NDP. Well, you know, the party at the end of last year was tied for a distant second to the conservatives with the liberals, both sitting at about 27%. Today, the liberals polling in Metro Vancouver are in a first place by a mile, by a wide mile, almost at about 50%, the NDP in a distant third. So do I know from experience and spending the first chapter of my career as a political journalist

that the NDP's vote is some of the most driven, most passionate, most committed vote at its very, very core? Yes. But that's sort of the organizing level. It's the core, core level. The people on the other hand, who showed up for Jagmeet Singh back in 2021 or 2019, on a wave of goodwill and inspiration because he was a fresher, newer leader at the time. Those folks, I think, and I say again again, for now here on day three of the campaign have decamped to the liberals. And I think are not as motivated as, as the, as, you know, by the fact that,

that I think it was David who talked about, you know, Carney being basically a progressive conservative and more about blocking Trump and electing somebody, sorry, blocking Poliev and electing somebody who will do a more elbows up job standing up to Trump. I think those are the motivations for voters. And we really have to see what happens with young voters, for example, and young women, traditional support basis for the NDP. Are these voters who are going to, number one, show up?

And if they do, are they going to show up for their traditional candidate, or are they going to show up for something new? All right, Kim, in 2011, Jacqueline and the NDP won 103 seats. In 2015, with Thomas Moclair, 44 seats. And then, as we mentioned, 2019, 2021, 24 and 25 seats. You know, our viewers, they're quite smart.

We don't need to put a line graph on here. Are you concerned about where the party's sort of larger trend line is? I'm really not. And I look at the 2015 campaign and Tom O'Kare was supposed to be the next one, the next prime minister. And then he ran a campaign that was by all accounts abysmal and not who he authentically was. What Canadians always

want to see is who are these leaders authentically and they get a sense of that. There's a smell test, you know, so how they respond to reporters, how they respond on the campaign trail, what are the policies they're putting forward. And Jigmeet always does quite well in these situations where Tom Mulcair tanked because everyone was like, okay, I was okay with angry Tom, but now he's smiling and weird and trying to be Jack, but not Jack. You know, like it looked like a village had lost their idiot. He was smiling so much.

And honestly, he just ran an abysmal campaign. This is why he's out of politics and every time he has picked a winner and loser in one of his columns I laugh because it's like, oh that's where it's going to tank because his instincts are terrible. But I'll put the former leader aside. Jigmeet does really well on the ground. He does really well in the scrums, in the campaign trail, in the cut and thrust of it. His human side, he's now a dad to two young adorable children. You saw them at the start with their, they even had the orange sunglasses on. He understands why he's doing this, authentically why he's doing this, not because some pollster or some focus group told Pierre Poliev he should smile more and that just

looks odd. And you know, you see these slogan earrings of Mr. Poliev, the verbing the noun, so to speak. He's tried Axe the Tax, he's tried the Bring It Home, he's tried Canada First. None of them authentically fit. What is interesting, and Mr. Carney's having a similar thing, you know, he was asked on the start of the campaign, well, why are you running in Nepean? He flipped several pages in his briefing book before he read basically the demographic profile of Nepean, didn't get the writing breakdown right and just fundamentally is just wouldn't. So he's going to try the Kamala Harris hangout with every celebrity he can, do a really lovely

social media campaign. But you have to strip that away in the 30 some odd days that are left in the campaign and in those debate stages. I mean just the notion of not wanting to do the TVAW debate and only wanting to do the consortium debates, and, well, it's because of this, well, it's because of that. He can't give a straight answer, and Canadians are going to have a real time with that.

Jagmeet, on the other hand, was out there talking about housing policy, how to make housing work for people, how do we expand pharmacare and dental care. He's also sitting there, you know, showing that fighter side. As people are looking for who is going to best take on Donald Trump and protect the interests of Canadians, people are looking for both a bit of a doctoral thesis, but a lot more of that doctor of thuganomics

type of situation. It's what we saw in the Ontario election. People want to see somebody who is feisty and fighter and really gets it. It's why Wab Kanu, the NDP Premier in Manitoba, is doing so well. So we've got some really great candidates. We've got some really great hotspots. And also we've got a leader who's been battle tested. I'm really excited to see what he does.

All right, David, I want to come to you. When we go back to 2017, like Kim was talking about, when Jagmeet was elected leader of the NDP, lots of excitement, lots of optimism. From that early optimism, now embarking on his third election campaign, do you think Jagmeet has been a successful leader? Well, first off a real quick point you run in Nepean because it's got the best Costco in Ottawa and maybe Canada Let's let's get the facts

I don't know that. Mr. Kearney's ever been to a Costco. So i'm not uh, I I I wouldn't exactly throw that one out there Well, if he's gonna go i'm gonna give him some advice right now. Book your tire change well in advance because you're looking at June to get your winters off. Look, to answer the question, we have to go to the core, which is what is the point of the NDP? And that sounds facetious or flippant, but it's not. I mean, that is a serious, deep, fundamental question about what we expect from the party. Because if we're going to evaluate Jagmeet Singh and the NDP, we need to evaluate them on some criteria. If you're the liberals or the conservatives federally,

that criteria is typically, did you win? Did you become government? How long were you government? How did you leave your party at the end of the day? What did you accomplish while you're in power? That's not something we talk about for the NDP because they've never formed a federal government. We can talk about that in Manitoba and Alberta. We can talk about that in British Columbia. We don't talk about that federally.

So what is the point? Well, I would say reasonably, I might say the point of the NDP is to push policies when they have an opportunity that they think are going to be good for Canadians. On that measure, I think Jagmeet Singh has actually been quite successful. He didn't grow the party electorally in any significant way. It actually went down. But he was there to help get the country some pretty decent pandemic benefits, got some childcare, some dental care, some pharma care, anti-scab legislation, all very nice things. So big W in the win column. But he risks getting rolled electorally because he risks suffering from junior partneritis, which is something that Nick Clegg in the United Kingdom can tell you about, where you get forgotten at best after cooperating with the government, or you get no kudos for the wins, but you get all of the criticism for the losses. They said, well, you're just the same as the

government. You're part of this liberal NDP coalition, that nonsense from the Tories. But it was the liberals who really delivered on all these other things. But Singh was core, and the NDP was core to getting those policies in a minority situation. I think that's a big win for them. They deserve credit for that. And on those measures, Singh has been quite successful. But then we say, okay, but what about electorally? Well, then it's less successful. And we have to say, well, you know, pending some changes in the current outlook of the election, maybe that wasn't so successful. And so then how do we balance? Because if at the end

of the day, your strategy is, well, we want to wait around to be in the right place at the right time to influence policy. Well, you can do that. David Lewis did it in the 1970s with Pierre Trudeau. Ed Broadbent did it in the 1980s with Pierre Trudeau. Jack Layton did it in 2008 with Stephen Harper and global financial crisis benefits support for people and Singh did it with Justin Trudeau but it doesn't get you the keys to well wherever the Prime Minister is gonna end up living, Rideau College or some hotel room. But it is important though David. But it is important because when we look at dental care as an example, dental care was a program

that the Liberals had ran on, then took it out of their platform, then ran on it, then took it out of their platform. They had no interest in doing it. They had no interest in giving a damn about the interests of Canadians and how they were going to be taken care of. That wasn't their agenda. It was never their agenda. Child care is another example of that. This is the Liberal government and Liberal Party since the 90s. When I was a child, we're running on child care. Those kids then had kids, and their kids had kids,

and their kids sometimes had kids, and they still didn't have child care and are still having trouble with it. So the amount of bluster that we see out of liberals, because they think it's what the electorate wants out of a focus group is never what they deliver unless they are pushed and pushed like hell. And that is why every new Democrat will say very much, who are you in this for? Who do you want there fighting for you?

And that's when you want the new Democrats. And in a situation like we're in today, with an existential threat coming from the South, and our community is struggling, the fact that you cannot get a one-bedroom apartment anywhere in the country while doing full-time minimum wage is abhorrent of the state of situation. And if you think Mark Cardy is going to fix that for you, your kids, your grandkids, or anyone else in your community, I've got another thing coming because the shareholders have never wanted that. And that becomes the problem.

And that's why the New Democrats will always have a place. And this is what people are looking for. And when I look at our incumbents, when I look at our leader, when I look at what we're talking about, this is why it's so important. And David, you talked about Carney being a conservative. I wouldn't call him a progressive conservative because I haven't seen anything progressive out of him. But you know, at the end of the day, what people want in communities is making sure

that we're building those communities and that we've got somebody who can fight. And I'm not sure Mark Carney's cut out for it. Alright. And neither is Pierre Poliev. Alright, Satya, I want to come to you. The Supply and Confidence Agreement, of course, has made it very difficult for some Canadians to sort of separate the Liberals and the NDP. And I'm curious, do you think as a leader, Jagmeet Singh has been able to articulate a vision for the NDP that is separate and distinct from the Liberals? And what is that?

Well, a couple of things. I mean, first of all, history is strewn with the detritus of junior partners who got rolled over, shredded, left behind. It's not just a Jagmeet Singh, Justin Trudeau thing. You know, there are many, many examples, both at the provincial level and at the federal level, where the electorate, and I mean, I appreciate that Kim is an NDPer and a passionate articulate advocate for her leader.

That's great. But frankly, voters themselves will say, thanks for the dental care, thanks for the childcare. That's retrospective. The ballot question in front of us right now is the question on Trump and the question on, do they see Jagmeet Singh as Prime Ministerial material? Do they see the NDP as government material in this

particular campaign? Well the party's down to 7% so let's see. The other piece of it though that I want to circle back on that we haven't talked about and when David talks about what is the point of the NDP and and I would frame it as what is the relevance of the NDP the NDP through the 80s 90s early 2000s framed itself and styled itself as the party of the working class and what we've talked about how the liberals have eaten the NDP's lunch on progressive issues on expanding the social safety net The other place where the NDP has really seen its support base drift away, this time to the Conservatives, is among the working class, particularly among private sector union members.

When we do polling every year as we do around Labor Day, and we talk to union members members and we ask them, you know, what's the party, who's the leader who's standing up for the issues that you are most interested in and galvanized by, who's got your best interests at heart? Shockingly, for some, what we saw was a split evenly between the NDP and the conservatives among private sector union members. So when we think about that Oshawa vote, when we think about that working class vote among union members who are going to build, and we saw, I think, was it just yesterday, a union endorsement for Pierre Poirier, not for Jagmeet Singh.

Singh has succumbed to something that a lot of NDP or left leaders, both here and in the United States, have succumbed to, which is becoming a progressive party for urban people in cities, young people. And hey, the rent issue, very important. Affordability issues, very important. But if you are someone who is working class, lower education, living in an exurb or in a rural remote community doing heavy lifting and trades work, you're more likely these days to be looking at the conservatives as an alternative than the NDP.

That is different from what we saw from the days of Ed Broadbent. All right, Kim, I'm going to get you to respond, but I am going to chat with you. Off camera, we were talking a little fashion and I thought this might be an interesting question too when we're talking about the working class. You know, Jagmeet Singh wears a Rolex, impeccably tailored suits.

Does this also work against him when it comes to winning over working class voters? Look, I grew up as a poor kid in rural southern Ontario, border kid. My mom made furnaces. Everybody I knew had a thing that they wanted to have when they made it. Maybe it was a watch, maybe it was a car, maybe it was whatever. And just because you're from a lower class background or even a rural community doesn't mean

you can't want nice things. That's kind of the most ridiculous thing. And I love that Canada Proud put that out there. That was fun. But that was because exactly what Satchar was just saying about those blue versus orange communities. And these are riding by riding across the North, the Kitchener Waterloo to Windsor Corridor, parts of the prairies, where the Liber liberals just aren't a factor at all.

I mean, they will play a distant third into most of those communities. These are places like Sault Ste. Marie and the knock-em-down-drag-em-outs. And that's what we saw in Ontario. We see Canada wide. And this is why it baffles pollsters at how could Bonnie Cromby be at 30 points and not win because her efficiency, the liberal party brand, doesn't play in the North, doesn't play in Kitchener,

Waterloo, to Windsor. And so we're having these fights, these neighborhood by neighborhood battles, street by street. Who is there for you? I will also say really proudly that the steelworkers are a big endorsement and surrounded Jigmeet in Hamilton just the other day because these are the folks who are most impacted by Tara Force. The steelworkers are the most impacted and they are absolutely in lockstep with Jigmeet and the New Democrats.

QP National also just endorsed Jigmeet yesterday. So it is a matter of- Yes, public employees and government union workers are solidly indicted. And the steelworkers and public unions, people who actually want to build our communities. And you're going to see more and more of that over the course of the coming days. People see who Jigmeet is. They know why he's doing this. They know why new Democrats are doing this

across the country. We've got extraordinary, utterly fabulous incumbents and new potential MPs who have solid track records in their community as community builders. And they're running and they're knocking on doors and they're not worrying about what's happening on X or whatever Elon's calling it this week which by the way Brookfield under Mark Carney invested heavily in but you know they're out there and they're doing their thing and they're knocking on doors and they're getting it done.

Alright I'm gonna point our viewers and you to our screen I'm gonna read a quote from the Walrus from last week. It reads, after this election, regardless of the outcome, Singh will probably face a leadership challenge. Even if he hangs on, he'll still be brought down by a familiar nuisance. Pretty much since the NDP's founding in 1961, the party's chief internal struggle has been the age-old question of whether it should tack to the centre or the left, whether it should try to beat the Liberals at their own game or remain faithful to its organized labour and prairie populist origins. David, a lot can change quickly in a campaign as we know, but if things remain where they

are today, what path do you think the NDP should take? Well, I'll do a disclosure here off the top as the country's housebroken socialist in the mainstream. That's my my tendency. You know, they let me in the rooms because I'm a tall white guy with a PhD and I don't ruffle too many, too many feathers. It's nice to be that kind of insidious radical, but I think the NDP should be radical. I think they should go all in on unabashed, unapologetic, nation-building, class politics. I think there's nothing more important than class politics. It's one of the markers that cuts across all these other cleavages, all these other markers.

It's the one thing that can potentially unite millions of Canadians. It takes work though. You've got to build that class consciousness. You've got to build from the grassroots in communities and in church basements and at the union table, at campus clubs, online and offline. You've got to really, really build that. But expressly class politics above all.

And also, I think the party should decentralize a little bit. The NDP talks a lot about grassroots, and the grassroots is great, but we know that there's a strong presence of experts, of professionals at the table who drive the party, that often the constituencies are actually kind of diminished or muted compared to the central folks. Go more all-in on the grassroots. Go in on class politics unabashedly. So roll up your

sleeves. Do the Bernie Sanders playbook a little bit and reclaim that ground from from Tories and liberals who are you know, cosplaying class politics for workers. Go be what Tommy Douglas was. And maybe even use the word socialist if you're feeling feisty. Jagmeet Singh won't use it, but I'd like to see an NDP leader use it again like they did back in the 60s and 70s. Shachi, Trump voters and right-wing populists say things like the game is rigged, the system is unfair and unequal, and the elites are winning at everything else's, at everyone else's expenses.

Progressives have been saying this forever as well. Is there any reason why the progressive left can't tap into these same feelings and frustrations? I mean, it's interesting because the question is who identifies as progressive left? Who identifies as socialist? Who identifies, who sees themselves in the modern federal NDP? That's the question. Do voters see themselves as a leader who understands their interests? And of course Kim is going to say yes, but I have to bring you back to the fact that at least at this stage in the campaign, on this day of the campaign, there's only about 7% support nationally for the party, which is down to the territory where it was

in the days of Alexa McDonough and Audrey McLaughlin in the era of an old pizza pie parliament when it was NDP reform, progressive, conservative, liberal and block. There's, there's, I think more runway at this stage and at this era for the NDP, for all of the reasons that David has laid out. And yet we, we never saw Jagmeet Singh really convert. And I think it's because not enough, clearly not enough voters saw or identified themselves with the party under his leadership, saw or identified themselves with the party under his leadership, saw or identified themselves with him. And until that changes either through his own approach, through party policies, or through just a sense that yes, the NDP is there for me, for my household, given my concerns, given all the other choices I have as a voter,

that will continue to be a problem, especially in a really tight five-week campaign, which when you take into account advanced polling is even shorter than five weeks, that has already narrowed really down to two choices. Where and how and when to sing and the NDP sort of elbow their way through and create space. Maybe that happens later in the campaign, maybe it happens on the campaign trail, maybe it happens after a debate,

but that debate is coming pretty late in the campaign. So that is the task, the devoir for Jagmeet Singh and the NDP with what little time he has to achieve it. Time will tell. We're unfortunately going to have to leave it there, Shachie, David, Kim. Thank you so much for your insights. Really, really good to see you all.

Thank you. Excited to see how Jagmeet becomes the new Jack Layton.