LILLEY: Poilievre a threat to Jagmeet Singh’s NDP

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I noticed an attention-grabbing headline the opposite day describing how the federal NDP has a plan to cease Pierre Poilievre from stealing the votes of union staff. The NDP ought to be fearful as a result of Poilievre’s presence as Conservative chief might harm the New Democrats in additional methods than one.

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Not solely is Poilievre pitching to blue collar staff, the NDP has to fret concerning the Liberals making an attempt to steal, or “borrow” their voters to cease a Poilievre Conservative authorities. It occurs each election when the Conservatives are an actual menace, the pitch is available in that if “progressive voters” don’t unify behind the Liberals, the Conservative barbarians will come storming over the hills.

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The tactic labored nicely for Justin Trudeau within the 2019 election when the Liberals went from a majority to a minority. It didn’t work as nicely within the 2021 vote nevertheless it’s more likely to come again the following time we head to the polls.

The primary menace to the NDP although may be the concept that blue collar, typically unionized staff, see extra in what the Conservatives have on supply that what the NDP places ahead. At this level, the NDP is dismissing that concept as being an actual menace.

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“I do know the Conservatives will need to attempt to gown up in blue collar, however they’ve actually all the time been on the facet of huge, rich companies. In order that’s the distinction that we’re going to attract and what we’re going to remind individuals of,” NDP Chief Jagmeet Singh’s chief of employees Jennifer Howard told the Toronto Star last week.

That assertion ignores historical past each current and distant.

The blue celebration’s historical past with blue collar voters

It was Sir John A. Macdonald who truly launched and handed the invoice to permit staff to unionize following a strike by print staff in Toronto. The strike and transfer to permit the unions had been opposed by George Brown, the founding father of the Liberal Celebration of Canada and the writer of The Globe and Mail.

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It was additionally a Conservative who established Labour Day in Canada when Prime Minister John Thompson issued a proclamation in July 1894. There have been loads of examples since the place conservative events have executed higher for staff than Liberals or New Democrats.

Possibly Howard missed this, however Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives beneath Doug Ford simply received a second, and larger majority, whereas taking the endorsements of a number of commerce unions. Ontario’s New Democrats misplaced 9 seats between the 2018 and 2022 elections in addition to roughly 800,000 votes.

Not all of these can be blue collar staff who shifted their vote however they did lose key ridings. Underneath a employee pleasant however nonetheless very conservative labour coverage led by Ford’s labour minister Monte McNaughton, the PC’s have shifted loyalty and votes.

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Ford’s PCs received in NDP strongholds like Windsor, Hamilton, Thunder Bay and Timmins.

Poilievre isn’t the identical man as Ford, but when he can join with blue collar staff like Ford did, it may very well be a recreation changer politically. When he speaks of creating it simpler for staff to get forward, to purchase a house, to place meals on the desk, to permit key infrastructure initiatives to go forward, Poilievre is talking on to working class individuals.

The federal NDP, like their Ontario counterparts, have develop into the celebration of no, the celebration that doesn’t imagine in constructing the infrastructure initiatives that so many blue collar, unionized staff depend on. They’ve develop into the celebration of public sector unions – federal bureaucrats, lecturers, well being staff however not expert trades staff.

If Poilievre can swing these staff, or sufficient of them, to his facet whereas the Liberals persuade the general public sector staff and social justice warriors to vote crimson to cease Poilievre, the NDP may very well be decimated.

How the combat between Poilievre and Trudeau would play out stays to be seen.