The bus is orange. The seats are carpeted. And the battle cry for the partisans on board is borrowed from the late Jack Layton: “Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done.”
Layton led the NDP to its best-ever election result in 2011, when the party won 100 seats and, for the first and only time, became the official opposition.
Jagmeet Singh, by contrast, is fighting to keep official party status.
A Global News seat projection model, based on an aggregate of polling done up to March 24, indicates the NDP may win just three seats.
To be recognized as an official party in the House of Commons — and qualify for more research funding and question period slots — a party must win 12 seats. The NDP won 24 in 2021.
Global News travelled with Singh the first week of the federal campaign and witnessed a leader struggling to attract large crowds, travelling at a slower pace than his rivals, and facing repeated questions about his political future.
“I’m running in this election to fight for you, not the billionaires,” Singh said time after time at news conferences and in social media videos recorded from the bus.
But the NDP leader is fighting for his own political survival, even as he insists he’s still running to become the next prime minister.
The Global News seat projection model has Liberal candidate Wade Chang defeating Singh himself in the British Columbia riding of Burnaby Central.
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Singh launched his third election campaign in Ottawa, before driving to Montreal for an event that provided a preview for much of the week; a few dozen volunteers packed inside a small office.
While his campaign has a plane, it didn’t fly until seven days in.
Singh’s team chose not to wrap it in party branding, explaining there were “better uses” for the funds. The NDP says it will spend the maximum amount allowed under the Elections Canada limit, which was $30 million in 2021, and that it is entering the campaign with “record-breaking momentum.”
But on the ground, travelling with the campaign, that “momentum” appeared modest, with no major rallies in the first week. Singh spent the bulk of day two of the campaign on Highway 401 — travelling six hours by bus between Montreal and Toronto.
The next day, while in Canada’s largest metropolis, he made no new policy announcements, despite highlighting the housing crisis.
When Singh’s campaign arrived in Hamilton — a city which prides itself on being known as Canada’s Steeltown — the NDP leader faced questions about whether he “missed the moment” by not making tariff-specific policy proposals or visiting a factory floor.
Party staff told journalists they expected media coverage to focus on Singh’s economic policies and did not think tariffs would dominate so much of the discussion.
Every journalist on board reported on the tariff threat.
The following day, Singh went to London, Ont., where his party holds one seat, but cut that visit short to head to Windsor, the heart of Canada’s automotive sector, to respond to Trump’s tariffs on vehicles made outside the U.S.
The pivot seemed to be a rare high point for a campaign team that appeared exasperated at times by daily questions surrounding the party’s plummeting support.
Recent Ipsos polling done exclusively for Global News has shown voters are turning increasingly to Liberal Leader Mark Carney to steer Canada through the trade war with the U.S.
The Conservatives are also gaining ground with the NDP’s traditional blue-collar base, and are receiving private sector union endorsements.
As the New Democrats face bleak poll numbers, Singh’s team tried to put on a brave face during week one, huddling most nights for a closing pep talk.
The optimism extended to a small campaign event in local candidate Monique Taylor’s office in the bellwether riding of Hamilton-Mountain, where the NDP remains a distant third behind the Liberals and Conservatives.
A few kilometers away that same night, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre held a rally that drew thousands of supporters.
After the NDP’s campaign event, Taylor toured Singh’s bus, where the leader and political staffers strategized at the back, and journalists sat, observed, and tried to meet deadlines near the front.
Before stepping off, Taylor, who had quit as an Ontario MPP with the hope of joining the federal NDP caucus, turned and reminded Singh and his team about Layton’s hopefulness; “Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done.”
— With files from David Akin
