New NDP leader Jagmeet Singh can take the party – and politics – in a new direction, said Nanaimo’s member of Parliament.
Singh was chosen leader of the federal New Democrats on Sunday on the first ballot of the leadership race. The Ontario member of provincial parliament had been endorsed by Nanaimo-Ladysmith MP Sheila Malcolmson.
“I was really impressed with the way that Jagmeet Singh’s campaign was incorporating talking about politics in a different way than we sometimes have,” Malcolmson said.
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She said she would have been satisfied with any of the four candidates for leadership – Charlie Angus, Niki Ashton and Guy Caron were the others in the race – but she made the decision to support Singh after he visited Nanaimo last month.
“I just felt a charge in the room where people responded, they were engaged, they weren’t being talked at,” she said. “It was a way of talking about our party and about our country that inspired and united and made people want to be involved.”
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Malcolmson said Singh ran a campaign based around a positive vision and said the leader struck the right balance. He wasn’t “overly focused on the nuts and bolts of policy” but kept party priorities at the forefront, she said. She liked his commitment to climate change action and promises regarding democratic reform, income equality and indigenous reconciliation.
Singh hasn’t yet publicly decided whether he will try to seek a seat in the House of Commons between now and the 2019 federal election. Malcolmson said previous leader Tom Mulcair has been a strong voice in Parliament for years, but that wasn’t enough to help the party win an election in 2015.
“The performance in the House in question period is one of the important parts of the leader’s job – it’s not the only one…” she said. “I would be really happy if [Singh] spends a good chunk of his time engaging volunteers, inspiring people to get involved, inspiring people to run as candidates in the next election, which is just two years away, and to do fundraising for the party.”
Malcolmson said she’s proud that the first non-white leader of a major political party in Canada is a New Democrat.
“That’s a real progression in the party and a very exciting part about [Sunday’s] vote,” she said. “I am seeing from the reaction on social media that this is an extremely important turning point for our country and for young people, especially.”
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