TORONTO—No, it will not. Despite its current malaise, the New Democratic Party is too thoroughly embedded in the fabric of Canada’s political culture to unravel completely.
The party’s antecedents run back to the turn of the 20th century, when Labour and socialist parties sprung up across urban English Canada and rural Saskatchewan. Pooling their efforts in 1932 to form the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), the NDP’s forerunner, they rejected the strategy of organized labour in the United States to “elect your friends”—usually Democrats—and “defeat your enemies”—generally Republicans.
Patterned on the model of Britain’s Labour party, the CCF garnered substantial support among British immigrants steeped in the old country’s politics. Many CCF leaders were either British-born or British-educated: J.S. Woodsworth, M.J. Coldwell, David Lewis, Saskatchewan’s Tommy Douglas, Manitoba’s S.J. Farmer, British Columbia’s Ernest and Harold Winch, Ontario’s Samuel Lawrence, and Alberta’s Floyd Johnson. Because of its British hue, a socialist party like the CCF was culturally viable in Canada in a way it was not in the U.S., where socialism was dismissed as un-American.
Like the CCF, the nascent NDP aspired to displace the Liberals as British Labour had done to become the alternative to Conservatives in a two-party parliamentary system.
That dream now seems dead.
However, becoming the left-wing alternative to a right-wing Conservative party did pan out in several provinces; the NDP has formed governments in six provinces and one territory. Currently, the party governs British Columbia and Manitoba, whose combined population is 7 million, while Liberal governments hold sway only in Newfoundland and New Brunswick, with a combined population of 1 million.
At the federal level, the party has contested 21 elections since its formation in 1961. Its average or mean vote has been 16 per cent. Every election is unique, but what happened in the April 28, 2025, election conforms to a cyclical pattern in NDP support. It has oscillated between its recent low of six per cent and a high of 20 per cent, except for the fluky 2011 election when the party swept most of Quebec to give it 31 per cent of the national vote. In the three elections prior to this year, the NDP’s vote averaged 18 per cent. Expect it to be closer to that level in the next election, a reminder that while history never repeats itself, it does often rhyme. Political scientists often term this pattern ‘path dependency:’ past events significantly influence future outcomes even if the past seems no longer relevant.
In the formation of the NDP—an alliance of the CCF and the Canadian Labour Congress—unions played a major role and were guaranteed representation at conventions. Union representatives constituted more than one third of the delegates at the party’s founding convention, and many other unionists attended as delegates of CCF constituency clubs. But the party and the labour movement have become increasingly detached; the current NDP constitution no longer guarantees union representation, and limits union delegates at conventions to 300.
The party and the labour movement have refashioned themselves. The NDP expanded the CCF’s pleas to workers and farmers, explicitly appealling also to “liberally minded individuals.” It continues to champion labour interests, but it also became the first party to embrace identity politics and adopt the language of intersectionality, interconnecting race, class, and gender. Rosemary Brown’s performance at the 1975 NDP leadership convention was an early indicator; the runner-up Black Jamaican immigrant garnered 40 per cent of the vote.
Organized labour has evolved, as well. At first it represented private sector workers, but now public sector employees dominate. Many are upper middle class. Former stalwart unions who supported the party, like the autoworkers, have endorsed Liberal leaders. In Ontario, many trades unions have lined up behind Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives. As the electorate has moved to the right on a variety of social and economic issues, the NDP brand has suffered.
But the pendulum of politics constantly swings. The currently leaderless party will select a new captain by next spring. Who qualify as early potential contenders? I see three: Alberta MP Heather McPherson, the party’s foreign affairs critic; former B.C. MP Nathan Cullen; and Avi Lewis, son of former Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis and grandson of former federal leader David Lewis.
Like the Conservatives and unlike the Liberals, ideology plays a prominent role in the NDP. It has always had a more radical group driven by youth and campus activists who consider electoral politics a limited force. They put stock in extra-parliamentary organizing, political education, and direct action. They undid Tom Mulcair and favoured Jagmeet Singh as his successor. My hunch: they’ll go for Lewis who is not in the party mainstream as were his forebears.
Hey, but I’m wrong most of the time.
Nelson Wiseman is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Toronto.
The Hill Times