HAMILTON, ONT. — An incumbent New Democrat says he hopes his party will begin the process of “soul searching” from within about “who who are” once the federal election ends.
“In elections, results matter,” said Matthew Green, seated in his Hamilton campaign office.
“At a time when we could have been capturing the public’s attention about what a more caring, compelling future of the country was, we didn’t.”
The incumbent for Hamilton Centre says he’s not interested in assigning blame, and projects confidence that the New Democrats, which went into the campaign with 24 seats, will retain party status, despite public opinion polls suggesting otherwise.
Those same surveys show Liberal Leader Mark Carney could be headed for a majority — a dramatic reversal of fortunes for a party that had spent the past 18-months trailing the Conservatives, dragged down by the unpopularity of former prime minister Justin Trudeau.
Carney’s arrival, which coincided with U.S. President Trump launching a trade war with Canada and aspiring to annex the country, has led to a Liberal resurgence, including across NDP-held ridings like Green’s in Hamilton Centre.
With mere days to go until the election concludes next Monday, Green sat down for a wide-ranging interview with National Post about his own re-election bid, as well as what the day after the election may bring for New Democrats.
“What I’m hoping for is, you know, some soul searching within our party about who we are,” Green said.
For him, what that means is NDP members getting down to the work of defining the party’s values, principles and identity, separate from the question of who leads them.
Jagmeet Singh has been at the helm since 2017. This race marks his third federal election.
His first, in 2019, saw the party lose 15 seats.
Green said he supports Singh and knows him to be a man of integrity, which he said he demonstrated throughout the campaign. The “spark” he showed during last week’s English and French-language debates also earned him some respect, Green added.
At the same time, he says his message to New Democrats has been to stop waiting for some “superhero” to come and save them.
While the Conservatives poured millions into targeting Singh for entering into a supply-and-confidence agreement with the Liberals, Green describes staying in that deal as an “ethical decision,” both to prevent Poilievre from winning what then looked to be a super-majority by not triggering an election, as well as delivering national dental care, which the Liberals agreed to introduce as part of the New Democrats’ terms.
But getting this message across to voters is “impossible,” he said. “People don’t get it.”
Asked what risk New Democrats run, should they fail to do the inner work he believes is required post-election, Green paused for a moment.
“It feels like a funny question, given where we’re at now,” he says. “I’m not sure how much worse things can get for us in the moment, right?”
Green, who grew up in Hamilton, was first elected to the solidly NDP riding back in 2019. It has been orange since 2004, reflecting the city’s deep roots within the labour movement and steel manufacturing, earing it the reputation of a gritty city marked with factories, embodied by the nickname “Steeltown.”
But Hamilton is changing. More people from Toronto now call the city home, pushed out of the provincial capital by skyrocketing home prices, which are on the rise in Hamilton, too.
Building back the NDP’s connection to the working class is a must, says Green.
“The risk of not pivoting and soul-searching would, in my estimation, be absolutely the beginning to the end of the party. We cannot continue on this path, recognizing where we’re at right now,” he said.
“So no matter what happens on the 28th, we need to rebuild a membership-driven, internally democratic, grassroots coalition, labour-centred party for the working class in order to recapture people who we’ve lost to right-wing populism or to political estrangement, or the absolute despair of having to vote, hold their nose and vote Liberal, one more time.”
The latter is Green’s biggest challenge at the moment.
Polling aggregator 338canada.com suggests him to be locked in a near dead-heat against his Liberal rival, Aslam Rana, who became the party’s candidate back in February.
Rana’s campaign declined an interview request.
Strategic voting has long been a problem for New Democrats, who are preparing to watch as their supporters and other progressives migrate to the Liberals in order to keep the Conservatives out.
Green blames the Liberals for stoking fear about wasting left-leaning votes, and he is not necessarily wrong.
Carney is spending his final days campaigning by asking voters who have supported other parties in the past to rally behind the Liberals, to deliver what he calls a “strong mandate” needed to face Trump.
Back in his campaign office, Green talks to a group of about 15 volunteers about to go door knocking. He walks them through what to say if voters want to talk about strategic voting.
It’s a conversation, he acknowledges afterwards, that he is having more of than he would like.
Green’s advice to volunteers is for them to tell voters that strategic voting only matters in races where Conservative support is strong, which is not the case in Hamilton Centre.
“We’re going to win this on the ground game,” he tells the group. He says their job today is to find supporters and speak to those who are still undecided.
He reminds them that it is a local campaign and to take their time at the doors.
For one young man assembled in the office, he sees another reason to hope.
“People believe in the Leafs. They can believe in us.”
National Post
staylor@postmedia.com
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