by Maurice Y. Michaud (he/him)
Let’s not be coy about it. Following its spectacular rise to official opposition status in 2011, it’s been downhill ever since for the NDP. As for the Green Party during that same time period, it is true that it finally entered Parliament in 2011; however, its progress has been slow. Internal fighting and the defection of Jenica Atwin to the Liberals prior to the 2021 election have put a damper on any significant advancement. For its part, the Bloc Québécois only began recovering in 2019 from its 2011 near-elimination by the NDP. However, by 2025, it had not returned to its pre-2011 stature, when it used to hold the most seats in Québec.
By Christmas 2024, with Parliament paralyzed and only months before a general election was to be called, polls indicated that the Conservatives were heading to forming a massive majority government. Some of those polls also pointed to the possibility of the Bloc becoming the official opposition for a second time, and the NDP winning a few more seats than the incumbent Liberals. Such was the fatigue of the electorate with Justin Trudeau. But the re-election of Mister Tariff Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States and the resignation of Trudeau in the early days of 2025 changed everything. The Liberals pulled the carpet from under the feet of the Conservatives, and the smaller opposition parties got squeezed out in the most binary general election in Canadian history since 1958.
The NDP’s situation
In 2015, with many Canadians fed up with a decade of those new Conservatives in power, they first took a look at the party claiming to be the government in waiting. Some polls at the start of the election campaign even suggested the country might be on the verge of electing its first NDP government, albeit a weak minority one. But those who ever doubted the impact an election campaign could have no longer have any doubts after 2015.
Indeed, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair was outflanked on his left by Liberal leader Justin Trudeau. Convinced that his party should not be perceived as wasteful, Mulcair repositioned it toward the centre on economic issues, while Trudeau asserted that he wasn’t afraid of a budget deficit if it meant giving Canadians a boost. But above all, in its categorical desire to oust the Conservatives from power, the electorate turned to a familiar entity — the Liberal Party — rather than one that had never held the reins of power federally. From 103 seats following the 2011 general election, the NDP found itself as the second opposition group with only 44 seats, which led to Mulcair being shown the door as leader.
The party chose Jagmeet Singh as its leader, the first visible minority person to lead a major federal party, as well as the first of the Sikh faith. The four core focuses of his leaderhip campaign were inequality, climate change, reconciliation with indigenous peoples, and electoral reform. He also supported decriminalizing personal possession of all narcotics and instead promoting harm reduction for users.
Whether it was because of these positions or his knack for proposing ideas that encroached on provincial jurisdictions (or a combination of both), Singh brought his party further down than Mulcair.
Although the 2025 general election was far from ordinary, the NDP knew the scenario all too well.
The Greens’ situation
The Bloc’s situation
The net effect of binary polarization in 2025
Soft NDP voters have long been known to shift to the Liberals when they sense a significant rise of the Conservatives. But while that definitely happened in 2025, the Conservatives were the net beneficiary in terms of seats, just like in 2011. In fact, the Conservatives tasted every other party’s lunch! As usual, the Liberals and Conservatives swapped some seats, but the latter were more successful by taking eight more from the former. So the way the Liberals strengthen their minority to only three seats shy of a majority was by eating more of the BQ’s lunch than the NPD’s, bringing Chantal Hébert’s
to assert on election night that the Liberals owed their achievment in good part to Québec. In the end, the Liberals won 16 seats from oppositions other than the Conservatives, while the Conservatives got 12 from oppositions other the the Liberals.
 Gains by Liberal Party of Canada ⇒ 26 |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| 10 | 9 | 7 | 0 |
| AB – Calgary Confederation BC – Kelowna BC – South Surrey—White Rock MB – Winnipeg West NS – Cumberland—Colchester NS – South Shore—St. Margarets ON – Bay of Quinte ON – Carleton ON – Peterborough SK – Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River |
QC – Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou QC – Beauport—Limoilou QC – Rivière-des-Mille-Îles QC – La Prairie—Atateken QC – Longueuil—Saint-Hubert QC – Mont-Saint-Bruno—L'Acadie QC – Terrebonne QC – Thérèse-De Blainville QC – Trois-Rivières |
BC – Burnaby Central BC – Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke BC – New Westminster—Burnaby—Maillardville BC – Port Moody—Coquitlam BC – Victoria MB – Churchill—Keewatinook Aski ON – Hamilton Centre |
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| Gains by Conservative Party of Canada ⇒ 30 |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| 18 | 1 | 10 | 1 |
| AB – Calgary Skyview BC – Cloverdale—Langley City ON – Kitchener South—Hespeler BC – Richmond Centre—Marpole NL – Terra Nova—The Peninsulas NL – Long Range Mountains ON – Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill ON – Brampton West ON – Cambridge ON – Hamilton East—Stoney Creek ON – Markham—Unionville ON – Newmarket—Aurora ON – Niagara South ON – Sudbury East—Manitoulin—Nickel Belt ON – Richmond Hill South ON – Vaughan—Woodbridge ON – Windsor—Tecumseh—Lakeshore ON – York Centre |
QC – Montmorency—Charlevoix |
AB – Edmonton Griesbach BC – Cowichan—Malahat—Langford BC – Nanaimo—Ladysmith BC – North Island—Powell River BC – Skeena—Bulkley Valley BC – Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay MB – Elmwood—Transcona ON – London—Fanshawe ON – Kapuskasing—Timmins—Mushkegowuk ON – Windsor West |
ON – Kitchener Centre |
| Gains by Bloc Québécois ⇒ 1 |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| QC – Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj |
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So, in terms of seats, the Conservatives ate the NDP’s lunch, while the Liberals feasted on the Bloc’s.
But in terms of votes, that was another story.
