“It’s kind of assumed Quebec MPs are dead politicians walking, so they don’t have any real influence anymore,” says an NDP source. “The party is anticipating a wipeout — zero to five seats in the next election.” --- ---

The week of March 12 began very well for NDP leader Jagmeet Singh. In Quebec, home to the the NDP’s largest concentration of seats, Singh was enjoying a bit of media-fuelled good cheer, a result of Singh’s appearance on Tout le monde en parle. He looked good, spoke well and otherwise endeared himself to the audience and hosts of the much-watched talk show — a trifecta not often attained by politicians appearing on its dais.

Meanwhile, Singh’s chief political foe, Justin Trudeau, was still suffering the hangover wrought by his recent disastrous trip to India. To recap: Trudeau punctuated his traipse across India, hands firmly namasté’d throughout, by sparking an international incident. The Canadian delegation brought a Sikh separatist and convicted attempted murderer to a reception with Indian dignitaries. Trudeau’s attempt at a typically Trudeaupian postcard in India had gone horribly awry, becoming an embarrassing political liability.

And then things changed rather brutally. On March 13, the Globe and Mail reported that Singh had in 2015 taken part in a rally honouring Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the Sikh separatist leader/martyr who espoused violence and died in a hail of bullets in 1984. The story, reported by the Globe’s Robert Fife and Steven Chase, halted any semblance of Singh’s orchestrated charm campaign and put the leader on the defensive.

In short, the story cut the NDP off at the knees at exactly the moment when the party’s leader stood to most benefit from Justin Trudeau’s buffoonery and utter lack of diplomatic tact with an important ally and trading partner. I’d never dream of suggesting this was a Liberal leak to Canada’s newspaper of record; after all, the video of Singh at the rally was posted to Facebook and YouTube, available to anyone with an internet connection.

Suffice to say, though, that the ensuing Globe story was manna from heaven for the Liberals, in that it took the attention from the roving disaster of Trudeau’s India excursion and smacked away the halo hovering over Singh’s head since he became the NDP leader in the spring of 2017.

For the last few weeks, Trudeau has trudged along, bruised but not nearly the casualty he might have been had the India stuff been allowed to fester. Meanwhile, thanks in large part to the fallout from the Globe and the ensuing National Post stories, Singh’s misery has only just begun — particularly in Quebec.

On the morning the Globe story broke, I spoke with Pierre Nantel, one of the more prominent members of the NDP’s Quebec caucus. Nantel was a vocal critic of Singh’s election as leader; last September, he penned an open letter castigating the leader for suggesting, as Singh did at the time, that an NDP government would consider using federal resources to fight Quebec’s religious neutrality bill.

Nantel, who hadn’t yet read the Globe piece when I spoke to him, had since softened his stance on Singh. “I would say that Jagmeet understands Quebec better and better,” Nantel told me.

The Globe story blew this talking point out of the water, in large part because Singh’s apparent dalliance with Sikh separatists plays worst in Quebec, where politics and religiosity don’t mix well. It has also underscored the party’s severe structural shortcomings in the province. Riding assistants in Quebec have already felt the electoral headwinds and are leaving the party in droves, according to NDP sources over the last two weeks.

Several high-profile NDP MPs, including party whip Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, are well on her way out the door. (François Soucy, Boutin-Sweet’s well-regarded assistant, recently decamped for municipal politics.) The NDP’s Quebec caucus was by far the noisiest in condemning Singh. Yet at the offices of both the leader and the party whip, where few notable warm Quebecois bodies remain, the criticism has fallen on deaf ears.

“It’s kind of assumed Quebec MPs are dead politicians walking, so they don’t have any real influence anymore,” says an NDP source. “The party is anticipating a wipeout — zero to five seats in the next election.”

Trudeau’s India woes continue, notably stemming from his government’s decision to float the rumour that Atwal was an Indian government plant designed to undermine Canada. It’s patently absurd, the stuff of conspiracy theories, and it shows the desperation on the part of the Liberals to get from under the heap of self-inflicted bad news.

But these are own goals. Thanks to a well-timed story about Singh, at least one external threat has been neutered. Singh might be NDP leader; unfortunately for him, he has better served as Liberal scapegoat as of late.

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