“Social programs are something people in the suburbs feel are neglected,” says Jagmeet Singh, an Ontario MPP representing a suburban riding in Brampton, just outside Toronto.



New Democrats in British Colombia regularly win seats in diverse, working class suburban areas. But Singh, rumoured to be mulling a bid for Federal NDP leader, is the rare social democrat who’s been able to win a similar Ontario riding.



“Our policies resonated because people were struggling,” says Singh. “They have some of the lowest funding for social programs. They’ve been specifically marginalized and the people who live there are already marginalized people.”



In an interview, Singh says many suburban voters don’t believe anyone’s listening. So his campaign started by tuning-in to local concerns.



He heard common refrains whether the voter’s home language was Punjabi, Hindi, Portuguese, Italian or English. Concerned about the economic struggles of everyday life – jobs, services, paying the bills.



Rising car insurance rates came up over and over again. With poor transit and no all-day commuter train service to Toronto, rising insurance costs were a growing slice from the paycheques of Brampton’s car-dependant voters. It was an issue his New Democrats had already worked on.



“That brought together everyone,” says Singh. “It’s wasn’t like we needed an entirely new message. We just needed to organize differently.” Singh’s campaign recruited young organizers who could listen and speak to Brampton’s diverse communities – and made a suburban break-through in Ontario’s 2011 election.



Listening and reaching diverse voters on their common economic issues seems simple – something any reasonable politician would do. But it needs a politician who isn’t party to captured status quo interests. And for many, that’s a barrier.



In the United States we’ve witnessed decades of political capture – both Democrats and Republicans – by Wall Street and other status quo interests. In Britain, Thatcherite Conservatives and Blairite Labour provided a bi-partite defence of wealthy interests.



And now in Canada, Trudeau steams ahead into the heart of the same darkness. Possible privatization of critical public assets. An infrastructure plan that embeds “revenue streams” to be pipelined up to global investors. Private pay-for-play fundraising soirées in the mansions of corporate big wigs. Donations to the Trudeau Foundation from Chinese billionaires.



Maybe it’s not political capture. Maybe it’s sweet surrender.



Trump and Brexit diverted the economic frustrations of working class voters into a divisive conservative nationalism. And in the name of anti-elitism, the elites won. It’s an approach being mimicked in the Conservative leadership race.



Is Singh’s plan of listening and responding a progressive and constructive strategy to confront it?



“Suburban working class people and urban working class people have everything in common. White people and racialized people have everything in common,” says Singh.



He presents his method to protect the common good from corrosive bigotry like sexism and racism: name it, address it, and “work on the culture that allows it to exist.”



And that work brings Singh back to his social democratic ideas. Address economic insecurity. Build common social programs, services and spaces where people meet “and have fun.”



We can’t know if a social democratic vision would have drawn away enough anti-system voters to prevent Trump’s revolt for the billionaires. But sugar coating over a captured Democratic party sure didn’t.



- Tom Parkin is a former NDP staffer and social democrat media commentator