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The futility of Singh’s situation makes it all the sadder to see him defending Quebec’s right to cleanse its civil service of teachers, police officers, Crown attorneys and other people in positions of authority who wear hijabs or turbans — not just or even mainly because he wears a turban, but because it can only be damaging the party’s prospects elsewhere in the country. The NDP might well be a busted flush under any leader at this point, but if there’s any campaign where a third party ought to be able to seize some momentum and scare the pants off the Big Two, it’s the impossibly dreary, cynical affair going on right now. It’s awfully depressing to see the traditional third party being just as cynical.

Last week, Thomas Mulcair accused Singh of having “totally abandoned” the NDP’s position on defending minority rights. That’s certainly one way to look at it. But the other way is that Singh is simply taking the Sherbrooke Declaration — the 2005 document that laid the groundwork for the party’s breakthrough in Quebec — to its logical, asymmetrical-federalist conclusions.

“The people of Quebec, especially since the Quiet Revolution, have expressed a clear desire to ‘vivre ensemble’ and build a social and political project based on solidarity,” the declaration reads. “The construction of a modern state and a social blueprint for Quebecers has centred around the Quebec state. We commend Quebecers for establishing institutions allowing them to develop differently in linguistic, social, cultural and economic terms.”