NDP Leader Singh carries strategic B.C. campaign swing to Vancouver
Credit to Author: Derrick Penner| Date: Tue, 01 Oct 2019 01:20:10 +0000
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh carried on a concentrated week of campaigning in B.C. with a stop in Vancouver to make a platform promise of establishing universal child care by 2030.
“That’s our vision,” Singh said in unveiling a commitment to spend $10 billion over four years to create 500,000 new affordable child-care spaces on the way to hitting the goal of universality within 11 years.
Singh said his federal proposal would build off B.C.’s $10-a-day daycare pilot project, and made the announcement at the Hastings Park Child Care Centre, one of B.C.’s sites running that pilot project.
“Ten dollars a day changes people’s lives,” Singh said of the plan, which he counted as an element of “telling young people they can count on us (and) we have your backs.”
Vancouver daycare advocate Sharon Gregson was on hand because Singh was making an announcement that “has to push the other parties to know that child care is a serious issue.”
For Singh, Monday’s stop was part of a strategic swing through the province’s southwestern corner where the NDP holds strength but is fighting to keep it at the same time parties are vying to poach seats from one another.
“I think in this election, the NDP also have to make sure they are retaining seats,” said University of Victoria political science Prof. Kimberly Speers on Singh’s choices for campaign stops. “Each seat is going to matter in this election.”
The NDP leader said he was “not worried at all” about being out-campaigned by the Green party on the climate-action file, particularly in ridings where the NDP is particularly strong.
“We see a lot of amazing opportunities here in B.C.,” is the way Singh characterized the campaign swing.
Singh said he is hearing from “a lot of people that are feeling let down by Mr. Trudeau.”
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh announced his party would put more funding into childcare if elected, at an event at the Hastings Park Childcare Centre in Vancouver, BC Monday, September 30, 2019.
The leader’s B.C. swing, however, took him from the Burnaby South riding where he is seeking re-election to stops on Vancouver Island, including Victoria, where he took part in last Friday’s youth climate strike. Victoria is a seat where the NDP is more vulnerable, given that former MP Murray Rankin isn’t running again, said Sanjay Jeram, a senior lecturer in political science at Simon Fraser University.
“And an important (seat) symbolically for them to maintain party status,” Jeram said.
NDP fundraising hasn’t been as successful as the other parties, Jeram said, so it doesn’t have as much money to work with on this campaign.
Jeram said the party’s polling has also started out weaker than in previous elections, so it’s being strategic in focusing on its areas of strength, such as the Island, where it holds five-of-seven seats.
“Spending so much time in B.C. is indicative,” said Jeram. “Obviously (Singh) wants to put on a strong face for the party, but he also wants to maintain (official) party status. At this point, that may realistically be the party’s goal.”
Singh said he is still mounting a national campaign, which is scheduled to head back east Tuesday after a breakfast event in Vancouver.
“We’re trying our best to get across the country,” Singh said. “We don’t know the details of everywhere we’re going before we get there.”
Singh made Monday’s announcement alongside Jenny Kwan, the NDP incumbent in Vancouver East, where the Hastings Park daycare is situated, which is also a stronghold for the party.
The NDP leader tried to tie the federal Liberals to some of the more unpopular elements of former B.C. Liberal premier Christy Clark by pointing out one of her former cabinet ministers, Terry Lake, has been brought back as a “star candidate” in the Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo riding.
Singh repeated the NDP’s promises to end subsidies to fossil-fuel production, expand health care and build affordable housing as “the things that matter to the people of British Columbia.”
“We really want to show British Columbians they have an option and don’t have to settle for less,” Singh said, before carrying on to a walk through Stanley Park with Vancouver Centre NDP candidate Breen Ouellette.