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Many New Democrats will welcome the chance for the party to hit the reset button. Singh’s leadership win in 2017 was full of promise after former leader Thomas Mulcair was ousted for running a disappointing 2015 election campaign, one that saw the NDP drop from its high-water mark of 103 seats under Jack Layton to 44, and the loss of Official Opposition status. New Democrats hoped they’d found their own Justin Trudeau, a hip, youthful leader who could energize the party’s base, bring in donors and new Canadians.

Instead, Singh nearly halved the party’s remaining seats during the 2019 election. He grew the NDP’s seat count by one during the 2021 federal contest, after helping the Liberals beef up COVID supports. On Monday, he oversaw the party’s worst ever electoral result: seven seats. The party has lost official party status in the House of Commons — losing with it the extra budget for caucus support and the leader’s office and guaranteed seats on committees — a feat not accomplished since Audrey McLaughlin in 1993.

Despite all of this, Singh may be remembered as one of the party’s best leaders: better than Mulcair, better than even Layton. 

Layton prized displacing the Liberals on the electoral map. He defeated prime minister Paul Martin — ending the Liberals’ $5-billion Kelowna Accord postponing investments in Indigenous Canadians before they could start, and helped to usher in a decade of Conservative rule under Stephen Harper.

Layton kept Harper in power when the Grits were ready to defeat him — justifying the delayed trip to the polls as a win for tweaks to the employment insurance program, tweaks his own MPs criticized as inadequate. What was most important to Layton seemed to be maintaining and growing the party’s seat count. The goal was eventual power. 

All the while, Harper set back environmental action, enacted discredited tough-on-crime policies and eliminated public subsidies for political parties — ensuring that party fundraising and its thwarted objectives would dominate Canadian politics.

Singh is not known as a bright strategist or a particularly hard worker. He has watched as key parts of his party’s base bled toward the Conservatives. Still, he managed to keep together a coalition of centre-left mostly urban progressives, many of whom feel his policies on the environment, on social programs and on the Middle East don’t go far enough.

New Democrats can and should be disappointed with him for his inability to keep and grow the base and speak to blue-collar workers. But what Singh has done, and what he should also be remembered for by progressives, is that he put their interests first.

Through his supply and confidence agreement with the Liberals, he helped establish a program that will deliver dental care to millions of Canadians. His refusal to help Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre defeat the unpopular Grits last fall — sacrificing likely NDP pickups — meant the Liberals had more time to negotiate pharmacare deals with the provinces, for free diabetes medication and contraception. Singh was vilified by the Tories for his actions. They attacked his integrity, painted him as a leader only interested in qualifying for his pension. 

He made mistakes, many. Announcing the end of the agreement with the Grits only to realize the Liberals couldn’t make a deal with the Bloc Québécois, and Singh would need to extend them a lifeline, didn’t help his credibility. But it did prevent Poilievre from obtaining a majority government — and using it as a mandate to invoke the notwithstanding clause for the first time, to change the Election Act and dismantle environmental regulations.

Singh leaves his party now in a very rough shape. Worthy individuals will lose their jobs and long-time MPs have lost their seats. The rebuild may pull the party further to the left, towards a more polarizing dialogue that might cost them more seats and more support down the line. Singh might be handing the Liberals power longer. But his party also holds, again, the balance of power. 

What the NDP failed to get in electoral gains, it obtained in policy gains.

Gains that even the Conservatives now partially acknowledge are too popular to take away.