With less than 24 hours to go before the polls open in the 2021 federal election, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh set Sunday aside for a final campaign blitz through British Columbia’s Metro Vancouver battlefields.
Singh scheduled stops in Vancouver, Surrey, Burnaby, Maple Ridge and the Tri-Cities, with a focus on ridings held by Liberals and Conservatives.
Singh has made the most stops in B.C. of any federal leader, a nod to the party’s historically strong performance in Canada’s most western province.
In the 2019 election, the party elected 11 MPs, nearly half of its 24-person caucus, from B.C. and is hoping to expand its reach this time around.
On Saturday night, the NDP leader visited Cranbrook, in the southeastern B.C. riding of Kootenay–Columbia, which has historically voted Conservative, but flipped orange in the 2015 election.
New Democrat Wayne Stetski won by fewer than 300 votes, but lost to Conservative Rob Morrison in 2019. Stetski is hoping to take back the riding.
Speaking to media Sunday morning, Singh maintained he was running with his eyes on the prime minister’s seat, despite opinion polls showing the NDP trailing the Liberals and Conservatives by an average of 10 or more points.
Quizzed on what it would take for one of the other major parties to earn the NDP’s support in the case of another minority government, he said his focus was on ensuring billionaires pay their fair share of Canada’s COVID-19 recovery costs.
Singh is the second leader to make an 11th-hour campaign push through British Columbia, after Green Leader Annamie Paul blitzed Vancouver Island — where the party holds its only two seats — on Saturday.
Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole was scheduled to campaign in Toronto on Sunday, while Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau had multiple in-person and virtual campaign events scheduled in every province but Saskatchewan.
–With files from the Canadian Press
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