CHANTAL HEBERT: Singh must keep his eye on the Greens

For his first question in the House of Commons, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh asked the prime minister whether he was going to make housing more affordable for Canadians.

This is an issue the NDP leader pursued throughout his recent byelection campaign in Burnaby South and it is close to the heart of many urban voters, in particular in Vancouver and Toronto.

Those two electoral markets are central to New Democrat prospects in next fall’s federal campaign.

Justin Trudeau responded with a boilerplate statement about helping the middle class. He was probably happy to get a brief respite from the SNC-Lavalin affair.

Singh waited more than a year for his opportunity to question Trudeau face-to-face about Canada’s current housing situation.

But he may have to wait a few more months – until the leaders debates of the upcoming election campaign – for a more serious policy conversation with his Liberal rival.

The NDP leader’s belated entry in the Commons comes at a time when the current Parliament is on its last legs - with its most productive days behind it.

Tuesday’s budget – the last of Trudeau’s ongoing term in office – marks the non-official start of the election campaign. Tuesday may also be the last semi-normal day in the Commons for the foreseeable future.

In an effort to keep the SNC-Lavalin affair in the forefront and force the Liberal majority on the justice committee to agree to invite former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould for a second appearance, the Conservatives are gearing up for a procedural trench war with the government.

Even absent opposition obstruction, the SNC-Lavalin affair has already taken a toll on the government’s agenda.

One of the reasons why omnibus budget bills have become such a central part of the federal governance apparatus is because they allow policy initiatives to clear legislative hurdles over a matter of months rather than over a year or more.

But the SNC-Lavalin affair – and the news that a budget bill was used to introduce in the Criminal Code remediation agreements of the kind sought by the engineering giant to eliminate the risk of a criminal conviction – has made the practice of squeezing a host of non-budgetary stuff in bloated finance bills politically toxic.

As a result, some of the measures the government had hoped to showcase in its campaign list of delivered items will now likely end up in the Liberal post-election catalogue.

Trudeau and his team are not the only ones who are having to temper their hopes for a productive parliamentary spring.

So might Singh.

The SNC-Lavalin has solidified the notion that the next election will boil down to a duel for government between the Liberals and the Conservatives.

It is a perception that the NDP’s role as the second opposition party tends to reinforce. Jack Layton in 2011 and Trudeau in the last election both had to wait to be on the campaign trail to level the playing field to their advantage.

Until Monday, Joe Clark had been the last opposition leader to make his entry in the Commons in the dying days of a parliament. The next-to-last leader of the Progressive Conservative party waited almost four years before securing a federal seat in the summer of 2000.

On the day Clark finally took his seat, three Quebec MPs initially elected as Progressive Conservatives crossed the floor to the Liberals.

Jean Chrétien called a general election a little more than a month after that show of strength. It was the last campaign the Tories fought under their banner.

Trudeau did not have as unpleasant a surprise in store for Singh’s first full day as an MP. But the NDP does face an existential threat next fall as the Tories did at the time of Clark’s second coming to the House of Commons almost two decades ago.

Like Clark, who had to fend off the Liberals and the Canadian Alliance, Singh is threatened on two fronts. As the result of a string of provincial breakthroughs, the Green party is poised to enter the federal campaign with the momentum the NDP so lacks.

In last month’s Outremont byelection, Elizabeth May’s candidate finished ahead of the Bloc Québécois and the Conservatives. In the province that currently accounts for the largest number of New Democrat MPs, the most recent Léger Marketing poll pegged the Green party at nine per cent, two points ahead of the NDP.

The stars could be aligning for voters to rediscover May at the expense of her NDP rival next fall.

As if crossing swords with the Liberals across the aisle was not enough, Singh will have to spend the coming months looking over his shoulder.

Chantal Hébert is a columnist based in Ottawa covering politics.