ਜਗਮੀਤ ਸਿੰਘਜਗਮੀਤ ਸਿੰਘ

Jagmeet Singh (born 2 January 1979) is a Canadian lawyer and politician who led the New Democratic Party (NDP) from 2017 to 2025. A Canadian-born Sikh of Punjabi descent, he was the first member of a visible minority group to lead a major Canadian federal political party on a permanent basis, and he represented Burnaby South in the House of Commons from 2019 to 2025.

Early life and Punjabi roots

Jagmeet Singh Jimmy Dhaliwal was born on 2 January 1979 in Scarborough, Ontario, now part of Toronto, to Punjabi immigrant parents, Harmeet Kaur and Jagtaran Dhaliwal. Both parents came from the Malwa region of Punjab: his mother from Ghudani Khurd in Ludhiana district, and his father from Thikriwala in Barnala district. His great-grandfather Sewa Singh Thikriwala campaigned for the cause of Indian independence. Singh spent a year as a toddler with his grandparents in India, then grew up in St. John's and Grand Falls-Windsor in Newfoundland and Labrador before the family settled in Windsor, Ontario. He attended Detroit Country Day School in Michigan from grades 6 to 12, took a B.Sc. in biology at the University of Western Ontario in 2001, and graduated in law from York University's Osgoode Hall Law School in 2005. He was called to the Ontario bar in 2006.

Law, and a first step into politics

Singh worked as a criminal defence lawyer in the Greater Toronto Area, first at the firm Pinkofskys and then at Singh Law, the practice he set up with his younger brother Gurratan. He gave free legal advice to an activist group protesting a Canadian visit by Kamal Nath, the former Indian minister alleged to have played a role in the 1984 Delhi riots, and later said that failing to get the group's concerns heard pushed him toward running for office himself. His first campaign was the 2011 federal election in Bramalea-Gore-Malton, a Brampton area riding. He stopped using his birth surname, Dhaliwal, during that campaign, saying he wanted to reject the caste inequality the name signalled. He lost to the Conservative Bal Gosal by only 539 votes, finishing ahead of the sitting Liberal MP.

Queen's Park: Ontario MPP and deputy leader

Months after the federal loss, Singh won the overlapping provincial seat in the October 2011 Ontario election, defeating the Liberal incumbent Kuldip Kular by 2,277 votes. He became the first New Democrat elected in Peel Region and the first turban-wearing Sikh to sit in Ontario's legislature. At Queen's Park he served as his party's critic for the attorney general and consumer services, argued for stronger police accountability, and won unanimous support in October 2015 for a motion calling for an end to arbitrary police street checks, known as carding. Legislation he introduced to make April Sikh Heritage Month in Ontario passed in December 2013. Re-elected in 2014 with 43.6 per cent of the vote, he became deputy leader of the Ontario NDP under Andrea Horwath in 2015.

How did Jagmeet Singh become leader of the NDP?

Singh became federal leader by winning the 2017 NDP leadership election on the first ballot, taking 53.8 per cent of the vote in a field of four candidates. His campaign signed up tens of thousands of new members and out-raised his rivals, and his win on 1 October 2017 made him the first person from a visible minority group to lead a major Canadian federal party permanently. He resigned his provincial seat on 20 October 2017. For more than a year he led the party from outside the House of Commons, until he won the Burnaby South by-election on 25 February 2019 and took his seat in Parliament.

Three elections and the dental care deal

Singh led the NDP through three general elections. In 2019 the party lost 15 seats and fell from third to fourth place in the Commons, though Singh was widely credited with a strong leaders' debate performance. In 2021 the party gained one seat and stayed fourth. Its clearest policy legacy came in the minority Parliament that followed: in 2022 the NDP signed a confidence and supply agreement with the governing Liberals, and in return the government enacted the Canadian Dental Care Plan and set a framework for national pharmacare. CUPE Ontario's 2025 tribute also credited the deal with funding for affordable childcare and federal anti-scab legislation protecting striking workers. The NDP ended the agreement in 2024.

Defeat in 2025 and legacy

The 2025 federal election was the worst result in NDP history: the party lost official party status, and Singh himself was defeated in the new riding of Burnaby Central. He announced on election night that he would resign as leader, and his tenure ended on 5 May 2025, with Don Davies taking over on an interim basis. Singh's place in Canadian politics does not rest on seat counts alone. A turban-wearing Sikh leading a national party changed who many Canadians could picture as a prime ministerial figure, and the dental care programme his bargaining produced remains the most concrete policy mark of his leadership. He identifies as a progressive and a social democrat, and he brought a personal style, colourful turbans and a large social media following, that made him one of the most recognisable Canadian politicians of his generation.