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Now begins the process to reckon with the heartbreak that was evident in a Burnaby, B.C., hotel ballroom, as the NDP’s three-election leader Jagmeet Singh — who lost badly in his riding in the city — announced he will resign when the party chooses his interim replacement.

The only silver lining was that, despite the shellacking at the ballot box, the shrunken rump of the NDP could still hold the balance of power if the end result remains a minority Liberal government. 

“We knew it wasn’t going to be good ... We didn’t know it was going to be this bad,” said George Soule, an NDP strategist who helped with the campaign. 

Ahead of Singh’s address to supporters on Monday night, anxious anticipation turned into melancholy as New Democrats stared blankly while incumbent after incumbent — including party stalwarts Matthew Green, Peter Julian, Nikki Ashton, Brian Masse and more — fell as voters in NDP-held ridings flocked to the Liberals and Conservatives. 

“My body’s here, but my brain’s off in La La Land right now just because of how long we’ve been going at it,” Mitch Biagioni, a volunteer on Singh’s local campaign, said before the final race was called.

Wrestling with a diminished NDP presence in Parliament, he described a political environment alienating to progressives like himself. Many New Democrats see Carney as a right-leaning banker whose platform includes an income-tax cut that brings relief to low- as well as high-wage earners, and $28 billion in “savings” that the NDP argues will lead to program cuts. (The Liberals deny that.)

“The Liberal plans don’t actually work for everybody. We’ve had like a neo-liberal thing since the ‘80s, and it’s just been awful for a lot of people, especially my generation, and the generation after me,” Biagioni said.

“I want a more progressive candidate, and I want a candidate that (wants) more social services and growing health care and all the things that are actually important.”

On top of that disappointment, early assessments from some New Democrats blamed the bad showing on U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs and annexation threats, which shaped the election as Carney’s Liberals championed themselves as the only answer to the American affront on Canadian sovereignty. 

“The election wasn’t necessarily about a good local MP. It was about who can form a government of more than 172 seats ... and who can stand up to Donald Trump. That was the ballot question,” said Joel Harden, the former Ottawa MPP who vacated his seat to run federally, and lost Monday to Liberal incumbent Yasir Naqvi. 

“It’s tough when you’re going into an election with 25 seats, to scale yourself up to that particular frequency,” Harden said. 

For Soule, the NDP strategist, the next step is to figure out the best path forward as the party and its reduced caucus choose an interim leader to replace Singh. Soule said it’s possible that “nobody wants to touch this,” but several potential candidates will be interested in the job. He declined to name anybody on Tuesday. 

Speaking earlier in Victoria, British Columbia’s NDP Premier David Eby said he has no interest in the job, but that he wants to see someone take over the party who is committed to rebuilding it so that it can keep playing a role in the future of Canada.

“I do hope that someone steps up,” Eby said, adding that “it was a tough night for our federal cousins.”

Soule, meanwhile, believes the NDP can recover with a clear progressive offering, and if Carney’s Liberals move to the right, as many New Democrats expect. 

It’s not the first time the NDP has been shunted to the margins of Parliament. In the 1993 election, under then-leader Audrey McLaughlin, the NDP dropped from 44 to nine seats, but did not disappear. 

“The progressive movement is going to come together and fight,” Soule said. “I genuinely have hope.” 

Harden, leaving open another shot at public office, said New Democrats should quickly start thinking about the party’s future because of the typical instability of minority governments. 

”There should be some version of a listening tour,” Harden said, calling for development and incentive programs at the riding level.

“That to me, that’s the missing piece.”

On Tuesday afternoon, as the NDP campaign plane prepared to leave Vancouver for Ontario, Singh boarded with his family to cheers and hugs from his travelling staff. After almost eight years leading the party, he prepared to leave it to find its footing in whatever comes next for the New Democrats.

“It’s been a good journey,” he said.