The NDP has a new leader. What does Avi Lewis’s arrival mean for the party?
Newly named NDP leader Avi Lewis promised to bring back the party from the political wilderness after its dismal showing in last year’s federal election.
“The NDP will start winning again because we will become that beacon to the 99 per cent — illuminating the darkening sky of these terrifying times with the energizing light of collectivism,” he said at the convention in Winnipeg on Sunday, after it was announced he had won the months-long leadership contest.
Lewis came out on top of a field of five leadership candidates that included Alberta MP Heather McPherson, union leader Rob Ashton, farmer Tony McQuail and social worker and municipal councillor Tanille Johnston.
The new leader invited his fellow candidates on the stage after it was announced that he had won decisively on the first ballot in the ranked-ballot contest, garnering 56 per cent of the votes. All five candidates hugged on stage as the crowd broke out into “NDP!” chants.
The activist and filmmaker steps into a role once held by his grandfather, David Lewis, who led the New Democratic Party from 1971 to 1975. His father, Stephen Lewis, is a former leader of the Ontario NDP. Avi Lewis is now the third Jewish person to lead a federal party — his grandfather was the first.
During his speech on Sunday, Lewis recounted how his father once told him something that was passed down from his grandfather.
“David said, ‘Son, not in my lifetime, but maybe in yours.’ And recently my dad told me the same thing,” Lewis said. “I refuse to tell that to my kid. We cannot wait another generation, we’ve got to start winning now.”
Before getting into documentary filmmaking, Lewis had a broadcasting career with a number of media outlets, including MuchMusic, Citytv and CBC.
WATCH | Lewis says his father told him ‘not in my lifetime, maybe in yours’:
New NDP Leader Lewis says his father told him ‘not in my lifetime, maybe in yours’
After NDP members voted Avi Lewis their newest federal leader at the party’s convention on Sunday, the new leader spoke about his father, former Ontario NDP Leader Stephen Lewis — who is in hospital. Lewis said his father ‘isn’t doing too well, but he is still with us and hanging on to see the next chapter of our movement.’
Lewis was largely viewed as the front-runner going into the convention, having raised more money than his competitors.
The new leader galvanized his supporters, holding numerous rallies across the country over the past few months. At a rally in Winnipeg on Thursday, one attendee said he hadn’t felt this excited since Ed Broadbent was leading the party.
The New Democratic Party’s internal elections for the national executive, held Saturday, also signalled that this was Lewis’s race to lose as a slate closely aligned with the new leader swept the top posts.
Niall Ricardo was elected president, former MP Libby Davies is the new vice-president and Keira Gunn won the treasurer post. All were backing Lewis in the leadership campaign, meaning he already has allies at the top level of the party.
WATCH | Avi Lewis wins NDP leadership in first-ballot victory:
Avi Lewis wins NDP leadership in first-ballot victory
NDP chief electoral officer Éric Hébert-Daly tells the party’s convention in Winnipeg that Avi Lewis is the party’s new leader. Lewis — the son of former Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis and grandson of former federal leader David Lewis — won the leadership on the first ballot with 56 per cent of the vote.
Cap on rent, wealth tax, ‘new green deal’
Lewis has described his campaign as an “anti-capitalist movement,” proposing things like a national cap on rent, a wealth tax on the top one per cent of income earners and public options for groceries and telecoms.
“Of course, we can already hear the howls from the establishment: ‘But how will you pay for all this?’ Well, let’s remind them, this country is awash in wealth, we can have nice things,” Lewis said during his speech.
“It is time, far past time, to properly tax the corporations and billionaires that have been riding a tidal wave of profits while the 99 per cent have been suffering and struggling.”
The new leader has made AI a main target of his campaign, calling for a moratorium on artificial intelligence data centres — along with other measures in a bid to rein in a technology that he says is being used by corporations to steal private data, threaten jobs and harm the environment.
Lewis made environmental policies a key part of his platform, promising a “new green deal” in Canada that would invest two per cent of the country’s GDP into addressing climate change — something the NDP leader said would create one million jobs.
He’s also promising investment in transit, heat pumps and solar panels, and says he would slap an export tax on oil and gas shipped to the U.S. “We can’t keep increasing fossil fuel production,” Lewis said during his campaign.
But Lewis has faced questions about how his environmental policies will go over with provincial NDP wings, particularly in the west.
Critics have suggested Lewis helped contribute to the demise of former Alberta premier Rachel Notley’s NDP government when he crashed the 2016 federal party’s convention with a controversial policy paper: the Leap Manifesto.
While he wasn’t the only proponent of that policy paper, many of its key points overlap with the direction in which Lewis wants to steer the NDP now that he’s taken the helm.
The manifesto’s central view was that the world is in a climate crisis and that burning fossil fuels is making it worse. It urged a complete transition away from fossil fuels and an adoption of renewable power sources.
It also called for expanding public transit, high-speed rail and social programs like national child care — issues now embraced by the federal Liberals.
Divide in federal-provincial NDP?
The manifesto was seen by some New Democrats as ammunition for conservatives to criticize provincial NDP wings, mostly in the Prairies. Now that Lewis is leading the federal chapter, there is worry that some of his policies could ruffle the feathers of the provincial chapters — and provide new angles of attack for conservatives.
Lewis took flack during the party’s English-language leadership debate in February, with Rob Ashton suggesting he “destroyed” Notley’s chances of re-election.
Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi appeared to push back against Lewis’s environmental policies before the leadership votes were tallied.
Nenshi unveiled his vision for the province’s energy sector — which includes pipelines and oil and gas expansion — on Friday, the first day of the federal NDP’s convention.
He issued a statement blasting Lewis just moments after it was announced that he won.
“It is clear that the direction of the federal party under this new leader, someone who openly cheered for the defeat of the Alberta NDP government, is not in the interests of Alberta,” Nenshi said.
“We believe in Alberta and we believe in Canadian energy and the good jobs it creates. We believe in more pipelines and in reducing emissions. We believe in strong public services and a strong jobs-driven economy to help pay for them. This is what we are fighting for every day.”
Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck also released a letter criticizing Lewis’s position on oil and gas development.
“The positions that you have taken when it comes to natural resource development are ideological and unrealistic. They would hurt Saskatchewan workers, communities, and industries,” she wrote in the public letter addressed directly to the new federal leader.
Despite the criticisms he’s faced during the campaign, Lewis has stood by his past activism. “NDPers across the country know that we are allowed to have differences of opinions on key issues,” he told CBC News earlier this month.
“I personally have had a consistency of positions over many, many years. I’m proud of that. I’m not going to flip-flop and be a politician who just changes their opinions according to what’s convenient at the moment.”
In his speech on Sunday, Lewis committed to having an open debate with fellow New Democrats that disagreed with him.
“Our debates are another sign that our party is back and our tent is growing — it is big enough to hold some differences of opinion within it,” he said.
Raymond Guardia, who was former NDP leader Tom Mulcair’s chief of staff, said despite the critics, he predicts Lewis will be able to pull the party together.
“I don’t know if it applies to other parties, but I know the NDP leadership races are very, very emotional,” he told CBC News.
“I think [things] will calm down after the race, but it’s just that kind of emotional arc that many people will have to go through and realize once Avi’s leader, ‘This is OK. I didn’t vote for him. I didn’t support him. I thought he was kind of weird and scary, but no, this is fine.'”
Building up from a historic low?
As the new NDP chief, Lewis is now tasked with rebuilding a party that is at a historic low point.
The party saw only seven MPs elected in last year’s election — that number is down to six with Lori Idlout joining the Liberals, and will possibly be dwindled further if Alexandre Boulerice decides to jump into provincial politics.
The party’s fortunes haven’t changed much since last April, according to Philippe Fournier, a polls analyst with 338Canada.com.
“When we look at the polls, we see single digits, low double digits sometimes and a very soft vote,” he told CBC News.
But Prime Minister Mark Carney is governing more to the right than his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, which could give the party a bit of an opening on the left.
However, a recent Abacus Data survey suggests Carney is attracting voters more so because he projects stability in an uncertain environment.
David Coletto, the CEO of Abacus, said the issues Canadians are currently preoccupied with — U.S. relations and global and economic instability — lend themselves to Carney’s camp.
“Lewis is calling for radical change to the ways Canada operates … so he is going to face a lot of the public who aren’t really in the mood right now for drastic change,” he told CBC News.
But Coletto said the underlying concerns — notably climate change and economic inequality — aren’t going away any time soon.
“Mr. Lewis doesn’t need to win tomorrow, but he does need to find a way to connect with the concerns of Canadians — and as we’ve seen over the last two years, they can change really rapidly,” he said.
“There is a space for Mr. Lewis in this conversation; the biggest challenge is getting attention. But I do think if he can get some attention, there will be a lot of people wanting to hear an alternative to the Liberal and Conservative plan.”
Lewis needs to win seat in Parliament
Lewis will be looking to bring the NDP back to recognized party status in the House of Commons to maintain relevancy. Having at least 12 seats in Parliament guarantees a party certain privileges, including funding for the leader’s office and research bureau.
And speaking of seats, Lewis will need to get one of his own.
Lewis has previously run two unsuccessful bids for a federal seat in two different British Columbia ridings, coming third in both in 2021 and 2025. But his first likely opportunity to run in a byelection would come in Ontario.
Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith is looking to make the jump to the provincial Liberals, which would leave his seat open for a byelection in a riding that the NDP has held in the past.
Until he does gain a seat, Lewis won’t be getting any face time in the House of Commons and will need to rely on his current crop of MPs to hold the fort in Parliament.
A party leader without a seat isn’t a new phenomenon, with plenty of recent examples to point to — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, having lost his seat in last year’s election, tapped Andrew Scheer to lead the party in the House last spring until he could regain a seat in a byelection.
Lewis’s predecessor, Jagmeet Singh, won the leadership in 2017 but didn’t claim a seat until 2019. Singh asked Guy Caron, a leadership rival, to lead the party in the House in the meantime.
Lewis could follow Singh’s example and ask Heather McPherson to lead the party in the House. Another possibility is he could ask interim leader Don Davies to continue in his role.
The new NDP leader has indicated that he’s in no rush to gain a seat and instead will focus on rebuilding the party — but the question about where he plans to run will linger above the new NDP chief until he throws his hat into an electoral race.
Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ndp-new-leader-avi-lewsi-9.7146004?cmp=rss