Here’s the ‘experiment’ NDP Leader Avi Lewis is trying to run in Canadian politics

While standing outside the House of Commons, Avi Lewis recalled that it has been five decades since his grandfather — former federal NDP leader David Lewis — stood inside the chamber to advocate for the Canadian left.

After David, there was Avi’s father, Stephen Lewis, a former leader of the Ontario NDP, Canadian ambassador to the United Nations and a longtime journalist and environment activist. He passed away last month at 88, shortly after his son was elected federal NDP leader.

Now, it’s Avi Lewis’s turn to take on the mantle. And going the federal route is a very intentional choice. 

“I think things are so deeply, grindingly unfair and bad and getting worse that we need fundamental structural changes and I’m interested in trying that,” Lewis said.

“It’s an experiment to see if politics can accommodate that kind of worldview, but it can only happen at the federal level. The federal government is the only level of government that has the resources and capacity and the levers to change the field of play.”

This week, Lewis made the rounds on Parliament Hill for the first time since becoming NDP leader. CBC’s The House gave him a tour of West Block — the home of the House of Commons — as he detailed what his “experiment” will look like.

LISTEN | NDP Leader Avi Lewis details his political ‘experiment’ to CBC’s The House:Catherine Cullen gives the new NDP leader, Avi Lewis, a tour of Parliament — a place he hadn’t been to in more than 15 years — and hears what he hopes to do in the House of Commons, and why he believes Canada has lost “a sense of elevated purpose” in politics.

Selling socialism to Canadians

If you ask Lewis why it’s important he use the word “socialism” to describe his outlook, he’ll tell you: “It’s not. It’s just accurate.”

“I don’t foreground ideology in the way that I talk about politics,” Lewis said. “I know what I am and I don’t see any need to hide it. I also think socialism is really having a comeback in North America.”

He pointed out some current socialist icons, like U.S. lawmakers Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — a man Lewis said is “a truly inspiring figure.”

One policy idea Lewis and Mamdani share are public grocery stores. According to Lewis, some of Mamdani’s policy experts assisted his team in designing the proposal, which goes beyond a pilot proposal.

“We’re talking about an alternative national procurement network, where the federal government uses its truly national reach — federal institutions, the school program — to really reach wide” and compete with large groceries, Lewis said.

The NDP leader also said that the stores themselves wouldn’t contain a massive array of products. Major grocery stores can have tens of thousands of individual products, whereas Lewis’s vision is a supermarket with about 1,500 to 2,000 products.

“So they’re full-fledged grocery stores, but they don’t have the absurd level of choice, which frankly slows down my shopping,” Lewis told host Catherine Cullen.

WATCH | Breaking down whether government-owned grocery stores could work in Canada:

Are city-owned grocery stores an answer to sky-high supermarket prices?

A grassroots campaign fuelled by left-leaning ideas led Zohran Mamdani to a resounding victory in New York City’s mayoral democratic primary. Policy analyst Vass Bednar says one of those ideas — government-owned grocery stores — could potentially work in Canada.

On Wednesday, the NDP introduced a motion to ban so-called surveillance pricing, where businesses offer different prices based on consumers’ personal data. The motion was voted down.

Experts have told CBC News it’s difficult to gauge how much of that is actually happening, and others have said it could constitute a deceptive marketing practice. But some businesses have told the Competition Bureau of Canada the practice could help them offer lower prices to consumers.

On social media, Lewis called surveillance pricing “a dystopian practice that will drive up costs for Canadians if we allow it to take root.”

When asked why he thinks Canadians will buy into these NDP proposals after a shellacking in the last federal election, Lewis said the party wasn’t putting forward these ideas before.

“We are providing solutions that would actually solve these problems. And we believe we can cut through the clutter and that Canadians will respond to this, because nobody else — the other parties — aren’t actually offering solutions,” Lewis said.

Rebuilding the party

The current NDP caucus in the House of Commons is just six MPs strong — and it’s unclear when Lewis will make his push to join the crew.

Lewis said he is keen to get a seat, and he doesn’t believe the new Liberal majority government will last “because I don’t think Prime Minister Carney wants [floor-crossing MP] Marilyn Gladu holding the balance of power in his caucus.”

“It’s a precarious majority, so we’ll see what happens. I’m focused on getting the party election ready, which means raising a bunch of money and continuing the work of the leadership and really building our ground game at the riding level,” Lewis said.

“I’ve got a tiny, mighty caucus… And they’re doing really hard work and they’ve said ‘stay out there’ to me. So it’s going to be an ever-shifting calculation, but it’s not now.”

Lewis acknowledged that his party, with its six seats in the corner of the House of Commons, needs to play a bigger role in Canadian democracy, “but that’s not a tomorrow thing… I need to build a base.”

The NDP leader ruled out accepting floor-crossers and said the party believes MPs should resign and run in a byelection if they’d like to join another team. 

When asked whether other NDP MPs could cross the floor to join the Liberals, as Nunavut MP Lori Idlout did last month, Lewis said the team is “absolutely rock solid. And every single one of them has looked me in the eye and said, ‘I’m not going anywhere.'”

Bringing back an old style of politics

Lewis said it’s “moving” to be on Parliament Hill and it reaffirms the importance of the work MPs do for Canadians, “much of which we don’t see on TV.”

“I absolutely feel as a Canadian we are losing touch with a kind of politics that corresponds both to our daily reality and also to a sense of elevated purpose in politics,” Lewis said.

Lewis joked that he teased his dad “relentlessly for decades” about being friends with former prime minister Brian Mulroney, but Stephen Lewis and Mulroney had a deep bond as they worked together to end apartheid in South Africa.

“That’s the sense of purpose which is available to politics and which we so rarely see today,” Lewis said.

The NDP leader added that he’s trying to bring his father’s values back to Canadian politics, and he understands the torch was handed to him in Winnipeg when he won the leadership race.

“I lost my dad, and now the mission is even clearer and more powerful than it ever was. This is a rich country. Life doesn’t have to be this hard. My dad and my grandpa spent their lives trying to make life a little bit more reasonable for Canadians, and now it’s my turn,” Lewis said.

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ndp-leader-avi-lewis-house-of-commons-politics-carney-9.7169279?cmp=rss