All eyes are on (frontrunner?) Avi Lewis as NDP leadership hopefuls prepare for final debate

OTTAWA — The five contenders to lead the NDP will meet on Thursday evening in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland for the second and final official debate of the party leadership campaign.

The English-language debate will be a critical opportunity for candidates to sway NDP members before voting starts next month. It could also be something of a palate cleanser after the all-anglophone field stumbled through November’s French debate in Montreal. I nterim leader Don Davies even jokingly called the Franglais-filled evening a morale booster for the Bloc Québécois .

The debate gets underway at 8 p.m. ET. Here are five things to know before tuning in:

Activist and filmmaker Avi Lewis comes into the debate as the clear frontrunner, holding a massive fundraising edge over the other candidates and drawing sizeable crowds to recent campaign events . He’s also driven much of the conversation with progressive proposals like a public option for groceries , national wealth tax for the top one per cent of Canadians and a so-called Green New Deal to transition fossil-fuel workers to sustainable industries.

Debate watchers can expect the other candidates onstage to press Lewis on the practicality and electoral appeal of his big ideas. Leadership rival Heather McPherson, an Edmonton MP, has already tested an attack line on Lewis’s “shut it all down today” stance on fossil fuels, saying on a recent podcast appearance that it takes the NDP “out of the conversation” on energy. McPherson also questioned whether the national public grocery chains proposed by Lewis would bring immediate relief for families struggling with high food prices.

A trio of contenders — Lewis, social worker Tanille Johnston and labour union leader Rob Ashton — will feel quite at home on the debate stage as British Columbians. Lewis and Johnston have both run unsuccessfully for federal seats in B.C. (twice in Lewis’s case). Expect all three to play up their local roots and pepper their remarks with appeals to the left coast crowd.

B.C. is also the closest thing the diminished party has left to a provincial stronghold, being home to three of the NDP’s seven remaining MPs. 

B.C. is one of two provinces controlled by an NDP government, but this doesn’t mean it will be a friendly place for all candidates on stage.

Lewis ruffled some feathers in November when he criticized B.C.’s NDP Premier David Eby for his support of liquified natural gas development in the province. Eby held his tongue, but the slight didn’t go unnoticed.

Former B.C. NDP executive director Michael Gardiner told National Post that Lewis would be harmful to the provincial wing as federal leader.

“(The B.C. NDP) would be best served by someone who plays (well) with blue-collar families, and that’s not Avi Lewis,” said Gardiner.

The debate will also take place at a time when Indigenous reconciliation has emerged as a major political issue in B.C., with Eby and other provincial leaders saying efforts to right historical wrongs have created too much uncertainty surrounding economic development and private property rights.

B.C.’s NDP government has joined the federal government and City of Richmond, B.C., in appealing last summer’s Cowichan Tribes decision , which extended Aboriginal title to tracts of private land in the Lower Mainland.

Two candidates, Tanille Johnston and Tony McQuail, said they disagreed with the B.C. NDP and supported the ruling.

A spokesperson for Johnston said the Cowichan Tribes decision reflected “exactly the kind of work Canada committed to” when it ratified the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2021.

“Instead of appealing, (Johnston) believes the federal government should be sitting down with Cowichan and other Nations to honour their inherent right to self‑government and title,” said the spokesperson.

Reconciliation will be a delicate issue for the NDP’s next leader, with the party historically drawing a high level of support from Indigenous voters.

The debate also comes on the heels of the federal government’s defence industrial strategy , a document that’s already drummed up debate in NDP circles.

Lewis said on Tuesday that, not only did he oppose the long-term federal target of spending five per cent of Canada’s GDP on defence, he didn’t even think the country should hit the two per cent minimum required by NATO.

“I don’t believe we need to spend (two per cent) of our GDP on military spending, as we need that money for other things, including the climate emergency, which is costing us more money while destroying towns and filling our lungs with smoke,” wrote Lewis on social media.

McPherson, for her part, faulted the strategy for not closing export loopholes allowing Canadian weapons to end up in the hands of bad actors.

Both Lewis and McPherson may have trouble navigating an NDP membership base that’s on high alert for potential U.S. aggression and strongly in favour of using force to rebuff a potential American invasion.

Expect Lewis, McPherson and the other candidates onstage to be quizzed on keeping Canada safe in a changing world.

National Post rmohamed@postmedia.com

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