Meet Avi Lewis, the leftist firebrand and new leader of the NDP

OTTAWA — Avi Lewis, a polarizing figure within the party who twice failed to win a federal seat in past elections and has never held elected office, is the new NDP leader.

Lewis, a skilled communicator, will face a number of challenges in the coming months, including the need to win a seat in the House of Commons and rebuilding a party that was reduced to just seven seats in last year’s federal election, and has since lost one of its members to a defection to the governing Liberals But perhaps his greatest obstacle will be to convince Canadians that the party is again relevant in national discussions at a time when the Trump threat from Washington permeates the political landscape.

Lewis defeated four rivals  — MP Heather McPherson, union leader Rob Ashton, farmer Tony McQuail and social worker and municipal councillor Tanille Johnston — to replace former party leader Jagmeet Singh.    

But who is Avi Lewis?  

Lewis, 58, was born into one of Canada’s most famous political families. His grandfather, David Lewis, was federal leader of the NDP from 1971 to 1975. Meanwhile, his father Stephen Lewis was the party’s leader in Ontario from 1970 to 1978, later serving as Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations from 1984 to 1988.  

But the new NDP leader gets his communications skills and interest in political issues from both sides of the family. His mother is progressive columnist and author Michele Landsberg. Lewis has two sisters:  Ilana Landsberg Lewis and Jenny Lewis, a casting director who has worked on productions such as Heated Rivalry and Letterkenny.  

Lewis, a father of one, is married to author and political activist Naomi Klein, who has written books such as No Logo, a critique of consumerism and global branding.  

Born  Avram David Lewis, he  attended the prestigious all-boys, private school Upper Canada College before earning an undergraduate arts degree in 1988 from the University of Toronto.   

Lewis is best known for his career in broadcasting, which earned him both recognition and awards. Beginning in 1996, he had a two-year run as the host of The NewMusic, a music show on MuchMusic and CityTV, and also contributed political coverage.    

His next stop was hosting CBC’s counterSpin, a current affairs discussion program, from 1998 to 2001. It later morphed into counterSpin Sunday. Lewis continued with CBC when he hosted The Big Picture with Avi Lewis in 2006 and On the Map, a daily international news show, a year later.  

In 2009, Lewis started co-hosting Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines, a program best known for examining the United States’ role in the world.  

Lewis is also known for making documentaries, including The Take and This Changes Everything, both of which he directed with his wife. In 2019, he co-wrote A Message from the Future, a short film, with American legislator Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  

In more recent years, he has largely worked as an academic, first as a lecturer of media studies at New Jersey’s Rutgers University. More recently, Lewis has been an associate professor in the geography department at the University of British Columbia.   

A long-time activist and high-profile figure within left-wing politics in Canada, Lewis, along with Klein and other progressives, launched the Leap Manifesto in 2015. The document called for a new shift or “leap” away from the consumption of fossil fuels, towards a more just and environmentally friendly economy. Key ideas included a quick transition to renewable energy, greater public transit, the end of new pipelines and other fossil fuel projects, greater respect for indigenous communities, and using the tax system to improve equality.  

The document increased attention to climate issues, but also created a rift within the NDP. Advocates hailed it for giving the party a more focused direction, while others saw it as too radical and unrealistic.  

Some party members haven’t forgiven Lewis for his role in the manifesto and the drama that it created, nor do they plan to rally behind him.  

Shannon Phillips, who was Alberta’s environment minister at the time the document was dropped at a party convention in Edmonton, wrote recently that the manifesto badly compromised her NDP government’s efforts to earn social licence for new oil and gas projects via industrial carbon pricing and other mitigation policies. Phillips said she was disappointed that Lewis hasn’t shown any regret over the matter.  

Former NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair said Lewis’s rigid position on fossil fuels will make the NDP unelectable in many remote communities that rely on resource industries as their economic base.   

But there’s little doubt that  Lewis’ candidacy for leader is also one of the reasons for recent increased interest in the NDP.  The party says its membership rolls have jumped to about 100,000, up two-thirds from about 60,000 in September 2025 when the leadership race began.  

At the same time, however, recent opinion polls suggest that the party is still struggling to grab the broader public’s attention or its support. The party’s tumble has been swift since 2011, when Jack Layton led the NDP to become the official opposition, with the party looking like a contender to form its own government four years later.  

At a time when the leaders of both the Liberals and Conservatives are seen as to the right of their parties’ centres of gravity, Lewis is widely seen as being on the NDP’s left flank, further to the left than Singh and other recent leaders.  

With files from Rahim Mohamed

National Post

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