'Disaster' or saviour? Avi Lewis bets it all on big-government populism

OTTAWA — It’s a pattern almost as old as party politics itself: candidates for party leadership campaign closer to the ideological wings, more in line with their party faithful, then immediately tack towards the centre once they win the leadership vote, more in line with the broader electorate.

In the early days of his leadership of the New Democratic Party, however, Avi Lewis has shown no signs of following that pattern.

Instead, Lewis, one of the leading architects of the Leap Manifesto, a far-left plan from more than a decade ago that denounced fossil fuel industries and created internal party wounds that have yet to heal, is doubling down on the left-wing populism that got him elected.

Given the NDP’s history as an opposition party that has rarely threatened to form government and now sits at six per cent in the most recent opinion polls , Lewis’s win raises big questions about the uncertain future of his party.

Those questions include whether the struggling NDP made a smart decision to veer further to the left at a time when its survival may be in doubt and the centre-left is less occupied than usual, whether left-wing populism will show the same appeal as its right-wing counterpart, and what effect Lewis’s left-wing populist ideas might have on the Liberal government’s agenda.

NDP voters hope that their decision to choose an unapologetic, left-wing firebrand proves to be the spark that ignites a new, more popular path, while critics say it’s more likely to be a nail in the party’s coffin.

Either way, even Lewis and many NDP loyalists acknowledge that the party, which was decimated in the last federal election and has since shown no polling evidence of a rebound, is at a crossroads: “It’s an existential moment for the NDP,” Lewis said during an interview last month on CPAC.

The rosier scenario for the NDP is that Lewis and his bold ideas gain some traction, Canadians find reason to look past the Trump threat that has decimated smaller parties, and the NDP’s status then returns to something like it was for most of the last half-century or so. That translates to polling numbers within the party’s traditional band of between 12 and 20 per cent of the electorate and not worrying much about maintaining official party status.

Lewis represents a reset of sorts for the NDP, said Jen Hassum, executive director of the Broadbent Institute, a progressive think tank, because he will generate new ideas at a time when many Canadians are looking for something different.

“At some point, we need to find solutions here.”

As for the more pessimistic view, Lewis marks a clear turn toward the far left at a time when the vote-rich centre-left is largely unoccupied. Prime Minister Mark Carney and the governing Liberals are largely focused on trade expansion, infrastructure, resource extraction and defence spending – all issues that would typically be seen as conservative priorities.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, are also seen as further to the populist right than they have traditionally been.

Lori Turnbull, a political scientist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said the centre-left is a big market of votes that both the NDP and Liberals seem to be drifting away from. “It would seem there’s a constituency in waiting.”

While he may raise the NDP’s ceiling, Lewis and the NDP’s leftward shift would also seem to lower the party’s floor at perhaps its most vulnerable time.

“It’s remarkable that the membership chose this to be a viable strategy,” said Sanay Jeram, a political scientist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

Sen. Peter Harder, a Carney supporter, goes a step further, calling the NDP’s decision “disastrous” because the public won’t buy into Lewis’s populist ideas.

Harder said Lewis’s election as leader could even be a key moment in the NDP’s eventual demise.

Some analysts said too much is made of ideology because voters choose candidates based on a wide range of factors, so the NDP’s move to the far left may not, in isolation, make much difference either way.

Either way, Lewis and his party have a steep hill to climb as they attempt to grow their support and relevance.

The party has a rookie leader, a caucus that has been reduced to a cell of six remaining members, mountains of debt, and, because it has fewer than 12 MPs, lacks official party status.

And it only took a few minutes after his win for old internal party wounds to re-emerge.

Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi got the ball rolling with a social media post criticizing the choice of someone who “openly cheered for the defeat of the Alberta NDP government,” a not-so-subtle reminder about the Leap Manifesto.

In a March 28 letter to Lewis, Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck said she won’t meet with him until he changes his views on fossil fuels industries, which she called “ideological and unrealistic.”

Turnbull said she doesn’t think that Lewis should devote too much time to mending fences with those that are unlikely to change their views. “I wouldn’t try too hard on that front.”

Lewis responds diplomatically when asked about his critics from within the party, with one exception.

The new leader describes the selection of Thomas Mulcair as NDP leader in 2012 as “an incomprehensible decision” that allowed the party to get overtaken on the left by Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.

Mulcair, a former Quebec cabinet minister in a Liberal government who was seen as a centrist for vowing to eliminate the federal deficit, hasn’t backed down in recent days. In a column this week in the Montreal Gazette, Mulcair wrote that most Canadians are moderates and that Lewis won’t be able to implement any of his left-wing ideas unless he wins.

The numbers also illustrate the challenge. Recent opinion poll numbers show that the party has lost both support and relevance in recent months.

A Postmedia-Leger poll released in recent days found that the NDP’s support was languishing at just 6 per cent of Canadian voters, up one percentage point from the previous Leger poll in early March but not within the same area code as the governing Liberals (48 per cent) or the Conservatives (34 per cent).

Just as concerning for the party, just 32 per cent of respondents said that the NDP is even relevant, compared to 42 per cent who said that the party is not relevant.

The poll was conducted between March 27 and 30, as NDP supporters gathered in Winnipeg to choose their new leader.

Andrew Enns, Leger’s executive vice-president, said the NDP’s support was hurt by its 2022 decision to strike a deal with Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government. The agreement called on the NDP to support the Liberals’ minority government on key votes such as federal budgets and confidence motions in exchange for legislation to advance issues such as dental care, pharmacare, and affordability.

Enns said the deal backfired for the NDP, at least electorally. “It kept them on the sidelines.”

The poll’s silver lining for the NDP, however, might be that its recent decline in the polls lines up with last year’s inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump, who almost immediately after taking office began threatening Canada’s economy and sovereignty. The NDP had the support of 16 per cent of Canadians near the end of January, 2025, polls showed, and had consistently polled between 15 and 20 per cent since the end of 2021.

If Trump were to leave office or agree to a new trade deal with Canada, voters might focus less on which Canadian party and leader are best able to deal with the unpredictable U.S. leader. That could be a boon for the NDP and other smaller parties – all of whom were hit hard during the last election.

NDP partisans also point to the fact that many voters remain open to the party — at least in provincial elections. The NDP is in power in British Columbia, under David Eby, and in Manitoba, under Wab Kenew, and is the official opposition in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Pointing to the NDP’s strongholds in these provinces and the “exogenous shock” of Trump’s role in the last federal election, Prof. Jeram said he expects the NDP to regain some of its lost ground.

So what can Lewis do help make that happen sooner rather than later?

Dalhousie’s Prof. Turnbull suggested that Lewis emphasize issues such as health care and child care that directly affect Canadians’ lives, and focus first on the “grunt work” tasks of trying to reduce the party’s debt and solidifying relations within the NDP caucus in Ottawa. The party elected seven members last April, but lost Nunavut MP Lori Idlout as a floor-crosser to the Liberals and is now also at risk of losing Quebec MP Alexandre Boulerice to provincial politics.

Turnbull said Lewis should work on building good relationships with most of his provincial wings, but not spend too much time on Nenshi and others from resources-heavy provinces who are never going to agree with him on fossil fuels. “I wouldn’t try too hard on that front.”

Lewis will also need to try to win a seat in the House of Commons at some point, but Turnbull said she doesn’t anticipate anybody in his caucus quitting so that he could run in an NDP-friendly riding. Lewis has already indicated that winning a seat is on the backburner.

Not surprisingly, Lewis is expressing extreme confidence that the NDP’s future looks bright.

In Winnipeg, he told a partisan crowd that the party’s comeback has already started. “It’s an extraordinary moment in the life of our party.”

Lewis makes no apologies for his efforts to move the party to the left, nor his embrace of populism. He continues to call Canada a “climate pariah” for the way the country continues to expand its fossil fuel industry.

On a recent podcast interview, he lamented that the party has been drifting to the centre in recent years. “The NDP that I grew up with in the 1970s, frankly, was more left wing than the NDP has been in the last couple of decades.”

His recipe for left-wing populism includes anti-elite rhetoric that espouses such policies as greater distribution of wealth, a national program for heat pumps, and a new wealth tax. The new NDP leader also supports greater public ownership of industries such as banking, telecom services and even grocery stores where he argues that markets have failed consumers.

More broadly, Lewis said he defines left-wing populism as recognizing that capitalism concentrates power and wealth in a small number of hands and that governments should implement policies that respond to the needs of the majority.

Speaking to reporters in Winnipeg following his win, Lewis pointed to the election of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the increasing popularity of Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party in the United Kingdom, as evidence that left-wing populism is on the rise.

“Left-wing populism is starting to work around the world,” he said. “Populism is popular.”

Right-wing populism has indeed been spreading internationally like wild fire over the last decade, boosted by Trump’s first presidential election win and British voters’ decision (“Brexit”) to leave the European Union.

But will Lewis’s brand of left-wing populism be popular enough over the next few years in Canada to influence the Carney government to take more progressive steps towards issues such as rising grocery prices?

Although it may seems like a stretch to think that Carney, an economist and former central banker, would propose a chain of government-owned grocery stores, SFU’s Prof. Jeram said the Liberal party has a history of “shape shifting” to the public’s mood. The government could, for example, find more progressive steps to try to reduce prices if food inflation remains high and Lewis’s ideas are attracting support.

The Broadbent Institute’s Hassum said Lewis’s grocery store idea isn’t as radical as many say, especially when you consider that eight out of 10 Canadian provinces have either provincially run liquor or beer stores.

That one proposal aside, SFU’s Prof. Jeram said Lewis’s election marks a significant moment for his party. “Whether they planned it or not, they’re doing something new here.”

National Post

• Fewer than one-third of Canadians think Lewis's NDP is 'relevant,' poll finds
• Meet Avi Lewis, the leftist firebrand and new leader of the NDP

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