TORONTO – The New Democratic Party (NDP) of Canada has a new leader: Avi Lewis, born in 1967, from a historic Canadian left-wing political family active since the late 19th century. A journalist and documentary filmmaker—he has won numerous awards and conducted interviews with music stars like David Bowie and Leonard Cohen—and a professor at the University of British Columbia, Lewis lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with his wife, activist and journalist Naomi Klein, and their son Toma.
Lewis has won the race for NDP leadership, which concluded today with the party convention in Winnipeg. He has been tasked with restoring the party to federal relevance after the disastrous tenure of former leader Jagmeet Singh. Under the latter, in the 2025 federal elections, the NDP won only 7 seats in the House of Commons, the worst result in the party’s history, which also caused it to lose official party status in Parliament (requiring at least 12 seats).
In his first speech as leader, Lewis described the situation for Canadians as extremely difficult: “We’re under economic attack by the U.S., while Donald Trump stomps around the globe grabbing foreign leaders and oil fields and starting wars he has no idea how to stop…”.
He called the daily economic situation “the everyday emergency of just trying to get by in an impossible economy”, accusing the Canadian Liberal and Conservative parties of bending to the wills of “a tiny group of billionaires who control every part of our economy. They’ll blame Trump. They’ll blame immigrants. They’ll blame Indigenous land rights. They’ll blame anyone but the CEOs, the corner-office class, to whom they feel accountable…” he added.
With Lewis at the helm, the NDP is attempting a return to its roots, reviving a left that, in practical terms, no longer exists in Canada. This effort is clear from his first policy proposals: imposing a “wealth tax” on Canada’s top one per cent of earners, which he estimates would rake in $40 billion a year; capping rent increases nationally and establishing a “Federal Housing Secretariat” similar to the Major Projects Office to co-ordinate home-building projects; ending any federal approvals for new pipelines, or other natural gas projects, and building a nationwide clean energy grid instead; pushing back on U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs with a tax on oil and gas exports to the U.S.; pausing expanding AI data centres in Canada and guarantee Canadians would always be able to talk to a real person when accessing federal services; offering free public transit, high-speed rail, inter-community electric bus services and revisiting the zero-emission vehicle mandate; investing two per cent of Canada’s GDP in tackling climate change, allegedly creating more than one million “good paying union jobs” and transitioning fossil fuel workers in the process; creating a public alternative to the big grocery chains, which he estimates could cut grocery costs by as much as 40 per cent using a warehouse-style model; establishing a public pharmaceutical manufacturer to rebuild domestic vaccine production capacity and ease reliance on foreign pharmaceutical suppliers; rebuilding the party through empowering members and Electoral District Associations (EDAs) as well as making training more frequent and nominating candidates early.
“This is a challenging time for New Democrats. But our campaign believes that we can build back stronger than we ever have before. The NDP’s best days are still ahead of us” is the motto of the new leader, on whom the NDP base has decided to place its hopes of once again making the left heard in Canada.
In the pic above, Avi Lewis at the NDP convention (photo: Twitter X – @avilewis)
