All would be credible leaders in their own right, but I feel Avi Lewis is best poised to improve the NDP’s standing, challenge corporate power in Canada, and build a socialist vision to fight back against Trump’s assault on our country. While I could speak to many things, I want to highlight a few key strengths of Lewis that set him apart from the field.

First, Lewis has demonstrated some real organizational prowess. He’s had large rallies across the country, bringing in sizeable and energetic crowds. But Lewis has also succeeded in the realm of fundraising. Often, New Democrats treat fundraising as a 4-letter word, but the reality is that you need at least a decent sum of money to compete, even if you don’t quite match capitalist party coffers. In this context, Lewis has already raised more money than Jagmeet Singh did in his 2017 leadership contest, when the NDP was a much higher point in the polls, with many more seats in Parliament. Lewis’ campaign reports raising $783,000, and that was as of the end of 2025. It’s likely a decent bit higher now. EDIT: since publication, Lewis’ fundraising total has quickly increases, and has eclipsed 1 million dollars by January 28th

This to be fair is notably less than Carney raised in his Liberal leadership run. But it’s enough that Lewis has demonstrated a capacity to build a war chest and campaign machine, which bodes well in a general election.

Second, Lewis has made it clear he understands the flaws of our political status quo, and how that’s rooted in our First Past the Post system. He has made a commitment to ensure proportional representation is a priority in any minority parliament negotiations with him as leader. This is critical, because many Canadians feel trapped by FPTP, and how it forces them to vote out of fear, rather than hope. FPTP also intensifies regional conflict in Canada, because progressives don’t have a voice in rural Alberta, while Conservatives don’t have a voice in urban Montreal.

Making this a priority ensures that the Liberals will be forced to reckon with their hypocrisy on “strategic voting:” that if they want to scaremonger Canadians about the dangers of a false Conservative majority, the only way to actually solve that is by working with the NDP. And if they continue to preserve the FPTP status quo, it becomes clear they are fine risking a Poilievre majority that their base clearly opposes.

Third, Lewis is only candidate even marginally prepared to communicate in both official languages. Now, to be clear, Lewis himself admits he has work to do in this regard, but among the 5 candidates, he has the most developed ability to speak in French, and this is essential in trying to win back support in Quebec, as well as setting the narrative of a viable national campaign. In my recent interview with him, he made immersing himself in French a first priority upon winning the leadership.

Finally, and most importantly, Lewis understands Canadians need economic democracy to challenge the power corporations—foreign and domestic—have over our lives. Carney made hay in the 2025 election by referring to Canadians as “co-owners” of the country. But he doesn’t actually mean that. Because his ideology is centred around private power dominating the public arena. Of capitalists—including American capitalists cozy to Trump—deciding our fate even if we oppose it. Of his government teaming up with corporations to crush workers’ right to strike at record speed in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

But Lewis seeks to make this rhetoric a reality by massively increasing the role of worker and public ownership of the economy. By ensuring that the Canadian people have the economic tools to resist the power of both Bay Street AND Wall Street. In many ways, Lewis offers us a modern vision of what CCF-NDP at its best has stood for: a belief that we can use economic planning and solidarity to build a cooperative commonwealth for all Canadians.

And make no mistake: this is also the way to defeat Trumpism. Carney’s approach is mostly to appease Trump and gesture to dissidence occasionally. We get speeches about a ‘post-USA global framework’, but Carney still defers to Trump on everything from war crimes in Venezuela to our domestic tax policy.

Carney and Poilievre, in short, want to make Canada more like America: more trickle-down economics, more tax cuts for the wealthy, and more cuts to public services. But you don’t defeat American domination by trying to out Wall Street Wall Street. You defeat it by being the antithesis of Trumpist America, and a democratic socialist Canada under Avi Lewis and the NDP is a important first step

So if you want build a Canada that’s Strong, Free, and Just, join me in supporting Avi.

sign up as a member of the NDP before January 28th, 2026. You can do so here for $5.

But curiously—when it comes to the rich, wealthy, and well-connected—conservatives and liberals seem willing to bend over backwards and ignore the ways in which they exploit the working class. If you’re rich, more often than not Crime is Legal.

This is where a new, bold version of the NDP can shine. It’s time to both pass new laws that criminalize currently legal exploitative acts by capitalists, as well as enforce the existing laws already on the books.

To be fair, none of this is a totally new idea, and for many decades workers have often demanded that if a capitalist kills a worker, they should go do jail. Nonetheless, the status quo is mostly that capitalists can defraud and deprive the working class without any legal consequence, and when they DO face consequences, they usually result in fines that are so low that the criminal activity was still profitable.

This is where Avi Lewis—likely set to run for the NDP leadership—is stepping in. Commenting on the long-running bread price fixing scandal in Canada, Lewis made it clear that mere fines will never actually solve the issue, because they amount to pocket change when it comes to the billionaire class:

Lewis is correct that when you make 4.5 billion in ill-gotten profits, and then only have to shell out 500 million in a settlement, that isn’t a punishment in any real sense: that’s just the cost of doing business on the backs of the working class.

And the sickening irony is clear: if a regular Canadian stole bread, they could spend time behind bars. But if you steal BILLIONS in bread profits from the mouths of hungry children and low-income people, you’re a well-respected member of the elite.

And while leftists should continue to question if carceral approaches are even effective in addressing criminality, the fact is that the capitalist elite DOES believe harsh criminal policies work when it comes to disciplining the 99%.

It’s time for them to taste the consequence of their own ideology.

But as the NDP warned, Carney was simply going to copy Poilievre, and their prediction was spot on. The warning signs for this actually came before the election, but socialists and feminists were shouted down by Liberals as Carney’s preliminary cabinet eliminated a dedicated minister seat for women’s rights. “Be quiet!” they said, lest we supposedly help Conservatives win.

Well lo and behold that Carney just launched a truly brutal cut for gender equality programs in Canada:

Women and Gender Equality Canada expects to see its spending cut by 81 per cent by 2027-28, and staffing levels drop from 444 full-time equivalents this fiscal year to 254 on the three-year horizon

The 2025-26 document for the department, known as WAGE, was released in late June and outlines a $407-million budget this year, which drops to $284.7-million in 2026-27, and $76.3-million in 2027-28.

As this report from The Hill Times notes, many advocates for women are stunned by these cuts, which could be more brutal than the ALREADY draconian ones aimed at the broader federal budget. Adding to this is public educator Julie Lalonde, who pointed out that these cuts to WAGE are worse than those under the previous Conservative government, in which Poilievre was a cabinet minister

Harper cut the department's budget by 60% mere months into taking power and the women's movement in Canada is still trying to recover. In fact, I worked for a national organization that was completely defunded by that cut and we had to close. And that was only a 60% cut!

I’ve already spoken about how Carney’s proposed Bill C-2 threatens essential abortion privacy, but in recent days many women’s rights advocates and medical professionals have sounded the alarm as Carney backs away from the national pharmacare program, closing off access to free contraceptive programs that were pushed by the NDP, and which have been implemented in only 3 provinces. Carney is refusing to expand that access, which physician Amanda Black is calling a “step backwards for women’s health.” So while the Liberal government in New Brunswick is eager to join the Pharmacare program to obtain contraceptives, Carney’s government won’t even return their calls.

• Cutting gender equality spending by 81%

• Putting up roadblocks to contraception access

• Allowing police to get private abortion info without a warrant

These were ALL things that liberal partisans warned would happen with Poilievre.

But they’re happening with Carney here and now.

And as I noted before, Carney doing this helps Poilievre, both by doing his dirty work for him, but also making him appear more centrist as the Liberal and Conservative policy books merge into one.

Most didn’t listen, and voted for the Liberals anyway. Now consequences are being felt. Carney is not only keeping many of the right-wing promises he made, such as gutting the carbon tax and capital gains tax, but he’s making rightward moves in DIRECT opposition to his election promises.

He promised to fight Trump with an “elbows up” mentality, only to let Trump dictate our domestic tax policy in a way that benefits American billionaires over Canadian workers. He ran on a budget that would cap public service spending at 2% increases, only to revise that to 15% CUTS after the votes had been locked in. And while Carney promised increased money for many “nation building” programs like Via Rail and the CBC—including a specific $150 million dollar increase pledge for the latter—he is now demanding they find major cuts that will hamper their ability to function and proliferate Canadian culture and connectivity.

The NDP said all of this would happen, although I think even many party officials are surprised by just how quickly Carney has shifted to the right, which includes alliances in Parliament with the Conservatives to pass the throne speech and ram through bill C-5 without full debate (silencing many Indigenous leaders in the consultative process).

Any way you slice it, Poilievre is the winner of the 2025 Canadian Federal Election, even if he lost his own seat. As I noted on March 8th for Ricochet (before Carney was even selected as Liberal leader), his victory would ultimately be a triumph for Poilievre because Carney’s platform was largely a copy of Pierre’s biggest hits:

Canadians are rightly frustrated with the status quo, but Carney is the status quo personified. He is offering a bargain to the 1 per cent in Canada: I can give you what Poilievre is promising, with less drama…Mark Carney didn’t come back to Canada to help the working class; he came back to crush it.

But Poilievre isn’t merely a winner because Carney copied his platform and outflanked him on the right (doing things like threatening abortion privacy in a way even Harper didn’t). Poilievre also wins because even he knew many of his moves would be unpopular. Cutting jobs and programs while giving big tax cuts to billionaires is never popular, even among right-of-centre voters, and he would have had to spend major political capital if he won to implement these policies.

And because Liberals wouldn’t support what Carney’s doing if a Conservative was doing the identical thing, he would have been confronted by bigger protests (as Harper was in prior to the 2015 election)

So this is the best of both worlds for him. He gets to sit back and watch Carney do his dirty work, which will only serve to anger Canadians and increase his chance at power, looking more moderate now in comparison to the increasingly right-wing Carney.

The CBC cuts really did seem to awaken some strategic voters and even a few Carney fans. But people need to remember this lesson when the next election comes. A vote for the Liberal Party is a vote for Pierre Poilievre and his toxic capitalist ideology.

One of my biggest criticisms as a long-time NDP member who has held elected positions in the party2 is that we scare ourselves into timidity and inaction. To be sure, when we take good positions—from championing dentalcare to denouncing Israel’s genocide—the capitalist press launches many attacks. But it’s incumbent upon us to resist those attacks and amplify them as examples of our enemies being wrong. Bernie Sanders, during his presidential runs for example, would produce lists of “anti-endorsements” which included capitalists and right-wingers who opposed his widely popular policies like Medicare For All and wealth taxes.

The capitalist press will NEVER give the NDP a fair shot, and nor should we expect it to: if the NDP is doing its job correctly, it should strike existential fear in the boardrooms of Toronto and New York.

Subscribe now

The press already does this now from time-to-time certainly, but not enough to convince Canadians that the NDP is the alternative to the emerging Carney-Poilievre coalition. Saying the word socialism can instantly cut through.

And let’s be clear: If Zohran Mamdani can say it in the United States—a country which has never had an successful established democratic socialist party—then we can say it in Canada. And Mamdani didn’t just say he was a socialist critical of capitalism quietly in front of a niche audience. He went into the capitalist media den to do so.

"No. I have many critiques of capitalism…I think ultimately, the definition for me, of why I call myself a democratic socialist, is the words of Dr. King decades ago. Call it democracy or call it democratic socialism; there must be a better distribution of wealth for all of God's children in this country.' And that's what I'm focused on, is dignity and taking on income inequality.

You read that correctly. The CNN host called Mamdani a democratic socialist, and he did not flinch, even for a moment. He then explained how capitalism fails the human spirit and any sense of justice, and how socialism fulfills it. Folks who are familiar with the Canadian left back to the CCF days will hear echoes of Tommy Douglas, J.S Woodsworth, and Stanley Knowles in this statement: all people who had a socialism defined in part by faith in building a better world.

We need to be more explicit in our language: we shouldn’t simply be trying to “grow the middle class” or “stop corporate greed” or “make the rich pay their fair share”

Those are all perfectly fine goals, but in reality we should be trying to build a society where democracy extends into the workplace, where the people own the economy as a commonwealth, and where billionaires and centi-millionaires are extinct as a concept. They should be able to plainly say that capitalism is bad because it doesn’t work for the 99%.

That’s not progressivism: that’s socialism. And if the Globe and Mail and National Post flip their lids as we say it, we know we’re on the right track.

While many people in the party—including folks I have deep respect for—want to see a shorter leadership race timeframe to get the new person up and running, I think time is needed to put forward a vision, welcome new voices, energize the base, raise money, and account for past errors. All of this is harder, I feel, if the race is too rushed.

Let’s break down how taking our time, even if only for a moderate amount, can help move forward

We Need Time to Talk

Obviously the party achieved an awful result in the 2025 election, both in seat count and popular vote share. There are many reasons this is the case, but it’s not a fully simplistic answer. Some will suggest the party veered to close to the centre; others will suggest the party became too ‘woke’ (whatever the hell that means); some will suggest that the former leader needed to exit before the election to get a fresh face. Further still, many will argue that the Trump factor made this a unique election, from which pulling lessons could be difficult.

How we debate and discuss these matters will drive the contest, but these talks being accelerated could lead up to reactive choices that have us running toward the LAST election, rather than the NEXT one.

NDP MP Heather McPherson, who many expect will be running for leader, is having some of those discussions right now. Jumping into a leadership vote right away would cut them short.

We Need a Proven Organizer

One limitation of a short race is that it doesn’t allow emerging candidates to prove their mettle, whereas with time a newer candidate can demonstrate their competency and prospect for winning. A very short timeframe won’t entail picking a great organizer, but rather someone who already has an audience. If we want a comprehensive contest where say—an exciting candidate can burst through—that can only happen with some time to percolate.

And this isn’t to say that we should outright reject perceived frontrunners: what better way to prove you belong at the top then by building a national movement of passionate New Democrats?

This will also help us going into the next election, because the time taken to organize leadership contest votes will carry over if we do it right.

Subscribe now

We Need a Proven Fundraiser

Talk about money is often uncomfortable in NDP circles. Many recoil at the idea that our leader must be able to raise money, and that members should have this as a priority in who they decide to choose. One place where I disagree with many fellow leftists in the NDP is that I support a fairly high leadership entry fee. While some see that as limiting accessibility, I feel it’s actually proving the ability to run a modern, high-cost campaign to compete with the capitalist parties.

Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Zohran Mamdani have repeatedly demonstrated you can raise large sums of money based off ‘27 dollar average donations’, and if we’re looking to build a movement to transform Canada, the next leader must rival them in fundraising prowess

But much like with the above point, you can’t actually determine who the best fundraiser is with a short timeframe. A longer race will allow outsider candidates the time to raise money, and not have it be just who has the most well-off friends at the start of the contest.

We Need to Introduce Candidates to Canadians

Name recognition in politics isn’t everything, of course, but it does have some inherent value. Right now, however, even the expected frontrunners for leader aren’t especially well-known by Canadians. Reporting by The Canadian Press indicates this:

A majority of respondents to the Research Co. poll said they “don’t know who the person is” when asked about possible candidates like current New Democrat MPs Leah Gazan, Gord Johns, Jenny Kwan and Heather McPherson.

The same goes for other high-profile New Democrats like former House leader Ruth Ellen Brosseau, former Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart and filmmaker Avi Lewis.

This means that some of the biggest names in the race are unknowns, to say nothing of emerging voices. A leadership race will be a rare point in time where the NDP gets sustained media coverage: time where Canadians can meet the candidates and engage with them. This can’t be done if the process is rushed.

While I respect the position that the party would benefit from a new leader in Parliament ASAP, there are bigger pitfalls to rushing into a mistake. Besides, I feel like Don Davies has been doing an admirable job as interim leader.

Let’s use this time to build and invest in the party’s future

Political democracy is not enough. Social democracy is our goal…We must not take refuge in the rhetoric of modern conservatives who say political democracy is sufficient…On the contrary, we must face all issues of work squarely, certainly recognizing both priorities and complexities, and yet remaining firmly committed to the building of that fuller kind of democracy which alone can make it possible for the lives of Canadians to be both just and exciting.

Ed Broadbent

What concept is more celebrated in Canadian society than that of democracy? How often are Canadians called upon to appreciate the fact that they have the ability to freely choose their officials from numerous parties in a trustworthy electoral process? How often are we told that servicemen and women have died, and continue to die, for our right to vote and have a voice within our society? The idea that Canada is a democracy, and that democracy is good, are as close to two universally-accepted statements that one might make. But this only really applies to the boundaries of politics, wherein all adult citizens have a right to vote and seek public office. It does not apply to other societal arenas, the most important one being our workplaces, which are in essence little autocracies, where owners and managers exact immense power over workers, even in unionized environments, but especially in workplaces without collective agreements.

Unfortunately, this fact is too rarely addressed in today’s mainstream political discourse, in part because the left has largely discarded it as a primary platform issue. With the rise of neoliberal politics, the left across the western world began to de-emphasize the notion that the economy was best when controlled by democratic interests. Certainly, the left in Canada as represented by the NDP hasn’t wholesale given up on the importance of public ownership and organized labour, but over the last thirty years most social democratic bodies have retreated from a commitment to build an economic democracy.

In my view, economic democracy needs to be reprioritized by the contemporary NDP as a central plank of our social and economic policy. We live in a time of unimaginable wealth held in concentrated personal and corporate hands. These companies and individuals have major sway over local, regional, national, and sometimes even international governments. Recently, major cities across North America have been applying to land an Amazon shipping centre in a process that essentially amounts to groveling before the feet of the world’s richest man and his company. Such power in the hands of one man, or one company, is the antithesis of a democratic economy and a democratic society.

Further, many people are concerned about humanity entering a new, unprecedented phase of automation, which will render millions of workers of both brain and hand unemployable. One popular remedy bandied about is a Basic Income Guarantee to keep those rendered jobless with the ability survive independent of work. But this solution leaves a great deal to be desired, chiefly because it would fail to address the fact that only a sliver of people will fully benefit from economic transformations that belong to the communities whose collective labour made everything possible. More than programs permitting people to subsist, we need democratic mechanisms to ensure that a new industrial age doesn’t lead to a further bifurcation between those with and without industrial power.

Furthermore, Canadian social democrats don’t need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to these questions, because under the Federal NDP leaderships of Tommy Douglas, David Lewis, and Ed Broadbent, the issue of building a more democratic economy was one of the major intellectual drivers of party philosophy. My view is that the Canadian social-democratic left—which has always placed great weight on its historical roots—has much to learn from these three leaders on this front in particular.

Tommy Douglas was convinced as the 1970s approached that the next big step in Canadian history was just around the corner. He saw Canada build up robust institutions of political democracy, along with a competent—if still not comprehensive—system of social security. But the missing piece was that of economic democracy, meaning that the NDP must turn its “attention to the second phase of socialist philosophy, which is to achieve the democratization of the economy.” Douglas never wed himself to one specific definition of the concept, drawing inspiration from Yugoslavia, West Germany, and Sweden, but suggested that it would include an increase in public ownership, a greater recognition of union rights, employee representation on company boards, and a conviction that because societal progress is a collective endeavour, the fruits of that endeavour must be democratically shared:

In a complex and inter-dependent society like ours workers should not be tossed on the human scrap heap as the victims of technology. Scientific and industrial progress are not due to the efforts of employers alone…All segments of our society…have contributed to advances and all should have a voice in making the decisions that affect their interests…Industrial peace in the future will be largely dependent upon our ability to build economic democracy as a corollary to our political democracy. Workers already have the right to decide who shall govern them; they should equally have a voice in determining their economic destiny. To deny this is to reduce democracy to a periodic stint at the ballot box.

David Lewis likewise highlighted the undemocratic structure of workplaces. This reality, more than even wages and benefits, triggered industrial class conflict. He felt that employers did all they could to resist worker and public power because it limited their own. In spite of this, he felt social democrats must persistently strive towards “participatory democracy: the right of the worker to have some effective voice in the decisions that affect his life.” But more than facilitating this through collective bargaining, Lewis would challenge contemporary property rights, because those rights were there primarily to protect the holders of capital, and not workers nor all those who held only token amounts of personal private property. In doing so, Lewis argued that workers should have the property right to their job just as legitimately as the ownership conferred by capital investment.

But of the three leaders, Broadbent himself was most intrigued by democratizing the economy, especially because he felt that “Canada is a parliamentary democracy, but an industrial autocracy.” Again, the issue here was that while elements of economic democracy existed in Canada through crown corporations and collective bargaining, they failed to manifest in what Broadbent called “effective power” for regular Canadians, by which he meant the ability to do more than simply resist and consult. The only solution was to exchange an economy “controlled by a private few, with one controlled by the public many.” This would be predicated on the dissolution of the “so-called prerogatives of management…that makes our present economic institutions inherently unequal and inherently undemocratic.” And while Broadbent’s words here certainly ring as radical and provocative, he was not simply speaking for dramatic impact:

This is not a Utopian ideal…Autocracy is no longer a practical form of government in industry, and will not be tolerated by the new generation of workers…They demand a more humanized, more democratic environment in the workplace and insist that enterprises operate in a manner consistent with the welfare of the community as a whole. Politicians and governments should encourage this revolutionary change.

Ultimately, what all three of these men emphasized was that however important things like Medicare, education, and social security were, they did not constitute the outer boundaries of the social-democratic project.

Canadian social democrats, simply put, need to re-embrace the value in challenging private property’s dominance over the state. This sort of change won’t happen overnight, even if social democrats are swept into power across much of Canada. But having a democratic economy serve as a long-term objective for the Canadian left is a worthy one that is both loyal to our political traditions, and forward-looking in addressing the defects of 21^st century capitalism.

This article—updated here—originally appeared on the Broadbent Institute blog on March 18, 2018 and now appears on the Institute's publication Perspectives: A Canadian Journal of Political Economy and Social Democracy.

That relief was a mirage. DOGE—a right-wing program to reduce public services under the guise of efficiency—is coming to Canada, and because Mark Carney is objectively more competent than Trump and Musk, he’ll be more effective in instituting a right-leaning program of austerity.

As reported by The Globe and Mail earlier today, the cuts will be coming hard and fast across most of the federal government:

Federal cabinet ministers are being asked to find “ambitious” internal savings this summer ahead of the 2025 budget as Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government must now sort out how it will pay for the billions of dollars in new spending that it recently announced.

In concrete terms, this means Carney is asking his cabinet to make staggering cuts of 15%. If that feels shocking, it is. Remember that during the election, many Carney supporters warned that if Poilievre was elected, it would entail the return of Stephen Harper’s brutal cuts and attacks on public services. Well as it turns out, these “Carney Cuts” would make Harper blush.

Economist Rob Gillezeau notes that what were seeing was inconceivable even when Poilievre was in cabinet last time under Harper. In fact, we would have to go back to the 1990s for such hack-and-slash austerity: “The proposed spending reductions are equivalent to the huge cuts in the Chretien-Martin era and an order of magnitude greater than the Harper era spending cuts.”

So it’s yet again clear that Canadians got duped despite clear (and proven correct) warnings from the NDP. They voted for Carney to stop Harper 2.0, and in effect got a man doing some things more right-wing than Harper ever did. But this has been the Carney calling card since before the election. He has made priorities clear: This is a man whose first move was cutting a capital gains tax increase which would have applied to only a few thousand Canadians that make an average of 1.4 million dollars a year on average. He’s also bent the knee to Trump, choosing to cut digital service taxes on American mega-corporations before protecting our public services.

Even still, Carney didn’t telegraph austerity this harsh. During the campaign he signaled a plan to stagnate the budget more or less, saying he would cap increases to 2%, which would entails small cuts after factoring inflation. But nowhere did he win a mandate for 15-32% cuts.

Carney’s DOGE will have the same broad objective as Trump and Musk’s: gut public services to funnel money to rich and to militaristic spending. This is why Trump demanded harsh cuts on key services like Medicaid while shoveling ungodly sums of money to ICE. And this is why Carney is demanding dangerous cuts while he spikes military spending to 5% of GDP

But Carney is no dummy: he’s not a fool like Trump and Musk, as such his efforts could be more devastating and long-lasting.

Canadians might look back on this moment 30 years from now and see this as our “Ronald Reagan Ruined Everything” moment.

CLARIFICATION: New reporting has the government clarifying it’s mistake in how it communicated its cuts. in the original reporting, the cuts were laid out as (5%, 7.5%, 15%, totaling 32.5%).

But new reporting says: “Champagne informed ministers that they must find ways to reduce program spending by 7.5 per cent starting in the 2026-27 fiscal year, followed by another 2.5 per cent in 2027-28 and 5 per cent in 2028-29”

Regardless, even at 15% the cuts would be quite a bit more harsh than Stephen Harper’s