A year after the NDP suffered its worst electoral defeat in party history, new leader Avi Lewis stood on stage at the party’s convention and promised its renewal.
“Canada, mark your calendars: the NDP comeback starts now.”
Reactions from some quarters have been swift and furious. Lewis has come under attack by Prairie NDP leaders, establishment media columnists, and pro-Israel lobby groups.
To solicit the views of those on the Canadian Left, whose forces helped power Lewis to victory, The Breach collected responses to the following question: how should the Left orient itself to the new, Lewis-led NDP?
Five organizers answered, ranging from skepticism to super-charged excitement.
With Lewis as leader, it’s time to go all in on the NDP
By Shawn Vulliez
Avi Lewis could be Prime Minister.
Like Jack Layton or Tommy Douglas, he’s unflappably nice. A happy warrior. He can shake hands and kiss babies. He’s not at all intimidating. He’s a policy nerd. But he can land a punch. In the prime ministerial debates, he will.
Like former B.C. Premier Dave Barrett, he’s an outsider who can speak on his feet in a way that’s totally natural. That’s rare among politicians. He doesn’t need to stifle himself for a message box, and his policy instincts are movement-hardened. He can go on the fly.
The timid wing of the NDP has such a deep fixation on false pragmatism they can’t see what’s in front of them: that Lewis has a type of charisma that will register with a wide base of voters.
Voters want people to shake up the system. The majority of them recognize the system is rigged against them.
Lewis has been under attack since day one as leader. The political class and the billionaire-backed media have been up in arms. Ironically, this is going to show voters that he’s on our side.
The screeching enemies of free society are ironically going to do 24/7 earned media for Lewis’s NDP by attacking his popular agenda. Seeing him unfairly targeted will create zealous defenders. This will create a base of amplifiers that will form a social scaffolding for the movement politics and political education outlined in Lewis’s plan to renew the NDP.
There are a handful of cities—including Greater Vancouver and Toronto and Montreal—that will make natural homes for a left-populist platform with well-spoken and respected candidates who can carry the banner.
In cities where the NDP has never broken through, the base can target one or two high-impact ridings and eke out new footholds.
Lewis’s NDP can show an impressive trajectory in the next election, going from just six seats to 25 or 50 in just a single cycle. This will amplify the elite screeching and talking-head doubters, which will agitate the base further, and inspire people to action.
Tommy Douglas peaked at 22 seats. Ed Broadbent got up to 43. Thomas Mulcair managed to hold on to 44. Jagmeet Singh dipped to 25.
Here’s a thought experiment: what percentage of people think a transition on climate and inequality is necessary?
How many fewer think it is possible?
If the people who feel it’s necessary suddenly see it is possible, what happens?
It’s critical we on the Left use this opportunity to build resilient party infrastructure, put forward a bold national platform, and elect those who aren’t afraid to make powerful enemies and fight for people.
I’ve been a member of the NDP on and off for a decade. This is the first time I’ve been all in.
Avi is underestimated. He’s legit. People are going to like him. I’m putting my chips on him. We can win.
Shawn Vulliez is the Campaign Director for the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) Vancouver and co-host of the SRSLY WRONG comedy podcast.
The NDP won’t save us. Working-class struggle will
By Deena Newaz and Dave Bush
To be a socialist is to be an optimist, and we believe we can achieve radical change. But we cannot wait for Avi Lewis or the NDP to build our movements and deliver us socialism.
The Left should use this moment to think bigger about the possibilities of reaching wider audiences with our ideas.
That means rebuilding a militant trade union movement and vibrant social movements that draw in new layers of people into struggle. We desperately need independent extra-parliamentary movements built from below, along class lines, to weather the oncoming violent opposition from the capitalist state to Lewis’s project.
It is these independent mass movements that will come to the rescue and become wind in the sails for the best parts of the NDP. Movements push governments to take bold action, as we have seen for Palestine solidarity and against austerity here in Canada.
Without these strong movements, history shows us that a socialist electoral strategy will crash into the shoals of the capitalist state and end up managing capitalism rather than advancing socialism. The price of electoral victories for the Left is too often the abandonment of socialist transformation and the hollowing-out of independent social movements and the power of workers.
Avi Lewis’s victory is a welcome development and points to a real opening for the Left. The weakness of the NDP has created room for Lewis to step to the left—but it would be a mistake to think that the wider working class automatically supports more robust social democratic demands, let alone socialism.
As socialists, we are pushing for something broader than just a parliamentary project. By building something independent of and bigger than the NDP and uniting Lewis’s voters with people who didn’t vote for Lewis or even the NDP, we can bolster the chance that the policies proposed by Lewis can land and find a home in the working class. This requires patient organizing and building at workplaces, in communities, and in neighborhoods, often with people who we don’t agree with.
People’s ideas can change, but that can only meaningfully happen through struggle that involves them directly in transforming their own conditions. Anyone who has organized in their union or community can tell you the hard work it takes to win people and create pathways for easy and accessible activity to bring them into struggle. Our aim should be to bolster the confidence of workers to take on bosses, landlords, and reactionary politicians.
We want to build mass movements that give expression to the demands of the working class for a decent and dignified life. Under capitalism, that work cannot be done by Lewis or even a renewed NDP alone without a broader, independent project. Otherwise, the defeat of the leader will become the defeat of you.
Let’s use this opening to unite and build even bigger movements that we desperately need.
Deena Newaz is a labour union researcher, organizer, and member of the Spring Socialist Network. Dave Bush is a labour journalist and organizer, as well as a member of Spring.
Filling the “missing middle” between Lewis’s campaign and a revitalized Left
by Nathan Rao
First, let’s celebrate and savour the Avi Lewis win.
Then, let’s be honest: this win was also the result of the unprecedented weakness of the forces in the NDP—the trade union leaders and the associated layers of professionals and consultants—that have been arrayed against the Left for decades. They were dealt a massive blow by the NDP’s near-collapse in the April 2025 federal elections.
It means the techniques Lewis used to win the NDP leadership will not be enough to overcome the many much larger challenges his project will face in the short and medium term.
The dominance of the centre-Right Carney Liberals and the MAGA-adjacent hard-Right Conservatives is not going to dissipate any time soon. The political and media establishment’s belligerent and even hysterical response to the Lewis project has already begun. And though temporarily weakened and disoriented, those hostile to his project in and around the NDP itself will seek to confine him to the margins.
So what can we do to sustain and build upon this historic breakthrough for the Left?
Lewis has said that it can’t only be a matter of bold policies, but also has to involve transforming the way we conduct Left politics. Right now, the NDP relies on bureaucratic, election-obsessed, and often-moribund electoral district associations (EDAs). This structure is clearly not up to the task at hand.
Lewis has spoken of turning EDAs into activist hubs. These would be places where new and old leftists could think critically together, debate, learn new skills, conduct political education, set priorities, and take collective initiatives.
The Lewis campaign proved that the human resources for such a project exist. And it would be a huge missed opportunity to treat the thousands of people who rallied for Lewis as simply door-knockers and phone-bankers.
But there is no clear path from here to the mushrooming of these organizing hubs across the country. “The Left” in Canada is a very fragmented and uneven range of groups, campaigns, and individuals. And many of the people drawn to the Lewis project have no previous political experience and can’t shoulder the hubs project alone as individuals entering their local EDAs.
We need to fill the “missing middle” between Lewis’s campaign team, and the vision of vibrant countrywide organizing hubs. We need a “constituent assembly” of sorts to discuss these difficult strategic and organizational questions frankly, and to determine concrete steps toward building the proposed network of hubs.
The assembly could select one or two priority initiatives as a “proof of concept” of the hubs vision. Why not a Canada-wide anti-war coalition against the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran, Palestine, and Lebanon? Or a mobilization against Carney’s C-5 attack on Indigenous sovereignty and the environment?
If successful, the hubs could build the dynamism and unity that would attract thousands of people across the country. During and between election campaigns, they could break the centre-Right and hard-Right stranglehold over politics and build the power we’ll need for our project of human emancipation, internationalism, and ecological restoration.
Lewis has the opportunity—and responsibility—to make this a reality. And the rest of us on the Left should do everything we can to help.
Nathan Rao is a Toronto-based translator and interpreter. He supported the Avi Lewis leadership campaign and helped organize a past and upcoming meeting to discuss the questions raised here. He also co-wrote a short essay on the Lewis campaign with Marcel Nelson. He writes under a pen name.
We need a new organization that can fight for socialism, inside and outside the party
By Emma Jackson
Avi Lewis’s victory opens new opportunities for the Left in Canada to democratize the NDP and turn it into a political vehicle for the 99 per cent. To succeed in this effort, we must learn from insurgent campaigns that have tried to transform Left institutions by building power both within and outside of them.
In 2008, disgruntled rank-and-file teachers in Chicago formed the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) to revive the Chicago Teachers’ Union and transform it into a democratized and militant trade union. Within years, the caucus slate had swept the union’s elected positions, organized one of the most powerful strikes in modern U.S. history, and begun negotiating for contracts that would benefit not just members but broader communities.
A similar formation emerged in the UK after Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership of the Labour party. Members of his campaign created an organization called Momentum that sought to organize both inside and outside the Labour Party to advance a socialist project within and build popular support for socialist politics without.
While the Avi Lewis campaign signed up over tens of thousands of new members to the NDP, captured 56 per cent of the vote, and swept the key governance positions in the party, the NDP is still shaped by forces that will not disappear with a change in leadership. Corporate lobbyists, provincial wings of the party, and a culture wary of “outsiders” will continue to shape organizing conditions within the party.
We should heed the lessons of CORE and Momentum and build an organization that acts as a bridge between extra-parliamentary organizing and the NDP. This organization would channel the demands of social movements into the Party’s policy-making processes, build popular support for socialist ideas, and create a mechanism of accountability for the new left-wing leader.
Such an organization could create community among those entering their federal EDAs for the first time, helping them navigate entrenched cultures and potential hostility. It could build relationships with social movement leaders and organizations who are still justifiably reluctant to trust the NDP and work to bridge these relationships to the party over time. And most importantly, it could develop a base of skilled organizers who could be deployed to pass critical resolutions at conventions, but also to campaign year-round on issue-based campaigns, get socialist municipal councillors elected, or organize in opposition to Mark Carney’s pro-corporate agenda.
As CORE and Momentum make clear, those seeking to transform the NDP will benefit from being unified by a sharp and coherent theory of change—one that doesn’t underestimate the resilience of existing culture and structures. To win socialism within our lifetimes, we need more than a change in leadership. We need to build a new organization, alongside a common front of militant trade unions, powerful social movements, and a democratized NDP.
Emma Jackson is an organizer living in Edmonton, Alberta. She was the outreach director on the Avi Lewis campaign.