Michael Serapio: Well, to talk about where things stand and a motion that his party introduced today when they were trying to get the House of Commons to vote, we’re now joined by Avi Lewis, the recently elected leader of the federal New Democrats. Mr. Lewis, Avi, thank you for being here.
Avi Lewis: Hi, Michael. Good to be here again.
Michael Serapio: Good to see you. So listen, I want to start this by noting that we will talk about your party’s surveillance pricing motion. But first I want to get your lay of the land here because here we have the Liberals today celebrating their majority. They welcome to their fold three new MPs, one elected amongst them. But one of those entering the Liberal fold is a former deputy leader of the Ontario New Democrats. So what do you make of this Liberal majority and how it’s been cobbled together?
Avi Lewis: Yeah, I mean, it is a majority government and things are going to change in Ottawa now. And I think it’s troubling the way the majority has been assembled. I know the Liberals like to say they wanted the by-elections, but they barely needed the by-elections because of all the floor-crossers. And this floor-crossing phenomenon — I think if you talk to experts in parliamentary history, I don’t know it’s ever happened before that a majority government has been assembled in a British parliamentary system from floor-crossers.
Canadians vote for the member of parliament and they vote for the party. And to see someone cross the floor, I mean, everybody knows the NDP has a policy against it. We believe if you want to change parties, resign, get a by-election, get a new mandate from the people. I worry about our relationship to our own vote and to democracy. We’re living in a time of rising authoritarianism around the world. Two-party system in the United States where they’re kind of interchangeable in some ways led to the cynicism and the alienation that led to Donald Trump. And we need to have a vote that’s meaningful, which is why we also need proportional representation so we don’t have 36% or 37% of the vote giving a government absolute power. And things like floor-crossings, they just erode the sense that Canadians have that our vote matters. And so I think it’s troubling, I really do.
Michael Serapio: Okay, you find it troubling, and you’re right. I mean, had it not been for these five floor-crossers plus these three by-election wins, there would be no Liberal majority. But as you know, there remains speculation that there could be more floor-crossers. Are you worried or concerned that one of your members might cross the floor?
Avi Lewis: No, I’m not. But I don’t think anybody sees it coming when it comes. But we’re a very small caucus. We meet in a minivan or whatever. Fill in your… I’m not going to go for Don Davies’ press gallery speech level of comedy here. But yes, we’re a small, intimate gathering.
And I had a caucus meeting, my first full multi-hour caucus meeting today. And it’s an incredible bunch of parliamentarians who have been doing really hard work with absolutely no support or resources since we lost party status compared to what we’ve had historically. So it’s a very tight group of folks, and we all feel the same way about these floor-crossings.
And I just think that the Carney… It’s now commonplace to say the Carney government has moved to the right. Obviously, these major pieces of legislation are passing with Conservative-Liberal support. And so even the majority might not look that different when you think about the major pieces of legislation that Prime Minister Carney has passed with the Conservatives. But now that you have a social Conservative like Marilyn Gladue in a party with Dolly Begum, I just don’t know what it means to be a Liberal anymore.
And I think for the NDP, this is a moment for us to say to Canadians, we are the progressive party. We are the party of the left. You can count on us to stand up against the corporate oligopolies that sit astride our economy like an octopus and gouge us at the supermarket and at the gas pump. We’re the ones who are going to be fighting back for working-class Canadians. And that Liberal monolithic party that spans the whole political spectrum, it seems to work for the powerful, not the many. And so for us, it’s clarifying.
Michael Serapio: Okay. And to that, your first order of business was to raise the issue of surveillance pricing. You’ve introduced a motion around that today. We’ll get to that motion in a moment. But as you yourself say, a lot of Canadians don’t understand what surveillance pricing is all about. Why is it concerning for you?
Avi Lewis: Well, go shopping online. Open up an incognito private browser window on one device and your own browser window on another and do a test. And you’ll see that you might see completely different prices at the same moment, the same person, at the same time online. And this is happening in grocery stores too. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission documented more than 250 specific examples where with the aid of big tech, retailers like big grocery stores — and we have a big problem with monopoly grocery in Canada — are teaming up with big tech to use your personal search history, AI. Now, within every platform, your email program, your calendar is able to suck up all kinds of information about you, your shopping history, your income maybe, where you live, your postal code, whatever. And use it to give individualized prices to people, even in the retail store, in the supermarket.
This is grossly unfair. It’s super creepy. It’s surveillance pricing and it should be — if it’s not already against the law, it must be against the law. And we’ve called on the Carney government to ban the practice.
Michael Serapio: Which is your motion that came up today. And it was shut down today by the Liberals. But they say they are looking into it, without necessarily supporting your bill. They say they’re looking into what they call algorithmic pricing.
Avi Lewis: The same thing. Lots of different names for it. I think surveillance pricing is a better way of thinking about what’s happening. You are being spied on. We know our devices are listening to us, are spying on us. You have a conversation with a friend about going to Mexico, you go to your Instagram, suddenly it’s selling you trips to Mexico. How do we think this… We know this is happening, right? It should not be used to further price gouge from Canadians, especially when we’re already suffering from a cost of living emergency. The Minister Solomon, the Minister of AI, literally said it wasn’t his department. I don’t know what his department is then. Because AI is central, this technology, to data mining and to hoovering up massive amounts of data about us — and in fact the whole history of human accomplishment online — to fuel these large language models. That’s a really big concern for us as well, which is why we have a humans first AI platform, unlike other parties.
Michael Serapio: Okay, so what do you do then? I mean, you’ve introduced this motion. Again, we now have a majority government. So it’s not going to go anywhere. What do you do with this?
Avi Lewis: Well, I think we raise the alarm among Canadians and we create popular pressure on the government. And I think the government is in a difficult position because they are so pro-AI. And I think Prime Minister Carney’s speech at the Liberal Convention, again, was more sort of cheerleading. This technology is going to make our jobs more interesting. It’s going to make life better for… No, it’s not. I’m not saying put the toothpaste back in the tube. This use of language models has long been used for scientific research, for medical research. There’s uses for them. There’s uses for this technology that are absolutely legit and we need it. But the trillions of dollars that have been poured into the stock market bubble, massive rollout of data centres all over the United States and the world, increasingly in Canada, the only way that they get their money back, these giant tech companies, is that they eliminate millions and millions of jobs. This is a threatening technology that needs serious guardrails. And we need to be able to trust our government to actually stand up to big companies. That has never been their specialty. That’s why we need the NDP.
Michael Serapio: Okay, so this is a conversation that will continue, obviously.
Avi Lewis: Oh, you bet.
Michael Serapio: But before we go, here you are making this argument to me. Love having you as a guest on our program. But at the end of the day, this is an argument that you could be making in the House of Commons. But you’ve said that you don’t feel it as an immediate concern to get a seat in the House. Why is that? Is that a lack of enthusiasm to actually spend full time here in Ottawa?
Avi Lewis: Oh, no. This has been my first week in Ottawa as leader. I’ve been in and out of Ottawa. I’ve been in and out of the West Block. And walking the halls of power is a humbling thing. You know, you feel it in your body, in your sense of purpose as a human being. Holy moly, this is real. This is really happening. This is where decisions get made that affect the daily lives of Canadians from coast to coast to coast. I’m eager to get in here. But we have a party that has some significant challenges. We’re at the bottom of the electoral cycle and we’re still coming back. And the leadership campaign was an extraordinary experience. We’ve seen the momentum and the excitement at our base. We raised a whole bunch of money in the leadership. We’ve got a bunch more money to raise. And I’m excited to tour the country, not as a candidate but as the leader, to spend time in people’s lives in Canada, in rural communities, in the suburbs, where people are working harder and harder, finding it impossible to get by, and talking to Canadians about what we need to do to make this country work again.
Michael Serapio: Okay. You’re a former broadcaster. You’ll appreciate what I say to you. I have less than a minute. But you are meeting the Prime Minister tomorrow. And I’m wondering what you make of Mark Carney and what your message will be for him tomorrow.
Avi Lewis: I, yeah, I mean… Well, first of all, I’m worried because there have been so many people sitting in the Prime Minister’s office that are floor crossers. I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. I don’t have a seat, you know, to lend to the government. So there will be no threat of that.
There are huge issues facing our country. We’re at a fork in the road historically. And I think the direction of our country — not taking a clear stand against war, I think the direction of our country is to be more focused on doubling down on AI and extractive, big extractive projects and losing a focus on the everyday emergency. If people are trying to get by and pay rent and pay for groceries, I want to see this government refocus on that. And we will be relentless for that. Maybe it’ll start politely in the Prime Minister’s office, but it will continue with passion.
Michael Serapio: Avi Lewis will speak again. But for now, thank you for the time.
Avi Lewis: What a pleasure, Michael.