“We need solutions from government. It’s literally what government is for.”
It was Monday. Avi Lewis’s office wrote to say he might be a bit late for our interview, because he had to react on Parliament Hill to the departure of the NDP’s only Quebec MP, Alexandre Boulerice.
Boulerice is off to provincial politics as a candidate for the lefty, sovereignist Québec Solidaire. His former caucus colleague Lori Idlout now sits with Mark Carney’s Liberals. So now the NDP caucus is down to five MPs and the new leader isn’t one of them.
In the end Lewis was only a few minutes late, and he was generous with his time. We covered a lot of ground, beginning of course with the NDP’s current straits. “We have significant rebuilding to do,” he said. For him, “being in the House of Commons is not the first priority.”
The supply-and-confidence agreement through which the NDP propped up Justin Trudeau’s government made more sense to New Democrats on the Hill than to voters, Lewis said. Then Donald Trump returned to office next door. “You could just see this wave of fear sweep through the electorate.”
So now what? Lewis favours a “progressive populism” that offers bolder solutions to street-level concerns. “Something has broken in our social contract,” he said. “We’re living in an era of market failure.” Hence his proposal for government-run groceries. He knows a lot of people think it’s absurd. He won’t drop the idea. “The goal is absolutely not to make money,” he said; it’s for government to cover operating losses while the stores put pressure on existing grocers.
You sound like a socialist, I said at one point. “I am,” Lewis said mildly. The NDP has always struggled with such labels. His father Stephen Lewis and grandfather David Lewis duelled against a left-nationalist current in the party in the early 1970s. It’s not his fight, Lewis said (“I was four!”), but he sounded at least sympathetic to those old academic lefties his career-politician elders battled. “I’m trying to bring a new boldness… and a new political offer.”
This corner offers no prediction about the new leader’s ability to pull the NDP out of a steep decline. We shall see. In the meantime I found Lewis thoughtful, frank and forthcoming about his plans. I hope you enjoy this conversation.
Video also available on Paul Wells’s YouTube channel; audio on the Paul Wells Show podcast feed.