Opinion column by Postmedia national politics columnist Tasha Kheiriddin, syndicated via Yahoo News Canada. Reproduced in summary under fair dealing (Copyright Act, s. 29). Full column available at the source link above.
Kheiriddin’s column argues that a “socialist wave” cresting in the United States — she points to the primary victories of self-described democratic socialists such as Darializa Avila Chevalier, Brad Lander and Claire Valdez, and the 2025 election of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani — raises the question of whether a comparable hard-left movement could take hold in Canada. She cites pollster David Coletto’s view that Gen Z is “ripe for a disruptive story,” and Léger data suggesting young Canadian women (18–24) lean most strongly left while young men (25–34) lean most strongly right.
She situates the federal NDP historically: Ed Broadbent’s 1970s call to nationalize banks and Stephen Lewis’s Ontario advocacy for rent control and public ownership, contrasted against the more moderate fiscal posture of Thomas Mulcair and Jagmeet Singh. Kheiriddin then frames new NDP leader Avi Lewis — Stephen Lewis’s son — as “Mamdani light,” citing his calls for state-run grocery stores and a moratorium on fossil fuel extraction, and his criticism of a five-per-cent-of-GDP military spending target as “a destructive and nihilistic fantasy.”
The column’s central argument is that the American left is animated in part by anti-Israel sentiment, and it points to shifting U.S. and Canadian polling on sympathy toward Israelis versus Palestinians. Kheiriddin recounts what she characterizes as the NDP’s “sad history of anti-Israel positions” — from Libby Davies’s 2010 comments to Lewis describing himself at the 2026 leadership convention as an “anti-Zionist Jewish person,” and to Laurier–Sainte-Marie byelection candidate Nima Machouf’s 2025 participation in a Gaza flotilla. She concludes that if the NDP emulates the American hard left to court young voters, it will “entrench its hate, division and antisemitism,” and urges Lewis not to take the party down that path.
Tasha Kheiriddin is Postmedia’s national politics columnist.