Note: summary of a full-length opinion column, with limited quotation. Read the original at the source link above.
Abacus Data CEO David Coletto analyzes a new Abacus survey on Canadian attitudes toward socialism, capitalism, democracy, and the appetite for upheaval, and argues it points to a latent opening for Avi Lewis’s NDP.
Key findings cited
- Four in ten Canadians think the economic system needs major or complete change; one in five wants a different system altogether. Among Canadians under 45, almost half say major or complete change is needed.
- A sharp generational divide on democracy: 78% of those 60 and over say democracy is always preferable, versus 43% of those aged 18 to 29.
- Younger Canadians report more openness to socialism, democratic socialism, communism, populism, and authoritarianism — which Coletto reads less as coherent ideology than as “the openness to alternatives,” with the old stigma around such labels weaker for people without lived memory of them.
- Conservative and NDP voters are “equally likely to say the economic system needs major or complete change,” though they want opposite remedies — public intervention and redistribution on the left, lower taxes and fewer constraints on the right.
Argument on Avi Lewis
Coletto frames the survey’s mood as an opportunity for Lewis, whose party “has struggled to grow beyond its existing coalition.” In his words:
This is where the opportunity for Avi Lewis becomes real.
He contends the results give Lewis “room to be more ambitious” — to argue that the affordability crisis is structural rather than temporary and that “the rules themselves need to change” — while Pierre Poilievre has a parallel opening from the same dissatisfaction on the right. Coletto attributes the current stability partly to Trump-era external threat pushing voters toward Mark Carney, cautioning that the political centre may not hold once that pressure eases: the stability, he writes, “should not be mistaken for deep satisfaction.”