Avi Lewis, a democratic socialist from Toronto, is the new NDP leader
Could he be Canada’s answer to Bernie Sanders?
Toronto-raised democratic socialist Avi Lewis has been voted the new leader of the federal NDP.
Lewis won the title with 56 per cent of the votes at a party leadership election on Sunday, clinching it in the first round of voting. He ran on a Bernie Sanders–style left-wing populist campaign, taking digs at Canada’s billionaires all the way.
Lewis has deep roots in both Toronto and the NDP. He attended Upper Canada College in high school and went on to complete a bachelor of arts at the University of Toronto. His father is former Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis, and his mother is writer and journalist Michele Landsberg. He is also the grandson of former federal NDP leader David Lewis. He currently lives in British Columbia.
Lewis went into broadcasting after university, hosting MuchMusic’s The NewMusic show in the mid-1990s, followed by CounterSpin on the CBC. In 2008, he became the host of Fault Lines, a weekly documentary series on Al Jazeera. In 2015, he made waves as an activist by championing the Leap Manifesto, a set of policy suggestions for the NDP that included a complete transition away from fossil fuels. More recently, he taught journalism at Rutgers University in New Jersey and geography at the University of British Columbia. He is married to author, activist and filmmaker Naomi Klein, and the two have produced documentaries together.
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In his leadership speech, Lewis came out swinging against Canada’s rich and powerful, blaming them for the cost-of-living crisis. His targets included the owners of Canada’s biggest grocery stores, telecom giants and “tech oligarchs.”
“The wealth of this country is being hoovered up by a corporate elite that is extracting it from you every day. It’s immoral, it’s unreasonable, it’s un-Canadian and we cannot let it stand,” he said.
Lewis wants to see the federal government provide many everyday products and services to Canadians itself through publicly owned corporations, which he says could provide groceries, telecoms, home construction services and pharmaceuticals for lower costs than the private market.
Lewis acknowledged that the person he’s up against, Mark Carney, is still riding high in popular opinion. “He’s a smart guy, and most Canadians want to give him the benefit of the doubt. That’s fair,” said Lewis. But he took aim at Carney’s record since taking office. “In the last federal election, Canadians voted to say no to Trump and Trumpism,” Lewis said. “What they’re getting instead is our government following the US into a future of wars, fossil fuels, austerity and job-killing generative AI.”
Canada isn’t due for a federal election until October of 2029, which may make things complicated for Lewis: he doesn’t have a seat in Parliament, and only a by-election or an early federal election would get him one, neither of which is currently in the offing. Until then, Lewis will have to be a proper populist leader, mobilizing the masses from well outside the castle walls.
Anthony Milton is a freelance journalist based in Toronto specializing in long-form magazine writing. He previously worked as an assistant editor at Toronto Life, where he launched the Front Row newsletter. He regularly contributes all sorts of stories to the magazine, including deep dives on sports, business and housing as well as short-form commentary on our ever-changing city, from its obsession with cherry blossoms to its maddening NIMBYism. His work has also appeared in Maclean’s, Ricochet, TVO, the Trillium and more.
