Online voting started yesterday in the NDP leadership contest, which from the start has appeared to be a two-horse race between Avi Lewis and Heather McPherson.
The auguries suggest Mr. Lewis is now in the lead and pulling farther ahead.
Mr. Lewis is the scion of the Lewis political family, which has been prominent in the NDP since the 1970s, when his grandfather David led the federal party for five years and his father Stephen was leader of the Ontario NDP for eight.
Ms. MacPherson is the only one of the five candidates seeking the party’s leadership with a seat in the House of Commons, and the only NDP Member of Parliament at the moment elected in Alberta, where the electoral map in almost any recent year has been a sea of what we used to call Tory Blue.
Mr. Lewis is a committed environmentalist and a leader of the coalition behind the LEAP Manifesto a decade ago, a fact that generates a lot of excitement in many parts of the NDP’s base and more than a little hostility here in Alberta, where talk of a Canadian Green New Deal a decade ago went over like the proverbial lead balloon, including inside the NDP.
Many in Alberta NDP circles to this day blame promoters of the LEAP Manifesto after 2015 for the provincial NDP’s failure to get re-elected in 2019, an argument that contains enough truth to be dangerous but is far from the whole story.
For his part, Mr. Lewis has not proved he can get elected to Parliament in a country where there are no safe NDP seats except, possibly, Edmonton Strathcona – which Ms. McPherson has represented since October 2019.
Ms. McPherson is a capable Parliamentarian beloved by many in the Alberta NDP’s base, which is considerably more conservative, if I may use that word in this context, on environmental issues than many in the federal party, or for that matter segments of the pre-Mark-Carney federal Liberal Party.
Tellingly, when Ms. McPherson announced her bid to lead the party, former Alberta Premier Rachel Notley showed up at her Sept. 28 campaign launch in Edmonton to introduce her as someone who knows how “to work diligently to earn electoral success that is necessary to make nation-building progressive changes in service of our country and in service of the millions of Canadians who need us to be there.”
The current Alberta NDP leader, Naheed Nenshi, was not there, whatever that means – possibly nothing at all, given Mr. Nenshi’s occasional talk about pulling the Alberta NDP out of the national New Democratic Party.
Avid supporters of both candidates have warned that election of the other might lead to the demise of the party, by being too radical or too like the ruling Liberals – which given the sorry state in which former leader Jagmeet Singh left the NDP, is a possibility either way. As for myself, though, I’d bet the NDP survives whoever leads it, so everyone can calm down a little.
The votes will be counted in 19 days in Winnipeg, and, while I can’t tell you who is going to win, I can report that the vibe last week during the Broadbent Institute’s annual Ottawa “summit” – named for the late Ed Broadbent, federal NDP leader from 1975 to 1989 – was that Mr. Lewis would win without breaking into a sweat, possibly on the first ballot.
Ms. McPherson was the only leadership candidate that I saw at the three-day event, and only briefly at the opening reception, but that did not seem to dampen the enthusiasm for Mr. Lewis’s chances or the feeling that there’s now a whiff of desperation about Ms. McPherson’s campaign.
The latest Elections Canada fundraising numbers reinforce this impression – with Mr. Lewis absolutely dominating the cash stakes, collecting more than double the amount raised by Ms. McPherson and leaving the other three candidates in the dust.
This, wrote polling analyst Éric Grenier on his Substack yesterday, makes Mr. Lewis “the odds-on favourite to win the contest.”
By Feb. 24, Mr. Grenier noted, Mr. Lewis’s campaign had raised $1,229,484. By Feb. 17, Ms. McPherson’s campaign had raised $560,144, from which Mr. Grenier estimated she would have raised about “another $27,000 or so” by Feb. 24, “keeping her below the $600,000 mark and hardly making a dent in Lewis’s fundraising.”
B.C.-based labour leader Rob Ashton had raised $356,933 by Feb. 17 and Tanille Johnston and Tony McQuail earlier reported less significant amounts. It’s possible, Mr. Grenier wrote, that Mr. Lewis “is over the 50-per-cent threshold in fundraising, making a first ballot victory entirely plausible.”
Mr. Grenier argues there is a strong link between fundraising success in NDP leadership races and ultimate victory.
Here in Wild Rose Country, the (badly) governing United Conservative Party is sure to try to use Mr. Lewis’s perceived radicalism on environmental issues to attack Mr. Nenshi and the provincial NDP.
Alberta’s separatist crowd will go nuts, of course, but they go nuts about most everything Canadian, so any impact of their nuttiness on a contest like this can be discounted as not very significant.
But – think about this, dear readers – isn’t it possible that the very real progressive conservatism (to borrow a phrase) of most successful provincial New Democratic parties in Canada is as likely to be a problem for Mr. Lewis as Mr. Lewis is for them?
Should he win, and if he manages to build some excitement for a genuinely social democratic platform, perhaps the day will come when Mr. Lewis sees an advantage to casting off provincial parties that are hard to tell from Liberals and, for that matter, some Conservatives.
Whoever wins the NDP leadership, you can probably bet that Prime Minister Carney will redouble his efforts to woo a couple of New Democrat MPs to cross the floor and join the recent Conservative converts to Canadian Liberalism in the government’s caucus.
I suppose it is quite possible that more succesful fundraising counts for something. Although that only goes so far, after all someone who gives $50 has a vote, just the same as someone who gives $100.
Mr. Lewis does have both a well known name and a platform to better distinguish himself from more centrist parties. However, voters on the whole seem fairly comfortable with the centre federally, at least so far. So the dilemma could be Lewis may excite or motivate a smaller group more, but may not be able to appeal to a larger one as well.
It seemed like the last Federal NDP leader started with a lot of buzz or excitement. Although, perhaps now Canadians are more skeptical about political leaders and are looking for someone who seems reasonable and competent, rather than one with flash or style. Maybe this is also partly a reaction to all the theatrics and divisiveness we currently see to the south of us.
Federally, there hasn’t been any other political parties getting into power, except for two. That being the Progressive Conservatives, who merged with the Reform Party to create the CPC, or the Liberals. There will not be any other political party getting into power. Jack Layton made the federal NDP come very close, but he has since passed away. Naheed Nenshi has separated himself from the federal NDP. Pierre Poilievre is trying to get the CPC back into power, but he won’t do it. He was very desperate, and had to parachute himself into an Alberta riding, already taken by an Alberta MP, Damian Kurek (I believe his name is), who gave his seat up, so he could win. Danielle Smith pulled something similar on the provincial level, by running in a safe riding occupied by another UCP MLA, Michaela Frey. In both cases, there were some type of well paying, grifter positions given for the MP and MLAs who gave up their seats for the others. You will see the typical columnists at Postmedia trying to connect the Alberta NDP with the federal NDP, but they will not succeed, given that the MH Care (Corrupt Care) scandal from the UCP is going to play a role in obliterating the UCP.
What’s Svend Robinson doing these days? He found his way into my heart when he starting booing Ronald Reagan during an address to parliament. A radicalized NDP may not win any elections but half the fun is climbing in the ring and taking your lumps.
Avi Lewis is not electable in farm country. His ignorance of orderly grain marketing and cooperatives does not help him in either rural Quebec or prairie Canada. Even if he bothered to try, showing up in a straw hat and a checkered shirt just will not cut it out here. The viability of family farms and ranches is built on generational wealth being passed on. His policy on capital gains taxes just stinks. He is just another clueless big city boy, high on theory and low on experience.
BTW, on the donations: since when is the leadership of the NDP for sale.
“showing up in a straw hat and a checkered shirt just will not cut it out here. ”
I dunno, it worked for PeePee…
Fair comment Anon Ymous: I know Pee Pee’s new area reasonably well, and they thought they were voting for a new PM. Most of the jobs in rural Alberta come from the oil and gas service sector which has disappeared over the last 15 years because of automation and corporate consolidation.
In my experience most rural NDP supporters are full time farmers and ranchers, which makes them very much a minority. Notley crapped all over them, so the love is gone. At least McPherson pushed to stop coal development on the eastern slopes.
actually it didn’t work for PP…he did not win the federal election and the by-election was in the safest conservative seat in the country
A few personal insights into your post. Family farms are a vestige of a long-gone era, with nothing more than nostalgic remembrance here in “farm” country, where the separatists and buffalo roam. Ms. Smith has only a tenuous “connection” with the family farm by way of buying frozen hamburgers for her roadside dinner from the Sysco truck. But you’re right, Botox, a straw hat, and a checkered shirt did not work for her either. I will concede he is a big city boy. So what? One final thought about grain marketing, ain’t that been handed over to the Saudis by Stephen Harper? Not unlike your grain assets, Premier Getty shed your assets in AGT, Alberta Government Telephones,
for a prairie yodel (explain capital gain to Albertans on that boondoggle).
Tenent: I own a family farm which produces 100% of my income. I’m surrounded by family farms like mine in Alberta. My colleagues in Sk and Manitoba are all family farmers. Many are incorporated for tax purposes, but they are still family owned and operated.
The speculative run up in farm land prices, along with certain blue Liberal tax rule changes mean each new generation of prairie farmers must now start out with a crippling tax debt even if the land is gifted to them by the previous generation. In most other parts of the world, so long as the farm continues to operate, land is transferred to the next generation freely. Do you think that this looting of generational farms could convince some that Ottawa is not our friend?
In spite of what you may have been led to believe by oil well farmers and ranchers in the media, the grudges over Harper and the Wheat Board and Pools run deep. With the killing of the Pools and Wheat Board, and the normal evolution of technology, full time farmers and ranchers are now less than 2% of the population spread across the prairies. So your impression of our political power, even if this were a functioning democracy, is optimistic.
The latest is the Carney Liberals are proposing to take control of all our food genetics away from farmers and Canadians and give it to the foreign aggro-chemical companies. Just about every Canadian farm group from left to right has been very vocal in opposing this. So much so even Conservative MPs and MLAs from the prairies are expressing opposition. Anyone paying attention?
How is Heather ? Big city lawyers turned politician have a way of speaking to rural folks that I’m unaware of? if he wants to be leader he needs a seat yes, but it doesn’t need to be a *rural* seat, that’s best left to local organizing within that community.
Not for nothing I’ve seen endless griping about the policies of the Notley era led to electoral defeat after one term, but having spoken with people on the ground; that’s not the entire story as our esteemed blogger has alluded to. In fact I’ve heard it alleged the party held back funding in promising RURAL districts, to favour URBAN districts that in retrospect were incredibly safe. The future of forming government in this province is organizing that community which lies between urban and rural, because cons can’t win with just the rural voters. I happen to think that farm workers (a community which I come from) deserve workers rights too, and if folks don’t agree, the New Democratic Party probably isn’t for them, Is it ?
aLB: Ms. McPherson opposed coal development which threatens the ground water quality on my farm and for the literal hundreds of thousands who depend on the integrity of that water shed on the eastern slopes. She was effective. That’s the kind of speech I can understand.
In my observation, WCB for farm workers is a very good thing, very badly introduced.
Why should working people pay taxes on their labour as they try to save for capital expenditure, but inheritors pay no taxes for the capital given to them?
Jenny: Working people really do not pay taxes on the labour which goes into purchasing a family home. That capital asset gets passed on tax free as it should be. Farm land is a special case because planting an orchard or building up fertile soil is a multi-generational task. The sad truth is very few people are willing to work a lifetime to benefit an unrelated next generation, and so far no viable substitute for that family farm structure has been found. Even the great Roman wheat farms which fed the ancient world were family based. They had lots of slave families as well to do the work. We have diesel fuel.
If the inheritors don’t continue farming the land and sell it, that money gets taxed. Your principal residence gets sold tax free.
My 30+ year NDP membership expired 2 or 3 years ago (the Site C boondoggle + LNG were the last straws for me), so I’m sitting this one out. If I did have to decide who to vote for, it would be more a matter of finding the candidate who had the fewest liabilities, so it would be Lewis by default, though not with huge enthusiasm. (I worry about his lack of success in 2 previous outings in decent ridings. Plus, I need to be convinced about his skills as an organizer, based on the lack of any convincing theory of change behind the LEAP episode.) But McPherson is too much a creature of Alberta petro-orthodoxy, with two major disqualifiers: (1) her support of the TransMountain expansion, and (2) a built-in conflict of interest (her hubby is a lawyer with Enbridge). The other 3 would make decent candidates for parliament, and should be encouraged to run next time.
Ask Tim Cartmell about the strong link between fundraising success and electoral success.
As for the accusation that the more electorally successful provincial parties are too centrist, you have to fish where the voters are. Otherwise, you are doomed to political irrelevance, which sadly the federal NDP has been for most of its existence.
yes, John! you are so right…this is what makes Heather so good at what she does…she knows how to connect with people where they are at. And to a point made by someone else, she has proven herself to be a good organizer. She may not have raised the most money in the campaign but the group of grassroots organizers who have been engaged in her campaign are super impressive.
You probably want to think about the difference between party elections and general elections
I actually signed nomination papers for Heather McPherson. The reason I did so was because she because is the best person not named Notley for the job.
Politicians in Canada campaign from somewhere on the political spectrum, but govern closer to the centre. I simply haven’t seen Avi Lewis recognizing this fact and acting accordingly. He is no Jack Layton, or even a Tom Mulcair. A win for him will continue the relegate the federal NDP as the 3rd place party in Canada.
And for the record, I voted Liberal in the last federal election, and NDP in the last provincial election.
“The key to political success in Canada is most closely mirroring the other party.”
Conservatives don’t believe this, why do you ?
I cast my ballot for Heather McPherson yesterday. She’s my MP and all my dealings with her have been super positive. I don’t live in her riding. I live in a riding with a Conservative MP who is basically a fence post painted blue. His office is never staffed. There’s a sign on the door directing constituents to phone or email. No one responds. He doesn’t even show up during election campaigns. Refuses to attend any candidate forums. At least fence posts serve a purpose.
wow…that is disappointing…Heather’s office is very impressive…they are open and very responsive.
Funny stuff. The tired, tired, oh so tired memes and tropes trotted out yet again. Perfectly timed as the one hundred and fifth anniversary of the British coup in Iran rolls around while the entire region is engulfed (get it? ha ha ha!) in a massive conflagration induced by the dynamic duo of the clapped-out US Empire and their cuckoo bananas ethnocentrist death cult in Palestine. So was the LEAP Manifesto a reasoned response to the state of the climate? Is the state of the climate such that drastic measures are required? If both are accurate, what kind of people are in the Alberta NDP, that they would resent the federal party advocating for such a policy? Arguably the single most odious politician in the US Empire of the last forty years, and that includes leading lights such as Harpo, W, John Howard, third-generation CIA asset Shintaro Abe and pedophile war criminal Edhud Barak, was Tony Blair. British Labour was outfoxed by the Conservatives, who used sophisticated psychological techniques to sell their plutocratic policies to the derped-out British masses, so Labour responded by putting a man with fewer scruples than a pimp running a trick-pad with teen runaways chained to their cots, in charge of their party and their state. But he got elected! The NDP was created to make sure that nobody ever addressed the economic hierarchy in this country. Your first clue should have been the fact that Christian Zionist Tommy Douglas is revered across the land. Prior to the taming of organized labour during the Big One, the Canadian state murdered, deported or imprisoned people who actually attempted to face down the plutocracy. The Lewis family were avowed Zionists for a very, very long time, but as the capacity to maintian the absurd myths about the land without “people” for the “people” without land fell apart under the deluge of cluster munitions and white phosphorous, not to mention, but of course I’ll mention it, the revelations of the unbroken string of pedophile/blackmail schemes going all the way back to the Purple Gang, Avi has stepped away from that particularly unviable stance. I always wanted to hear an NDP explanation for those of us who hew to the secular humanist and syndicalist persuasion for appointing a leader who wears a watch that cost more than my car. What precisely is a social democratic platform in a state whose economy is composed almost entirely of the FIRE sector and is controlled by billionaires? The NDP should have folded like the Cleveland Barons and rolled their whole crappy apparatus into the Liberals after coming up with a ridiculous grifter like Mulcair, a man who actually tried to join the federal Konservatives during the Harpo era.
For sure, Max Fawcett, Jake Landau, Nora Loreto et al. have already crowned Avi Lewis, mainly, it seems because his French is more passable than that of the other candidates.
Which is why the federal NDP will never ever ever catch hold again in the heartland. Small town everywhere doesn’t care if their local independent grocer is undercut by big business or big government. They don’t care if the jobs were taken by the ecoterrorists or predatory shareholders. They don’t care which order of government broke their school and their post office and their clinic. The Nations in particular don’t require another white saviour promising clean water and largesse.
People ARE receptive to having their dignity upheld, to feeling respect for the communities they built together in spite of the obstacles, to being recognized for their contributions and to being trusted. Which is why phrases like ‘common sense’ and ‘red tape reduction’ are so compelling. Why charter schools and independent schools flourish in rural Alberta. Independent agri-business. Why Crowsnest Pass residents resent good mining jobs slipping out of their hands. Or the NDP sticking their noses into farm labour law.
No, especially in the prairies, folks prefer feeling that they’re out of the reach of both global capitalism and socialism. You mind your business, we’ll mind ours.
But then, that’s not where Avi needs the votes anyway.
If Lewis gets the leadership, we might as well fold our tents and retire.
The electorate is not looking for yet another nepo-leader; and the LEAP Manifesto carnival proved a wonderful piece of self-promotion with no other purpose or effect.
Just like that, one NDP MP has crossed the floor to the Liberals: Nunavut’s Lori Idlout.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/ndp-mp-crosses-floor-to-join-liberals-putting-carney-two-seats-shy-of-majority/
About 2 years ago Rick Salutin in his column in the Toronto Star opined that the NDP at the federal level should merge with the Liberals because, at least, these individuals would have some form of political party and hence have some effect in Canadian politics. As “left wingers” of the Liberal – they are more viable than a political party virtually with no “footprint” as NDP/CCF, long since a corpse with advent of Layton and Mulcair and the latest leader — who again ? Neither Carney, Poilievre and now anyone in the NDP have any moral standing, in politics and/or as leaders of any form of governemental represention, because of their full throated support for Trump and Israel’s war of agression on Iran with the killing of the Iranian leader(s) and school children within 24 hours of initiation of war. These are very dark days but the aforesaid “leaders” will backtrack when the war tanks big time, slowly and very suddenly, as they say about going bankrupt. Cynicism is not the issue, I am simply, very simply, think realistically. I am ashamed to call myself a Canadian. Canadian tourists and travellers would be well advised not to attach a maple flag on their persons and luggage – self identifying as a Canadian.
As I write the Dipper MP from Nunavut is said to have crossed the floor to the Liberals. With so many looking to the Conservatives, nobody thought of the other parties. Carney has hammered his tent-pegs pretty far apart, first well into centre-right territory which the CPC has abandoned on its way to the edge of Terra Flatus, and now on the left in a real Territory (reminding that the PM was born in the Northern federal jurisdiction), geographically to the right of Yukon and NWT after once-stalwart Dipper-loyalists flocked into the Liberals’ big top.
Since I’m an old-fashioned Dipper, I have no choice but to vote for Rob Ashton for leader. Btw, there’s more ‘n’ one safe NDP seat: my riding’s MP, Gord Johns, happens to represent us in Ottawa and I’d vote for him again in a heartbeat.
I’d vote for Gord Johns also. just don’t live in the riding
When he was first discussing running, I lived in the riding and thought he’d be very good and he is. Currently living in a riding which was NDP and went Conservative in last election. Wasn’t surprised. When the Greens won the riding the Conservatives came in second. Nanaimo has changed a lot in the last decade, with a lot of Albertans moving in about 6 to 10 yrs ago.
Would I vote Liberal, federally? In a heart beat if it meant it got rid of the Conservative and it looked like the NDP would not be winning.
“Idlout endorsed Avi Lewis for party leadership at an event in Ottawa last week” says CBS News. Then today this NDP MP joins the Liberal Party. Weird and I’m not sure what that means.
I thought we had enough of rich, smooth-talking lawyers at the head of our “Party of the Working Class.” If Mr. Lewis becomes the leader of the NDP it might bring in some Green votes but will alienate the workers the party is supposed to represent. Just my prediction and like Yogi Berra I don’t like to make predictions, but if Avi wins we’ll find out I guess.
Mickey: I missed that. You mean the CBC, presumably, correct? DJC
Yeah, I mis-typed, it was CTV. I’ll blame it on auto-correct…
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/ndp-mp-crosses-floor-to-join-liberals-putting-carney-two-seats-shy-of-majority/
It happens, Mickey. You could always do like the targeters in the Pentagon and blame the AI. As an aside, “the AI did it” will become the “I was only following orders” of the 21st Century. DJC
Good of you to spot and test to if it has any meat. Though odd no, how a string of deservedly incestuous meaningful allegations never got a substantiated answer, not even to such primary basics as Mickey’s source?
Nevertheless as to your own floor-crossing note of anticipation, open to sharing what possibly tipped you off as defections from PP come with much less, if any surprise to anyone able to read the room for discontent regarding the room full of leaders abusing their powers of leadership?
I believe Grenier has been spectacularly wrong before. I don’t have a lot of faith in polls and I don’t think journalists should write about polls as if that’s definitive.
Mr. Lewis’ Leap Manifesto created a “lot of excitement” in parts of the NDP’s base? It also created a lot of hostility in the Working Class way beyond Alberta. People care about the environment but it is well below caring for their family (employment), housing, education and health care. Mr. Lewis talks about these too but he’s divisive.
If Avi Lewis is chosen, the federal NDP will face the same problem on the left that Pierre Poilièvre’s Conservatives face on the right: a rabid, radical, doctrinaire, ideological base that can’t appeal to the mushy middle of Canadian politics. I’m with commenter John Kolkman above: you need to look for votes where the voters are. I call it the “Willy Sutton rule” of politics. [For those who don’t know who Willy Sutton was, he was an American bank robber famous (apocryphally, it turns out) for saying, when asked why he robbed banks, “because that’s where the money is”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Sutton%5D.
Avi Lewis will also appeal to that cohort id civil society progressives who remain at arm’s length from participating in grubby party politics, preferring to remain ostensibly non-partisan and claiming to support “issues not parties”. (This includes certain labour unions I know). My message to those kinds of progressives is this: the people who hate you, who want to take away your rights — whether that be free collective bargaining, or freedom from racial and ethnic discrimination, or reproductive rights, or personal autonomy at the end of life, or the freedom to love who you love and be who you are, or any other rights and freedoms under attack by the newly energized activist right — those people are coming for your rights, and they’re not shy about engaging in “grubby partisan politics”.
They’ve already taken over the internal governance of Alberta’s governing party, and are in the midst of doing the same to the Official Opposition party next door in BC. I don’t know enough about the internal workings of the federal Conservative Party to know if that same phenomenon is happening at that level, but it wouldn’t surprise me. The only way to counter that is to embrace the reality that activism without partisan engagement doesn’t decide elections. The way to defeat those haters is to get the citizenry to vote them out of office.
There won’t be a Tim Houston-style reversal on bad budgetary policy because a bunch of activists protest on the steps of the Legislature in Edmonton — https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/tim-houston-budget-cuts-grant-funding-restored-9.7121998. That isn’t how ideological conservatives operate. They have to be defeated at the ballot box.
(Sorry, got on a bit of a rant there … )
Avi Lewis is married to Naomi Klein, and I’m guessing from the general attitude of this blog, y’all have not read the shock doctrine, which they also (the two of them) made into a movie.
I’ll cut to the chase, Ms. Klein was the first mainstream journalist to name and shame Ewan Cameron, the McGill doctor that ran shock treatment experiments for Mk UKTRA, who if you don’t know was the CIA, and that’s all I’ll say for now.
Heather McPherson is my MP, and she’s done a great job as my MP but I don’t see her as having more depth than team Lewis, and see her very much as a centre right / neoliberal pro business politician.
Now you can prefer whomever you wish but this bird believes that left principles are MORE popular than Con ones, and even if they weren’t; they’re worth fighting for.
I’m not holding a membership at this moment but I may reconsider, and I would absolutely vote for Avi, were that the case. Heather is great and I love her pet calendars but she is absolutely out of her depth.
Membership signups closed some time ago, so you can’t even if you change your mind.
You advance four observational opinions.
Agreed with what’s worth fighting for, but might you add more supportive insight and/or depth as to how popular these wants are?
I ask as I wonder why would you consider joining after the decision was made instead of before when you have more voice to help make it happen, given the general sentiments expressed in several comments that the current batch of candidates falls noticeably short of our needs and wants?