Can Avi Lewis make the federal NDP relevant again — without undermining its provincial cousins?

The federal NDP convention in Edmonton in 2016 was the scene of two fascinating events: the unceremonious dumping of Tom Mulcair as party leader and a rhetorical clash between Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and the supporters of a broad statement of principles known as the Leap Manifesto.

Notley, less than a year into leading the first NDP government in Alberta’s history, was trying to prove her province’s central industry could be developed responsibly and profitably within a serious plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Leap Manifesto, which had appeared suddenly the previous fall and which some federal party members wanted to embrace, took a dim view of “extraction” and was opposed to “oil and gas pipelines.”

Speaking to the convention, Notley used a substantial section of her remarks to list some of what her government had achieved and was pursuing: a progressive income tax, increased funding for health care and education, a higher minimum wage and a climate policy that she called “the single most important step that any Canadian government at any level has taken so far to actually act on climate change.”

Then, Notley took her shot.

“That is what you get to do,” she said, “when you move up from manifesto to the detailed, principled, practical plans you can really implement by winning an election.”

A few days later, after delegates to the convention had voted to continue considering the manifesto, Notley called the document “naive,” “ill-informed” and “tone deaf.”

Almost exactly a decade later, New Democrats voted to make the principal author of the manifesto their leader.

“It’s time to fight for solutions that are actually as big as the crises we face,” Avi Lewis told delegates to the NDP convention in Winnipeg on Saturday.

Lewis, a former television host, journalist and documentarian, promises to make the federal NDP relevant again. But the first question for his leadership is whether he’ll do so at the expense of the NDP’s provincial wings.

Federally, things have never been worse for the NDP. 

On the day Notley addressed New Democrats in Edmonton, the NDP occupied 44 seats in the House of Commons, having won 19.7 per cent of the vote in the previous election. Ten years later, the NDP occupies six seats, having won 6.3 per cent of the vote last year.

Provincially, things actually look OK for the NDP. 

The party is in power in British Columbia and Manitoba (where Wab Kinew is the highest-rated premier in Canada). And it forms the Official Opposition in four other provinces and one territory: Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Nova Scotia and the Yukon.

‘My door is open’ to smooth disagreements with Prairie leaders, new NDP Leader Avi Lewis says

The Leap Manifesto wasn’t single-handedly responsible for limiting Notley’s government to a single term in office. But it probably didn’t help. And New Democrats in Western Canada at least seem unwilling to take any chances this time around.

Lewis remains opposed to new fossil fuel development and in December he condemned a proposal to dredge Burrard Inlet in B.C. to make it possible for oil tankers to carry heavier loads — a proposal that is supported by not only the Alberta government, but also the NDP government in B.C.

Within hours of his victory on Sunday, Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi and Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck had released statements distancing themselves from him. David Eby, whose NDP government in B.C. is working to increase its production and export of liquefied natural gas, said his government “will work with anyone and any federal leader who shares our priorities, and stand firm against those who put that progress at risk.”

Provincial NDP leaders can argue, fairly, that they are not beholden to the federal party. And Lewis can argue that New Democrats don’t have to agree on everything.

But bridging divides and bringing together potentially conflicting views — appealing to the sorts of voters that Eby, Nenshi and Beck are pursuing — also seems like the sort of thing a federal NDP leader might want to do.

While several of the provincial parties are fighting to win or hold power, the federal party is in search of mere relevance.

In a recent survey of people who have voted for the NDP at least once in the last four federal elections, the Angus Reid Institute found that 44 per cent were unfamiliar with the names of any of the candidates in this year’s leadership race. According to Abacus Data, just 34 per cent of Canadians would consider voting for the federal NDP right now — a drop of 17 points over the last decade. 

How NDP Leader Avi Lewis could change the political landscape

In last year’s election, the NDP lost voters not only to the Liberals — an eternal problem for the NDP — but also to the Conservatives. Ridings like Windsor West and Kapuskasing-Timmins-Mushkegowuk in Ontario, held by New Democrats for more than 20 years each, are now represented by Conservative MPs.

Lewis’s prescription is a brand of populist socialism. He directs voters’ ire at corporate power and wealth. And he proposes a suite of new publicly owned companies to counteract that power and lower costs for consumers: including public options for groceries, telecom services, housing construction and pharmaceutical manufacturing. 

It would at least be the most aggressively interventionist federal party platform in recent memory.

“The NDP, I think, may have been a little too polite in [recent years] in not actually validating and recognizing how legit it is for people to be furious. I think we shied away from that,” Lewis told CBC Radio’s The Current on Monday.

“I also think there’s a communication style that the party drifted into, which was, I think, a little bit too crafted, a little bit too attempting to not offend anybody and ended up with a situation where in some cases people didn’t know what we stood for.”

He recently described the Liberal government’s plans to increase defence spending as a “bottomless money pit for war.” And in his acceptance speech, he made a point of saying that he believed Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza.

Under Lewis, the federal NDP might be louder and more distinct. Whether that will lead to greater electoral success is another question.

Beyond the impact it may have had on her own government’s fortunes, Notley’s criticism a decade ago might have boiled down to an argument that Lewis’s way of doing politics was impractical and unrealistic. Now that he’s a party leader himself, he has the opportunity to prove her wrong, or right.