Hope on the Canadian Left
by Nathan Munn
Last week, journalist and activist Avi Lewis won the leadership of Canada’s federal New Democratic Party after campaigning on a platform to levy new taxes on billionaires, launch publicly-owned grocery stores, establish a national rent cap and a moratorium on data center construction, speed up Canada’s transition to green energy, and more. Which all sounds awesome, but it’s going to be an uphill battle.
Lewis takes the helm of the NDP at a critical time. The party suffered brutal losses in the last federal election, when many left-leaning Canadians cast their votes for Mark Carney’s Liberal Party to form a united front against Trumpian fuckery in the U.S. In the same election, millions of middle-of-the-road Canadians, fed up with the Liberals after a decade of Justin Trudeau, voted for the Conservatives, who had been leading in the polls. In the end, Carney’s Liberals won a minority government, the Conservatives increased their number of seats in Parliament, and the socialist NDP was decimated. They fell from 24 seats in Parliament to seven and lost their official party status, prompting NDP leader Jagmeet Singh to step down and kicking off the NDP leadership race that Lewis just won.
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