Montreal City Weblog

Kate 08:58 on 2026-03-30 Permalink Reply  

• Chris 09:17 on 2026-03-30 Permalink

  Could be they have found a way to have even less than 6 seats.

• jeather 10:24 on 2026-03-30 Permalink

  I don’t disagree with him on policies but I’ll have to wait to see if he’s actually capable as a politician. I did like his dig at Mulcair; I like his wife (the good Naomi).

• jeather 10:25 on 2026-03-30 Permalink

  I’m also very amused at the number of articles I saw headlined something like “Brother of Heated Rivalry casting director voted in as leader of Canada’s leftist party”.

• Kate 10:44 on 2026-03-30 Permalink

  jeather, yes, I was thinking this gets the NDP not just a new leader, but one with a very smart partner as part of the deal. I wonder how many party members elected him because of her.

  I haven’t seen the headlines you describe, but what could be more Canadian than a longtime political family being linked to a popular piece of entertainment?

• jeather 10:48 on 2026-03-30 Permalink

  Oh, I think those were American entertainment stuff, which is fair enough. I am just impressed they’re being linked to Canadian entertainment instead of American.

  I don’t think he’s campaigning to be PM, I think he’s trying to change the discussion, which is probably fair enough. I am a little unimpressed that he refuses to try to get a seat, though since they’re no longer an official party I guess it doesn’t matter.

• Taylor C. Noakes 11:01 on 2026-03-30 Permalink

  In a weird way it seems like he may not have been the establishment choice, which I think was far more interested in MacPherson. Jeremy Appel noted that the new NDP executive also appears to be the anti-establishment choice as well.

  56% of the vote on a ranked ballot makes me think the choice was clear on the convention hall floor (i.e. no second round of voting). So NDP voters got the person and team they wanted, not the party elite.

  That’s usually a good thing.

  Appel notes as well that the other candidates got most of their cash from a few large donations, whereas Lewis got many small donations. That’s a grassroots candidate with genuine pull. He pulled in more money than (I believe) all other candidates combined.

  The statements issued by SK NDP and AB NDP are out of this world silly – like not even living on planet Earth levels of absurdity. The SK NDP claimed in their letter that the oil and gas sector employs 900,000 people nationwide.

  The latest figures indicate 128,000 – and falling.

  Nenshi says there’s a bright future in oil and gas – there are literally no indicators of either being the case.

  The provincial NDPs are basically rebranded Liberal parties. The more they move towards the centre, the lower their chances of winning. And then they’ll blame Lewis for ‘damaging the brand’ when they lose.

  Lewis is a breath of fresh air: a committed environmentalist who understands climate isn’t ideology, and the impacts will be economic first and foremost.

  We need to get off oil and gas because it’s destroying our economy. It’s already destroyed our democracy. We are not a sovereign nation. You literally can’t even vote against Big Oil in AB and SK right now.

  My hope is Lewis gobbles up all the Green votes, and attracts Liberals who understand that Trudeau’s green policies didn’t go far enough.

• dwgs 11:37 on 2026-03-30 Permalink

  I spent a brief amount of time with him at an event back in the ’90s and came away impressed, seemed like a very decent guy whose heart was in the right place.

• MarcG 11:57 on 2026-03-30 Permalink

  That’s my dude, I grew up watching Avi on the New Music. Here’s hoping that they can get people thinking about collective solutions to the problems were facing rather than more fear and division.

• MarcG 12:23 on 2026-03-30 Permalink

  (and pipelines and austerity and)

• Meezly 12:43 on 2026-03-30 Permalink

  I’m cautiously hopeful. Lewis seems to want to steer the party back to its leftist/socialist leanings since Layton shifted the NDP towards the centre. It worked at the time mostly due to Layton’s likeability and charisma but obvs not for the leaders that followed!

  And it’s great to hear Lewis earned his leadership role via grassroots support. His environmental/activist background is a plus for me, though don’t know if this means the Green Party may become less relevant.

  Will Lewis be able to appeal to and/or connect with the average Canadian? With the average Quebecer? I hear his French is competent so that’s a positive. Lewis seems to have a lot of things going for him, but we’ve yet to see how he performs as a politician. Whatever happens, I’m looking forward to seeing more of him in the public eye.

• maggie rose 13:15 on 2026-03-30 Permalink

  I don’t know the ins and outs of all the candidates but I do know that when Avi was announced leader my shoulders relaxed and my politics-nerd self breathed a sigh of relief. Like she did when Zohran in NYC won, and when Zack Polanski became Green leader in the UK (with the added bonus of the recent win by Hannah Spencer in a riding held by Labour since 1931). Very similar vibe. I’m old enough to remember Lewis co-hosting Counterspin on CBC (1998-2004). Too bad those haven’t been released on YouTube. That changed a few conversations that we don’t seem to have any more in this country.

  Shame that Canada doesn’t seem to see the Greens as more than just environmentalists. The European history of that party is wildly interesting & varied in its ideology. But then, we have the NDP, which shares values, etc. with other left politics in history, but is unique. Maybe they should meld, but what would they be called?

  I still have a saved email that Jack Layton sent me personally in 2010 in response to a question I asked him about seniors. It wasn’t a cut and paste reply, but a lengthy piece of writing that meant a lot to me at a difficult time back then. So I have a soft spot for the party. The vibes are rather human. I know Avi didn’t mention Jack last night, but I didn’t read much into that. Crikey if my dad and my grandfather were both transformational politicians, for the better, I would crow a bit about them too at such a time.

• Kate 13:39 on 2026-03-30 Permalink

  I hope he’ll be able to counter Carney’s reflexive tendency to protect banks and investors. Nora Loreto’s been looking into all the cuts the federal government has been making, which are not widely discussed. Maybe Lewis can shine more of a light on those.

• Ian 13:49 on 2026-03-30 Permalink

  Honestly I’m relieved the party seems to be waking up to the fact that centrism is a mistake. I look forward to having a real leftist to vote for.

  @chris tell it to Tom Mulcair, lol

• SMD 14:06 on 2026-03-30 Permalink

  I was heartened to hear Chantal Hébert on Radio-Can this morning, praising his improved French.

• Tim S. 17:28 on 2026-03-30 Permalink

  I’m excited by all the people who are excited by him and think he has a genuine chance to shape the national conversation. He does have a steep learning curve when it comes to winning over people who don’t already agree with him. Liberal supporters were already all over social media yesterday, trying to take over any thread with any positivity about him (and then complaining that people were being mean to Mark Carney. On Avi Lewis threads. Sigh). Internally, the real trick will be to not get into drama with the provincial parties, while still quietly maintaining connections with the staffers and volunteers. And not assuming that anyone who’s ever actually won anything is ‘The Establishment.’

  As for a seat, I would be very surprised if he didn’t run in a possible upcoming by-election in Beaches-East York in Toronto.

  Final point: I have very high hopes for Tanille Johnston in future. Probably the most genuinely thoughtful and determined of the leadership candidates.

• Ian 19:07 on 2026-03-30 Permalink

  Agreed on Tanille Johnston, the support for her was really refreshing, especially as her chances were initially dismissed.

  I forgot Avi Lewis was that Avi Lewis the VJ, seeing that old footage is great. I totally didn’t recognize him and I used to watch Much religiously. He needs better glasses haha : D

  Overall, despite the (inevitable) provincial infighting, I do think that this ushers in a new era of optimism and progressiveness, with room for a lot of different voices. I am glad we are moving past the centrism of Mulcair – to Singh, and hope we have moved past the sophomoric “holier than thou” McDonough era. If the NDP can really reinvent themselves as a party there is a very large unsatisfied demographic that is not comfortable with the rightward drift of the Overton Window.

• Chris 20:26 on 2026-03-30 Permalink

  Ian, tell what to Mulcair? You know he got the 2nd most seats ever for the NDP, right? Yes, he lost a bunch vs Layton, but Layton seems to have been an outlier, judging against those that came both before and after him.

  I guess it depends what you think a political party is for. Is it for having parliamentary power, like forming government, or official opposition, or having committee presence? If so, I doubt Lewis will do well. We shall see.

  Clearly this blog is full of Dippers, but as you have seen from every election ever, most Canadians are not with you. Remember to peer outside your bubbles sometimes.

• Ian 20:45 on 2026-03-30 Permalink

  Ah, I touched a nerve I see. Good.

  My main point in taunting you is that you are not a progressive, and will never be.

  Kate asked “Any thoughts on Avi Lewis as the new NDP leader?”
  Your brainworms could have cooked out anything but effectively your response was “Any thoughts on the NDP?”

  Why bother? If you think “dippers” are so contemptible, well, who cares what you think of their leader?

  In terms of Mulcair, he squandered Layton’s legacy, the strongest support the NDP had seen nationally ever, by being such an obvious neoliberal centrist that he foolishly cmapigned right of Trudeau. He lliterally tried to out-liberal the Liberals. That should have been a rookie mistake, but as we can see now, Mulcair dislikes the NDP and has always thought the NDP should be all about the economy and jobs, and that progressive politics are a liability. He wishes he was clever or connected enough to work with Carney, but showed very quickly that he lacks vision and his only talent was as a local MP.

• Kate 21:52 on 2026-03-30 Permalink

  I don’t think Mulcair could have picked up where Layton left off. Purely as a personality he’s too different. But although by now I can’t cite specific instances, I respected Mulcair for how he countered Harper at various moments.

• Joey 09:50 on 2026-03-31 Permalink

  Fifteen years later and we are still treating the 2011 election as if it were not one giant outlier… The NDP vote in Quebec increased from 12.2% in 2008 to 42.9%! The bloc dropped 15 points! With the same leader! This is weird. A lot has been said about what a unique and magical unicorn Jack Layton was but by 2011 he was a known quantity (he had been NDP leader since 2003). I’ve always thought that after nearly 15 years Quebeckers were bored/fed up with Gilles Duceppe by 2011 and found the principal alternatives – Harper and Ignatieff (who, unlike Dion in 2008, had no connection to the province) – to be completely unappealing.

  IMO comparing Mulcair’s or Singh’s (and soon Lewis’s) electoral performances to 2011 doesn’t tell you all that much – the fact that the NDP managed to turn 43% of the Quebec vote into 79% of Quebec seats says a lot more about Canadian elections than the circumstances of the party or its leader.

• Kate 10:03 on 2026-03-31 Permalink

  Joey, I’d almost managed to forget about Ignatieff, and you’re right, Ignatieff created the electoral vacuum that the NDP filled for that one election.