This Sunday, Avi Lewis won the NDP leadership race with 56 per cent of the vote on the first ballot.
Early on, the leadership race looked like Heather McPherson’s to lose, since she was the only MP among the challengers.
But Lewis pulled ahead through effective campaigning: he garnered more coverage in the left-wing press, and raised twice as much money as McPherson.
The question now is whether he can revive the ailing NDP.
Lewis has inherited a party in crisis. The 2025 federal election saw the NDP reduced from 24 seats to just seven. When Lori Idlout crossed the floor to join the Liberals, the NDP caucus dwindled to six. With Alexandre Boulerice, the party’s only MP from Québec, expected to resign to run for the leadership of the provincial party Québec solidaire, their numbers might drop further.
Lewis’ first hurdle will be making his voice heard in the House of Commons. At a rally in early March, he said he has no plans to run in any of the three upcoming by-elections, perhaps because the NDP has no safe seats where he would be likely to secure a victory.
When Lewis ran in the 2021 and 2025 federal elections in two distinct Vancouver-area ridings, he placed third each time. This lack of electoral success has some worried.
There is a precedent for taking a patient approach: Lewis’ predecessor Jagmeet Singh was crowned party leader in 2017, but did not secure a seat in Parliament until a 2019 by-election (after being parachuted into the safe riding of Burnaby South).
For Lewis, waiting until the next federal election to run may not be an option. A general election could be as far away as 2029; it would hamper Lewis’ ability to lead to be out of Parliament until then.
One option would be to run in a by-election in the Beaches—East York riding in Toronto. The riding’s current Liberal MP, Nate Erskine-Smith, has announced his plans to step down and run in a provincial by-election in Scarborough Southwest once that race is called. Mainstreet Research has indicated Lewis would stand a chance of winning the Toronto riding.
But even if Lewis can secure a seat in Parliament, his task of rebuilding the NDP will be formidable.
In particular, the party must answer the question of who is their core constituency.
The NDP’s base has increasingly shifted away from its rural, working-class origins to become an urban party of the well-educated. While fighting on one flank against the Liberals for the hearts and minds of urban, educated professionals, the NDP shed much of its traditional blue-collar base to the Conservatives.
Rob Ashton’s rise from obscurity to fourth place in this weekend’s leadership contest speaks to a desire within the NDP to reconnect with its working-class roots.
The longshoreman and union leader’s working-class credentials, attitude and aesthetic helped him poll ahead of Lewis or McPherson with the party’s self-identified blue-collar workers, according to the market research firm Pollara.
Before running for the NDP leadership, Lewis was best known as co-author of the Leap Manifesto, which championed a transition to clean energy in response to climate change. Lewis’ brand of eco-socialism is anathema to many workers.
Selling a clean transition to blue-collar Canadians would take careful work — and Lewis has already put his foot in his mouth.
During a leadership debate, while criticizing energy infrastructure projects, Lewis derided “manly” work camps that have “horrifying” impacts on women. Writing in the political magazine Canadian Dimension, Leigh Phillips excoriated Lewis for “calling the predominantly blue-collar workers — mostly men — who labour in remote camps like the ones where I work rapists and murderers.”
The energy sector and environment have also become a dividing line between the provincial and federal NDP in several provinces, particularly Alberta. Lewis cannot afford to worsen these rifts.
Despite these challenges, there are opportunities for Lewis and his party.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has shifted the Liberals rightward, leaving a gap on the Canadian left that the NDP could fill.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives have been trying without success to capitalize on affordability as an electoral issue, but have provided few inspiring solutions. In 2025, the only policy solutions to affordability in their platform were uninspiring tax cuts.
Lewis has proposed ambitious policies to address affordability, including a national rent cap, public grocery stores and building public housing.
If he can stay focused on bread-and-butter issues, and avoid alienating working-class Canadians, he could succeed in leading the NDP back to relevance.
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