Ranking the 5 Biggest Challenges Facing the Avi Lewis NDP
There will be no honeymoon phase for Avi Lewis, who has built a movement but faces the challenges of taking over a fragmented party struggling for national relevance.
The NDP has entered a new era with Avi Lewis’ first ballot victory in the NDP leadership race on Sunday. The final results were convincing but not dominant, with some clear divisions still evident within the party.
I was on CPAC on Saturday before voting closed and talked about some of the major challenges Avi Lewis will face in the early days of his leadership:
Today’s post will focus on the top five challenges that will require urgent action.
Honourable mentions:
Not a lot of Canadians know about Avi Lewis in recent polling. A lack of national profile is a genuine challenge, but it is better to be unknown than unpopular and with no election imminent there will be time for Lewis to introduce himself on his own terms. The NDP also looks destined to be in the news in the short term thanks to their internal divisions, and that will help raise his profile.
Decisions need to be made about the brand Avi Lewis wants to put forward to the public. His has effectively appealed to the NDP base, but his audience is changing in a general election context and adjustments need to be made to broaden his support base and make electoral gains possible
5. The NDP is losing the battle on the policy issues Canadians prioritize
The 2025 election was dominated by topics that the NDP struggled to articulate a position on. Jagmeet Singh had difficulty convincing Canadians he was a more capable economic manager than Mark Carney, and Avi Lewis will face the same challenge so long as affordability remains at the top of the list of vote drivers for Canadians. The NDP also had no answer for the threat posed by Donald Trump’s aggression against Canada.
In the short term, Lewis needs to find a way to insert himself into these conversations and make the NDP relevant to concerned voters on these topics. It won’t be easy.
In the longer term, Lewis could gamble that the vote drivers for Canadians will be different by the time the next election comes around. Canada-US relations might be entirely different in 2029 if Carney decides to carry his government to a full term. The economy has been a dominant issue since COVID, but in late 2019 it was the environment that Canadians listed as their top voting priority and that could be the case again if the economy improves. Even the current enthusiasm for defense spending might fade and lend more support to Lewis’ proposals to direct funding elsewhere.
It’s risky to assume conditions out of your control will turn in your favour, but there is an argument for skating where the puck is going and establishing yourself early as the trusted voice on topics the other leaders aren’t discussing so you can win those policy arguments down the road.
4. The NDP backs unions more than union members back the NDP
A disappointing 6% result for Rob Ashton may be the most interesting data point from the leadership race. There has been much talk about labour as an organizing force behind the NDP, but they failed to deliver votes for the explicitly union-backed candidate in the race.
Much of the NDP approach to union engagement has been top down recently, courting union leadership under the assumption that they will deliver votes in elections. However, all recent evidence suggests that union leaders no longer have the ability to politically mobilize their membership in that way.
For years, I’ve been struck by how rare it is to see Canadians cite their union as an influence in surveys and focus groups when asked about deciding factors in their votes. Now, it’s more evident than ever that while the NDP might see itself as a workers party, workers don’t feel connected to the NDP.1
Something needs to change in the NDP approach to workers because these results have laid bare a harsh truth that union members are just not that interested in what the party has been selling.
3. Money
Money doesn’t solve all of the NDP’s problems, but it will be difficult to solve any of them without it.
Avi Lewis has proven that he was the best fundraiser out of all the leadership candidates, but the financial hole the party is in will not be easy to escape. Paying the bills is an urgent concern because not doing so would put the future of the party at risk - some of the other challenges the NDP faces may have to take a lower priority until the party is able to collect the money needed to fund a growth strategy.
2. A regional revolt
Avi Lewis was still on stage giving his victory speech when Naheed Nenshi launched a broadside on social media to distance himself from the federal party.
The Saskatchewan NDP issued a similar statement declining an invitation to meet with Lewis:
The relationship between the federal party and these provincial counterparts might be irreparable. Issuing these statements before Lewis has even had an opportunity to make his case to them as leader suggests disinterest from the provincial leaders in finding common ground. It’s hard to read the timing of Nenshi’s response as anything other than an attempt to undermine Lewis’ moment of triumph.
That doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying to hold the party together.
Lewis has spoken very positively about both leaders since his victory and has issued ringing endorsements of both despite their statements. The urban prairies have become a key locus of strength for the federal NDP and Avi Lewis needs the resources of his provincial counterparts to maintain that more than the provincial parties need him.
The provincial revolt will be Lewis’ first test as leader and his first major moment in the national spotlight. He needs to salvage some sort of working relationship or the conflict could cause a downward spiral for a federal NDP that has few strongholds and faces many geographical threats.
1. The rest of the country
Alberta and Saskatchewan pose an urgent problem, but the most existential threat for the NDP lies to the east.
The much-rumoured imminent departure of Alexandre Boulerice to run provincially for Québec Solidaire will leave the NDP with no Members of Parliament east of Winnipeg for the first time in thirty years. Boulerice has been almost single-handedly carrying the flag for the NDP in Québec, where there is no formal provincial NDP counterpart. He has been ubiquitous as a guest on francophone news shows and his absence will deal a major blow to the party’s relevance in francophone media.
Avi Lewis could try to talk Boulerice (who donated to Heather McPherson) into staying in caucus, but that seems unlikely. Regardless, the departing MP should be one of the first calls Lewis makes. It’s vital that the federal NDP develops a Québec strategy that builds off of the institutional knowledge of their few francophone voices.
It’s not an entirely different story in Ontario and Atlantic Canada.
The NDP is staring down a few years of no representation in these regions before the next federal election and that puts them at a huge disadvantage in terms of party infrastructure, familiarity with local concerns and their relevance in regional media.
A smart strategy could rebuild the brand in these places, recruit new star candidates and maybe even result in Lewis entering Parliament this year as a result of a strong by-election effort that shows the party can still compete outside of Western Canada.
However, if the NDP brand is left to wither in more than half of the country, the NDP could shrink from a competitive federal party to a regional party with meager ambitions.
A return to national relevance is absolutely attainable for the new look NDP, but the downside risk is a Western husk distracted by internal fights in some of their most competitive jurisdictions.
That’s why, more than anything else, Avi Lewis’ first priority as NDP leader should be proving the party can be a united, national party capable of articulating a progressive vision in every region of the country.
Part of this may be that many unionized workers see themselves as middle class rather than part of a united working class.