Crisis is coming, and voters may give the federal NDP another look

[Sid Shniad]

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GLOBE AND MAIL                                                                                                                                                                 APRIL 1, 2026

Crisis is coming, and voters may give the federal NDP another look

Andrew Coyne

Avi Lewis, who was proclaimed as the new leader of the NDP, speaks at the party convention in Winnipeg on Sunday. JOHN WOODS/The Canadian Press

Somewhere, James Laxer is shedding a wistful tear. Along with Mel Watkins, Cy Gonick and others, Mr. Laxer led the radical Waffle faction within the federal NDP in the late 1960s and early 1970s, whose mission was to pull the party sharply to the left.

They advocated for nationalization of major industries, strict limits on foreign ownership, sharply higher taxes on the wealthy, and perhaps most controversially, withdrawal from NATO. They were organized, disciplined and uncompromising: a party within a party.

So alarming were they to the party leadership that they were eventually expelled. I believe the leader’s name was – no, don’t help me – it was … Ah yes: David Lewis.

What a delightful irony, then, to see the Waffle, or its 21st century equivalent, finally take over the party, under the leadership of his grandson, Avi. (Sadly, Mr. Lewis’s father, David Lewis’s son, Stephen Lewis, a former Ontario NDP leader, died Tuesday, at the age of 88: that he lived long enough to see his son elected leader will be at least of some comfort.)

NDP Leader Avi Lewis vows to move party to the left and stop oil industry expansion

Alas, there is little left of the party to take over. Comparisons are sometimes made to Jeremy Corbyn’s insurgent campaign to win control of the British Labour party or Zohran Mamdani’s social-media-driven conquest of the Democratic party in New York. But these were serious parties with broad followings and real shots at governing.

The NDP, by contrast, is at historic lows in popular opinion, reduced to half a dozen seats in the House of Commons and facing the threat of bankruptcy: the sort of party that is ripe for the plucking. The 30,000 or so members the Lewis campaign is credited with signing up are about half the size of the pre-race membership.

The party was already down to its hard core, the truest of the true believers. The Lewis influx will reinforce that. This is a radical party, now, unrecognizable to many of its former members.

It is hard to see how it could be otherwise. Those pining for the old labour-farmer coalition have to reckon with a Canadian society that looks nothing like what it was in the NDP’s glory days. In 1935, when the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (the NDP’s forerunner) was founded, 30 per cent of Canada’s work force was agricultural, while another 15 per cent was unionized.

By 1961, when the NDP came into being, the proportions had been reversed: 11 per cent agricultural, 32 per cent organized labour. Still, nearly half the working population, combined. But today? Farm workers make up about 1 per cent of the work force; unionized workers, still about 30 per cent – but most of those are white-collar, public-sector workers now, not the horny-handed sons of toil of old.

Still, the provincial New Democrats seem to have managed the transition. For all of the federal party’s travails, the NDP’s provincial cousins are in robust good health, governing two provinces and forming the official opposition in four others.

Opinion: Is Avi Lewis’s NDP doomed? Don’t write the obituary just yet

The efforts by the provincial parties in Alberta and Saskatchewan to distance themselves from the new federal leader, striking both for their speed and brutality, are therefore an ominous sign. But again, how could it be otherwise: for a party in a resource-based province, any association with a party so overtly hostile to resource extraction is a death knell.

To add to the party’s difficulties, it remains a non-factor in Quebec, with a leader whose French is serviceable at best. Most of all, it faces the same dilemma that did in its previous leader: how to occupy space in a political landscape dominated by the baleful figure of Donald Trump, at a time when national survival has supplanted more everyday concerns.

So, pack it in, then? Not so fast. These are the last of the good times for the Carney government. The global economy, under the strains imposed by the Iran war, is heading for the ditch. Trade talks with the U.S. are likely to fail. Secession referendums loom, with or without annexation campaigns.

In the chaos that is headed our way, more voters may be willing to give the NDP a look than is presently accounted for. Popular opinion has become detached from its partisan or ideological moorings.

And memories are short. It has been decades since any government tried the policies the Lewis NDP now advocates. The reasons that led governments to abandon them are forgotten; the very passage of time means they can now be presented as fresh approaches.

As for the party Mr. Lewis now leads, it is impossible to discount the importance of feeling good about yourself. The policies of the Lewis NDP may be bad policies; they may be losing policies; but they are authentically their policies, things they actually believe in. You’d be surprised how much that matters to people.