The NDP leadership race could be turning into a nail-biter with no clear winner in sight. But it’s unclear if Canadians are tuning in.
But according to party insiders, three are likely bets to become leader: Heather McPherson, Avi Lewis and Rob Ashton.
One endorsement that flew under the radar came from the largest private sector union in North America, the United Steelworkers.
The union, with its 225,000 members, announced in December that it was throwing its weight behind Ashton, who is a dockworker and the national president of the International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU) in B.C.
Union members are already volunteering for Ashton’s campaign, signing up members, organizing meet-and-greet events in local union halls and making phone calls.
It would be interesting to see if more unions join up Rob’s campaign. That could be a big boost and offset Avi’s funding lead. I won’t be mad with either of them getting the leadership but I think I still prefer Rob.
Labour power - the ability to shutdown the machine that feeds the oligarchs as well as take the most of what workers produce - is the most fundamental and the strongest power we have for enacting significant change. It’s the power that stops the shipments of weapons from Italy to Israel, without asking for a politician to turn against his defence donors. It’s a power that can only be forcibly taken away at gunpoint. It’s a power that’s acquired without the consent of politicians or oligarchs. The way I see it, any campaign for systemic change needs to leverage labour power if it is to not be disrupted by the oligarch class. Oligarch-resistant political power is downstream from labour power.
Thought-provoking take, thanks.
My problem with the modern NDP is that I’d be happy voting for 2 out of the 3 frontrunners but as soon as I say which ones some random fellow NDP supporter will come out of nowhere to skewer me.
Well, Heather McPherson is campaigning explicitly on stamping that behaviour out.
Good. I want a strong workers rights and social safety net party without having to acknowledge 15 causes in every statement in the preamble.
Edit: that’s hyperbole and I respect the land acknowledgements on unceded territory.
Is anyone paying attention?
Lol…no.
As a party you willingly sold yourselves down the river to prevent a Pollievre disaster. While many believed it was necessary (myself included), the consequence of that is that the NDP aren’t even an official party anymore.
We are now effectively a two-party country, and people give the NDP leadership race as much attention as the Green Party.
As a party you willingly sold yourselves down the river to prevent a Pollievre disaster.
Which very likely saved Canada from buying khaki shorts and white New Balances in 2025.
I don’t disagree. Just saying that the price for that sacrifice was to make themselves politically irrelevant. at least in the short term.
I think the NDP will be back next election now that all the voters that voted liberal didn’t get what they wanted from the liberals.
The big parties have all gone through collapse and resurrection before. It’s not over until it’s over.
People voted Liberal to prevent a conservative government only to get a conservative government with red paint.
I agree. I’m disappointed in the fact that we ended up just voting in a Red Conservative. However, the alternative wasn’t a Blue Conservative…it was MAGA. And quite honestly if the choice were to be made again, even KNOWING FULL WELL that Carney is more Conservative than he let on, I’d do it again to prevent Poppingfresh from turning the country into MapleMAGA land.
Because they think they’re so smart and will vote strategically instead of supporting their beliefs and values. That’s what you get. Own it.
And this is just fine. I’ll take a “middle right” liberal instead of a full whack job far right party any day. I’m happy to elect centralist parties that can sit on the fenc for everyone in Canada to some extent.
Yeah, the status quo is going great. Pumping more wealth to the wealthy is swell. Them economics are trickling down like crazy. So much so that the working/middle class is thriving and not being priced out of their homes and left starving.
Boohoo.
“Now”? This country has no clue how to exist in a multi-party system and it’s depressing as hell. We call it “strategic voting” to make ourselves feel better about the fact that we constantly vote against our interests.
A few elections back the NDP got more than half the votes of the Liberals but because our system sucks they got a sixth of the seats. People don’t look at the important numbers, only the seat count, so we all collectively decided to shoot ourselves in the foot so we could elect a conservative instead of a Conservative because our brains are mush.
Getting so fucking tired of Canadian apathy.
For a FPTP system we’re actually pretty multiparty. Like you said, if you don’t vote for a party with a local chance it doesn’t matter how motivated you are.
Except that it is painfully obvious that everyone simply decides what a “good chance” is and that means most people left of the Conservatives piss their pants and vote Liberals, who are just lower-case conservatives. The only people who ever benefit from “strategic” voting are the Liberals, it almost never happens any other way. Why do you think they threw our democracy in the garbage a decade ago when they nixxed that promise?
Vote for the party that aligns with your values or don’t show up and fuck with the numbers. If you can’t handle that then we deserve what we get.
“Boohoo I voted against my best interests and now things that are bad are happening! I did this so often that I’ve helped choke out any idea that maybe we can do better, and further reinforced the idea that the Liberals are some kind of ‘default’ option.”
I mean, the Conservative party existing is a form of strategic voting - it used to be more than one. You’re talking about it as if the spectrum stops at Mark Carney.
It’s just the optimal strategy in this system, and yeah, it inevitably leads to some two parties dominating. You can be as self-righteous as you want about it - while losing.
ill just throw this out there. because in my point of view, i do believe canada, and generally the west itself has a nearing exparation date as far as the normal function of our society goes. we are entering into a death spiral that will likely see our entire way of life dramatically change, and we as a country may not exist in the same way every again. that being said.
i would care more if any of these individuals were actually consistent on issues that really matter.
some of them may be worker positive, others wish to centralise the party further right, others want stronger unions, and increased immigration. but none of them are nearly dramatic enough to fight the only fight that really matters. they care more about the economy and immigration than the environment, nationalising energy projects, or dismantling monopolies. none of them care about attacking the cancer that is oligarch influence in our country.
what we would end up getting is a milk toast feel good government which would spend more money on advertising what the right would inevitably call “woke bullshit” and rile them up about canada “doing a socialism” furthering the divide and increasing separatist support.
dont get me wrong, i love the idea of strong unions, immigration (when balanced with increasing living standards, and not done maliciously to the detriment of immigrants and canadians, stagnating wages, increasing the cost of housing, and creating scape goats out of people who just want a better life)
what we need is someone who will promise not to fuck with legal gun owners, and if anything roll back gun bans on “military STYLE guns” (especially right now when we face a potential invasion from the US) we need someone who is pro worker, pro union, and pro free healthcare. we need a new national standard of pay for healthcare workers and a federally implemented standard that dramatically cuts the progress of privatised healthcare at every corner. we need someone who will dismantle telecom monopolies, nationalise our energy sector, and telecom companies. develope domestic trade routes, international trade agreements. protect our private information, and remove surveillance technology from the police and csis against canadian citizens that would interfere with our constitutional right to privacy. while also ensuring that AI ethics are dramatically enforced by anyone wishing to make them available in canada. environmentally, and content wise. we need someone who will work to create a balanced and fair immigration system that allows our standard of living to increase in spite of new canadians coming over to make a new home. and we need someone to dismantle the system of realestate investment in canada, who will completely remove or severaly reduce corporate ownership of single family homes, farm land, and condominiums. there needs to also be an individual cap on home ownership as well. at the very max a normal individual can own no more than two residential properties in canada without licensing. ALSO, this is extremely upsetting to hear for landlords. we need combined ownership rights from renters and landlords. if you pay 90% of someones mortgage, then you should be entitled to 90% of the equity. we need to dramatically reduce the allure of landlording. it is parasitic. and destructive.
feel free to shit all over what i just said. but honestly our countries fucked either way with the current changes in the world, and perhaps when we rebuild, we rebuild it a bit more fairly once that child raping geriatric fuck down south chokes to death on a big mac.
oligarchs and billionaires should simply not exist, not in canada. not anywhere in the world. they are directly to blame for the negative influence in our country. and so, we should attack the system that allows it. if we corner off our country from them, that is one massive landmass of labour, and a millenias worth of resources they cant touch. fuck em.
The gun thing is the least important part. I’m focusing on that because you put it first, and because many people who put guns at the front will often use that as an excuse to not vote for the better thing.
What we need, right now, is for the people of Canada to start voting for their interests. No more “strategic” voting and no more fighting against postive, evidence-backed change. The people you want exist and are out there yelling but we tell ourselves “they couldn’t win” and throw them aside. After a 36% turnout, Montréal elected an obviously corrupt landlord to be the mayor when Craig Sauvé was right there saying the things you say will fix things.
It’s not flashy, it’s not dramatic, but the reality is that Canadians don’t seem to want better for themselves. We have to vote to show others that we do, and that’s scary right now but what, do we want someone to hold our hands and call us special babies in order to do our one fucking job?
i agree that guns are not on the top of the list of important things for most canadians. however you are not going to flip conservative, rural/indigenous hunters without some kind of roll back, as an indigenous hunter myself, who hunts to sustain myself and my family. its annoying that we would rather spend money on a buy back programs instead of using that money to secure the border and dedicate more law enforcment to addressing illegally imported firearms and ghost guns.
if we want a presence from the NDP, and to gain official status back, this is just one issue that would flip a massive sum of voters from the conservative and im sure the liberal party as well.
everything else the NDP wants starts to make sense when you allow canadians to have their privacy and some autonomy back in their lives. everything else sweetens the pot. unfortunately there are a lot of single issue voters when it comes to gun rights. if we undermine the conservative parties policies, like the liberals did, and quite successfully, specifically around gun rights. it would be a slam dunk return for the NDP.
ive spoken to a quite a few people who decided to vote conservative on this policy alone. the rest of their platform doesnt work for them (obviously) otherwise. we need to strengthen individual rights, and workers rights, and we need a better armed population. because none of our wanted policies will matter if we are annexed by the states without a fight.
we unfortunately do not have the luxury of living in a safe world anymore. and we need numbers to ensure that we get the policies that serve all canadians. even the ones traditionally on the other side of the isle.
Do you…not understand how little autonomy you have under Liberals and Conservatives? Not only are their laws actually pretty shitty, but by quietly soft-locking the working class put of having enough money to genuinely participate in the market you also have very little power there, too. There also won’t be much of a place left to hunt for your food after those two are done selling off and exploiting all that land.
If people do not see how obviously bad the Liberals and Conservatives are, and if they are stupid enough to vote single-issue on the dumbest fucking thing imaginable compared to everything else going on, then there’s no way they’re going to flip parties because of any concessions. Single-issue voters very often use their pet issue as their excuse, not their reason, and will vote away all their rights and power for the love of the game.
You vote Liberal and Conservative and you get precisely what you deserve. You can vote to turtle up and being afraid of everything, allowing the wealthy to take everything from you and your community, or you can grow a backbone and try to help shift the culture. They don’t give a fuck about you, and the best you can do to work against that is make excuses for them?
You can’t fight the wildfire that will claim your hunting grounds with a fucking gun, genius.
Me, I’m paying attention. Avi seems like the only true leftist with a shot at winning. Rob is okay but he needs to drop the fossil fuel BS. Heather sucks and is a moderate and will only push the party further center. Tony and Tanille are precious but obviously don’t have a chance.
Wow, great summary. They are kind of missing someone that can speak to the whole party.
Yeah, I think that’s why the race is so tight. IMO Avi, while not representing unions in the same way that Rob Ashton is doing, is still speaking to a lot of the core of what the NDP was originally. You can have worker solidarity but if you don’t have community support, that doesn’t really work. Avi is calling for the gov to work with community organizers and unions, as well as calling for green alternatives, which I don’t think was a founding principle for the NDP but it is a huge issue that could help unite left leaning voters in Canada.
I wonder if we can get Avi to be a bit more relatable. He self describes as a “movement builder”. If he wants to win an election his image will need a hell of a makeover.
How do you propose? Like he needs to have more of a worker/blue-collar vibe?
From what I’ve seen, he’s seemed fairly down-to-earth and I appreciate his passion. However, I know I am his target audience, so I’m genuinely curious as to what you (or anyone else reading this) think would make him more relatable to the common person.
We haven’t had a promising NDP leader since Jack Laydon. When you get another guy like him I might start giving a fuck.
I’m pretty sure my hope in the Canadian government died with Jack Layton. My younger eyes viewed him as the most human politician compared to the others. I don’t know if it was true, I was only just becoming politically aware at that time but that’s how felt at the time.
Sadly my hope in this government and country has never recovered. All I see is a growing mountain of disappointments.
Same my friend.
I think if you listen to Avi you will see he has passion and drive delivered with a charisma that has been lacking in recent NDP leaders since Jack… I like Avi and his vision. Give him a listen if you can, you will like him.
I had the opposite reaction. He did not seem at all relatable. I like his vision, but feel like he has a hard time articulating it in simple terms.
Paying attention to what, another crop of rich fucksticks arguing over who gets to fill their pockets next ?
Rob Ashton’s actually not bad. He’s a good ol’ fashioned union boy. I’d vote for him.
