Who is Avi Lewis, the new leader of the NDP?

New Democrats have chosen Avi Lewis to lead their party, tasking him with rebuilding a caucus that has fallen out of official status in the House of Commons, and charting a path back to federal prominence.

Lewis took the stage as the crowd chanted “Avi! Avi! Avi!” and called on his opponents and supporters to join him. Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew, who leads his province’s NDP, also stood behind him onstage. Lewis called him a “political powerhouse.”

“Our party is back and our tent is growing,” said Lewis from the podium, after securing 56 per cent support with 39,734 members’ votes.

“Canadians are living on the edge. We’re under economic attack by the U.S., while Donald Trump stomps around the globe grabbing foreign leaders and oil fields and starting wars he has no idea how to stop,” said the new leader.

“Shame!” the audience responded.

Lewis then lamented what he called “the everyday emergency of just trying to get by in an impossible economy.”

He accused the Liberal and Conservative parties of bending to the wills of “a tiny group of billionaires who control every part of our economy.”

“They’ll blame Trump. They’ll blame immigrants. They’ll blame Indigenous land rights. They’ll blame anyone but the CEOs, the corner-office class, to whom they feel accountable.”

The Lewis campaign

Lewis, a Vancouver-based documentary filmmaker and author by trade, pitched himself as a leader who could bring the NDP to form a government “that serves the many, not the money.”

He was largely seen as a front-runner during the campaign and pledged to disrupt Canada’s wealth concentration among the country’s highest earners.

Among his major policy ideas are a wealth tax he estimates would rake in $40 billion in revenue from Canada’s richest, ending government subsidies to the fossil fuel sector, and reviving the digital services tax. He also advocated for rebuilding the party’s relationship with local riding associations.

The major critique he faced from his perceived main opponent, Heather McPherson, was that he had never been elected and the party needs someone who knows how to win.

Lewis ran twice, unsuccessfully, for the federal NDP. He first tried in West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea-to-Sky in 2021. Then in 2025, he ran in Vancouver Centre. He placed third both times.

What has he promised?

When it comes to policy, his plan centred around advancing “solutions as big as the crises facing working Canadians.” Among what he sees as these crises are: rising inequality, climate change, collapsing health care and growing fascism.

Lewis’ campaign platform had seven pillars, focused around party renewal, tax fairness, the digital age, affordable housing, health care, public options “to stop price gouging” and his environmental plan called a “Green New Deal.”

Among the major policies he’s proposed within those categories are:

• Imposing a “wealth tax” on Canada’s top one per cent of earners, which he estimates would rake in $40 billion a year.
• Capping rent increases nationally and establishing a “Federal Housing Secretariat” similar to the Major Projects Office to co-ordinate home-building projects.
• Ending any federal approvals for new pipelines, or other natural gas projects, and building a nationwide clean energy grid instead.
• Pushing back on U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs with a tax on oil and gas exports to the U.S.
• Pausing expanding AI data centres in Canada and guarantee Canadians would always be able to talk to a real person when accessing federal services.
• Offering free public transit, high-speed rail, inter-community electric bus services and revisiting the zero-emission vehicle mandate.
• Investing two per cent of Canada’s GDP in tackling climate change, allegedly creating more than one million “good paying union jobs” and transitioning fossil fuel workers in the process.
• Creating a public alternative to the big grocery chains, which he estimates could cut grocery costs by as much as 40 per cent using a warehouse-style model.
• Establishing a public pharmaceutical manufacturer to rebuild domestic vaccine production capacity and ease reliance on foreign pharmaceutical suppliers.
• Rebuilding the party through empowering members and Electoral District Associations (EDAs) as well as making training more frequent and nominating candidates early.

“There’s no question that this is a challenging time for New Democrats. But our campaign believes that we can build back stronger than we ever have before,” Lewis’ platform reads. “The NDP’s best days are still ahead of us.”

Who is Avi Lewis?

Lewis describes himself as a “veteran journalist, educator and activist.” His media experience includes hosting CBC’s “CounterSpin” and co-creating Al Jazeera’s “Fault Lines.”

He is also a documentary filmmaker whose campaign biography notes he’s conducted interviews with David Bowie and Leonard Cohen for CityTV’s “The New Music.”

Arguably, his largest claim-to-fame is as co-founder of the The Leap Manifesto, a 15-point plan pushing Canada to “transition beyond fossil fuels.”

The roadmap had the backing of environmentalists, Indigenous leaders, social and food justice advocates, academics, artists, and some labour organizations. Though, the document quickly divided New Democrats, particularly in energy-rich western provinces.

Between campaigns, Lewis teaches climate justice and documentary film at the University of British Columbia and lives in Vancouver with his wife, author and activist Naomi Klein, their son, Toma, and dog Smoke.

‘Not in the interests of Alberta’

Not all New Democrats are celebrating Lewis’s win.

Naheed Nenshi, leader of the Alberta NDP, sharply criticized the federal party’s new leader in a statement released moments after the results were published.

Nenshi called Lewis “someone who openly cheered for the defeat of the Alberta NDP government, is not in the interests of Alberta,” in the note published on X.

“We believe in Alberta and we believe in Canadian energy and the good jobs it creates. We believe in more pipelines and in reducing emissions. We believe in strong public services and a strong jobs-driven economy to help pay for them. This is what we are fighting for every day,” he added.

Nenshi closed his statement writing that he is not interested in battling the federal NDP’s agenda. Rather, his “fight” is with “Danielle Smith and the separatist UCP.”

Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair, speaking to CTV News Channel, highlighted Nenshi’s “strong condemnation,” adding Lewis must bring the perspective of resource-producing provinces into his tent if he intends to win seats nationally.

On Saturday, Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck said she was open to meeting with Lewis so long as he changes his position on resources development.

She said his positions on that file are “ideological and unrealistic,” referencing a LinkedIn post he made in November, 2025, where he wrote he’s “unequivocally opposed to any new fossil fuel development.”

Beck said there are 40,000 Saskatchewan jobs tied to natural resource development, directly and indirectly, and “at least 900,000 worldwide.” Lewis’s positions are antithetical to NDP values, she wrote.

Both Beck and Nenshi’s New Democrat parties form their respective provinces’ Official Opposition.

An uphill battle

Lewis, having won the support of the party, faces an uphill battle to expand its reach to the rest of the country.

The NDP entered last year’s election with 24 seats. It saw its caucus reduced to just seven members and recently lost Nunavut MP Lori Idlout to the Liberals. For a party to retain or gain official party status, it must hold at least 12 seats – double what it has now.

The party will also need to win back its own voters. On March 25, pollster Angus Reid published responses from more than 1,100 Canadians who voted NDP in any of the last four elections and found 44 per cent did not recognize a single name on the list of leadership hopefuls.

About one quarter of respondents said the party is irrelevant, and 40 per cent said the party’s best days are behind it.

More than a fifth of respondents disagreed with the notion that the NDP is the party of the working class, many of whom supported the New Democrats in the past but now vote Conservative, the pollster noted.