When Avi Lewis was elected leader of the New Democratic Party just over two months ago, he issued a boast that was almost Trumpian in its braggadocio. “Canada, mark your calendar. The NDP comeback starts now,” he said. But it turns out, he was right. A Liaison Strategies poll released on Monday had NDP support at 15 per cent, with the party leading among 18–34 year olds. To put that in context, the NDP won the support of 1.2-million voters in the 2025 election. If a vote were held tomorrow, with a similar turnout, at this level of polling, the party would win nearly three million votes.
Rising Support and Polling Trends
Since May 15, nine opinion polls have the NDP in double-digit territory, in large part because of a cooling in sentiment on the left for the Liberals. The polls suggest that Lewis is becoming more familiar to Canadians and a lot of them apparently quite like what they are seeing: ostensibly, an articulate, telegenic, bilingual leader, arguing for a better deal for workers and the young, particularly when it comes to the adoption of artificial intelligence.
Lewis's Policy Positions
He has not acclimatized to national politics yet, as he showed in his press conference when asked about the Alberta separatist movement. “The separatist movement in Alberta has no point of comparison with the historic sovereignty movement in Quebec,” he said. “It’s a MAGA-aligned, potentially funded, disruptive movement… It’s not the same thing.” He could hardly have done more for the separatists in Alberta if he had called them “deplorables.”
However, his “humans-first AI strategy”, his proposed ban on surveillance pricing (where companies use personal data to determine prices), and his call to remove the Canadian Labour Code’s article 107 (which gives the minister discretionary authority to order striking workers back to work) have all positioned Lewis as being well within the parameters of NDP convention as a pragmatic democratic socialist.
Confrontation with Liberals
Last week, he promised the Liberals “a very hot summer” if they limit the right to strike, which he said is “under attack” after the government held consultations on the Labour Code. Lewis said the Liberals have been “flooding the zone” with legislation attacking environmental, worker and Indigenous rights since they gained their majority. “There is a reasonable fear that they’re going after the right to strike as a whole, or at least on major projects,” he said. This is a smart position that any NDP leader in the last 40 years, from Ed Broadbent to Jack Layton, would likely have taken.
The Radical Agenda Behind the Rhetoric
But voters should not be fooled. Lewis is not Broadbent or Layton; he is an unabashed proponent of what The Economist this week labelled “Gen Z socialism.” As his leadership platform revealed, Lewis wants to remake the economy with price controls on groceries and rent, impose hefty wealth taxes and nationalize grocery, telecom and pharma companies. He would pause the expansion of AI data centres and place an export tax on U.S.-bound fossil fuels. “This country is awash with wealth,” he said in his platform, “a fountain of wealth… but it’s not trickling down to working people. It’s stuck at the top, being hoarded by the corporate welfare bums.”
