00:04:30.100but I would say that Avi Lewis is a serious person.
00:04:32.920Like, I'll play a couple of clips here. This is sort of the good side of Abby Lewis. So here he is delivering his victory speech. And he says that, you know, Mark Carney's a smart person. We have faith in him. But he's failing to live up to the vision that Canadians elected him. I think this is a very valid criticism and the way he delivers it is quite strong. So let's play this clip.
00:04:50.920The Prime Minister is very popular at the moment. He's a smart guy, and most Canadians still want to give him the benefit of the doubt. That's fair. But I think when you connect the dots, his moves do not add up to the vision that Canadians truly want and deserve in this perilous moment.
00:05:08.100That's exactly right. I'll play another clip. I thought this was quite powerful as well.
00:05:11.580I don't agree with this, but there's a big segment on the Canadian population and certainly on the Canadian political left
00:05:17.080that doesn't like Israel very much and doesn't want Canada to be involved in any way, shape or form in a war in the Middle East with Iran.
00:05:24.560So here is Avi Lewis articulating that, saying Canada should have absolutely nothing to do with this war.
00:05:30.900And we need a government that doesn't just talk about Canadian values on the world stage.
00:05:36.360we need one that acts with moral clarity when it matters when missiles are falling on schools and
00:05:44.220hospitals when israel commits a genocide in gaza we call it by its name and we do everything in
00:05:53.720our power to bring it to an end right so again that that's not what i i don't i don't agree with
00:05:59.720that but i think that that the fact that somebody is out there saying these kinds of things there
00:06:03.620is a large segment of the population, or at least a significant segment of the population that would
00:06:07.680agree with that. What do you think? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's at least 10% of
00:06:12.100Canadians that are very sort of ideologically left-wing, that this party should be able to
00:06:17.260hoover up and make that their base. And 10% doesn't sound like very much. They got 6% in the last
00:06:22.200election. So 10% is increasing their vote, you know, is almost doubling their vote. So they start
00:06:26.300with 10, they're on the road back a little bit. But, you know, I think that what Mr. Lewis
00:06:33.520is showing is that he's not, he's going to be, he's okay with criticizing the government for the
00:06:39.620left. Under Mr. Singh, the NDP, like Jagmeet Singh's problem was not that he didn't want to
00:06:46.600be an NDP leader. He wanted to be Justin Trudeau and was very annoyed that there was somebody else
00:06:50.860doing a better job of being Justin Trudeau than Jagmeet Singh. And he never could really criticize
00:06:56.360or attack Justin Trudeau in a very effective manner because he didn't really believe it,
00:07:01.140because it was kind of what he wanted and that was the way he saw things. So I think a reinvigorated
00:07:07.780NDP will be strong, could have the potential to build something and attacking Carney from the
00:07:15.080left. It's been very interesting because Carney hasn't really had to deal with any attacks from
00:07:18.220the left. He's been able to, there's been a lot of talk of how Carney has attacked to the right
00:07:23.400and cut into certain chunks of sort of boomer conservative voters. There's a whole lot of
00:07:27.820conversation around that. But he's been able to do that successfully because he hasn't had to worry
00:07:31.760about his left flank. You have to start worrying about his left flank as things are getting very
00:07:35.860interesting. I completely agree. I think that that was a problem with Jagmeet Singh, right? The way
00:07:39.660that they introduced him when he became the leader was he's a lot like Justin Trudeau. He's sort of
00:07:43.360like privileged elitist. He has a Rolex collection and he drives like antique BMW cars. But he's a
00:07:49.240man of the people and he's a socialist and he wants to nationalize the grocery system. But it just
00:07:54.880really work because dustin trudeau was already the avatar of left-wing canadians and so yes mark
00:08:00.320carney really tacked to the right he ripped off most conservative uh principles and positions in
00:08:05.920the last election getting ready to carbon tax wanting to build pipelines and sort of taking
00:08:10.320back control of loving canada right like elbows up we love canada again and and and yeah exactly
00:08:16.720there's no one no one fighting on the left because at that point jagmeet singh was so diminished
00:08:21.200And Canadians just didn't trust him. I want to go back through the last few election results with you, Hamish. I pulled out the last five because I think that you have to go back to 2011 to remember the height of the NDP, Jack Layton. We had that orange wave back in 2011 that really helped the Conservatives win. I mean, that was partially the reason that they did win. The NDP at that point got 30% of the vote, historic high, 103 seats in the House of Commons.
00:08:45.860Remember, the Liberals were just totally wiped out with only 34 seats and 18.9%, and the Conservatives were able to get a majority government with 166 seats or 39.6, so 40% of the vote.
00:08:57.960Fast forward to 2015, and again, that was the election that Justin Trudeau won, and the Liberals were back up to 40%, the Conservatives were knocked down to 32%, and the NDP were at 20%.
00:09:09.86020%. So 30% is the difference for the Conservatives. At 20%, the Liberals were still able to win that
00:09:16.420election. And then we go to 2019, NDP, we're down to 16%. So again, 30% down to 20%. And then 16%
00:09:25.220in that election, of course, Trudeau won with the smallest, I believe the smallest popular vote
00:09:29.860in Canadian history, 33% of the voters had 34%. The 2021 election wasn't that much difference.
00:09:36.820basically is very similar. And then it was a 2025 election that was just historically bad for the
00:09:43.900NDP. They really should have gotten rid of Jagmeet Singh as a leader before this election. They only
00:09:47.380got 6% of the vote Hamish. And so I, you know, I think that that was the difference. I'm just
00:09:52.720curious, but like, what do you think Abby Lewis needs to meet? What percentage in the election
00:09:58.000would he need to get to help the conservatives? And do you think that he's capable of getting
00:10:02.140them there? Well, I think, I think the fascinating thing is there's a couple different paths. The
00:10:05.740NDP lost in the 2025 election, lost votes both to Conservatives and to Liberals.
00:10:10.320Everybody assumes left-wing voters just sort of go to the Liberals.
00:10:13.060They were scared of Donald Trump, everything else.
00:10:14.800And that's true for hundreds, millions of voters.
00:10:17.120But there's also a huge chunk of working-class NDP voters, blue-collar voters, especially
00:10:22.400in places in rural British Columbia, northern Ontario, Windsor, that blue-collar old private
00:10:29.880sector union vote who moved to the Conservatives in a significant way.
00:10:35.220So the question is, which votes does Mr. Lewis get back?
00:10:38.880I think because of the way Mr. Lewis presents himself and the issues that he's focused on,
00:10:42.640he is much more likely to do better in urban areas and in areas with more sort of traditional left wing
00:10:51.220or more urban and public sector union type environments.
00:10:55.140So the fascinating thing is those seats are all held by Liberals.
00:10:59.400So the NDP actually, depending on where they grow,
00:11:02.380and if they grow in areas that are more like Mr. Lewis, I think we're going to see them grow.
00:11:09.780They don't actually have to grow that much to make a significant difference.
00:11:13.160If they got 6% in the last election, if they take, say, 6% from the Liberals,
00:11:18.220especially in a whole bunch of seats that are overwhelmingly Liberal,
00:11:20.620that vote's concentrated there, the election, if that happened in the last election,
00:11:25.560it would have been enough for a Conservative majority.
00:11:27.900It's incredibly credible how the liberal strength is actually predicated on NDP weakness and the NDP even being back at 10, 11, 12, 13 percent.
00:11:37.420They don't need to be at 20 percent, but if they get their vote up 10, 11, 12, 13 percent, they can have a huge impact on the next election.
00:11:45.040Well, and not just that, but like you said, I think with a strong NDP and an articulate leader like Abby Lewis,
00:11:50.140It will force Mr. Carney, Mark Carney to tack further to the left on some issues and possibly lose, like you mentioned, this sort of boomer conservative base that he built up.
00:12:00.600A lot of those people won't like some of these ideas.
00:12:03.040I'm going to play what I thought was the most remarkable clip, and clearly the thing that gave the most energy to this NDP convention, where Avi Lewis is excitingly telling the crowd that he wants basically a state takeover of the entire economy to Trump-proof our economy with public ownership of every major market from housing to internet to food to transit.
00:12:24.360This is what the future would look like under an NDP government.
00:12:29.020Our NDP has a different offer for this country.
00:12:31.920Our plan is to Trump-proof the economy by investing massively in Canadian economic independence,
00:12:39.340using the unmatched power of public ownership to ensure the fundamentals of a good life.
00:12:48.420A network of public providers for food, phones, and internet.
00:12:54.260a public housing developer and public construction companies to build millions of non-market homes
00:13:04.180a 21st century electrical grid an ev bus revolution and a heat pump in every home
00:13:12.500built with canadian steel creating tens of thousands of unionized jobs
00:13:18.380so that is the future of canada under an ndp government communism folks and uh we'll just
00:13:25.680build a wall against the americans we won't have to deal with them at all i don't know how we'll
00:13:29.140fund all this well we're only going to trade with north korea and cuba only like-minded countries
00:13:34.800apparently uh but i mean this is this is the direction that the ndp is going i'll play another
00:13:40.400clip here this is where avi lewis blasts the corporate elites uh for the high prices of
00:13:45.320groceries and presumably a government-run grocery store would be much more affordable as the sought
00:13:49.840for. It's why you're in shock at the grocery checkout, in tears looking at your bills at the
00:13:57.120end of the month. It's because the wealth of this country is being hoovered up by a corporate elite
00:14:02.780who are extracting it from you every single day. It's immoral, it's unreasonable, it's un-Canadian
00:14:09.420and we cannot let it stand well we're gonna have a model of that because olivia chow just announced
00:14:16.340government-run grocery stores in the city of toronto so i guess we'll see how that experiment
00:14:20.780goes hamish i'm getting to guess not well one other point of frustration that i had with this
00:14:26.360party last night i think we play this on b-roll but when avi lewis was named leader there he is
00:14:31.380with his wife naomi klein famous hard left author and academic you can see a palestinian flag on
00:14:37.260stage there, Hamish, but you do not see a Canadian flag. There's no Canadian flag in sight
00:14:42.540at this convention, at this party. The only flag that they have is what has become sort of like
00:14:48.500the de facto pro-terrorism Hamas flag. I mean, I'm sorry, but that's sort of what it's come to
00:14:53.640represent in our culture at this moment. And so no, they didn't, whoever was doing advance didn't
00:14:58.980think to put up some nice Canadian flags. This is not a Canadian party. This is a very distinctly
00:15:02.860anti-Canadian party. The media, I don't think, pays enough attention to the fact that the NDP
00:15:07.860is very extreme. Look, I said that I think that Avi Lewis is going to be a good leader and a good
00:15:12.220voice for this crowd. But, you know, to take a step back and look at the things that they believe,
00:15:17.820the things that they say, I mean, this is wild, right? Like, the media spent a lot of time sort
00:15:22.920of policing conservatives and saying, like, that's too far. These people are extreme. These
00:15:26.720people are hard, right? This is bad. These are naughty ideas. Don't have them. But then when it
00:15:31.080comes to the NDP we kind of treat them with kid gloves and we just kind of like ignore it or laugh
00:15:35.360like I didn't see a lot of media focusing in on these things but the fact that there's no Canadian
00:15:39.420like just a Palestinian flag I thought was really really bad for this party yeah I mean it's appalling
00:15:44.240the idea that they would put together a room like that and not have any Canadian flags in the
00:15:49.320backdrop or anything it's just it's just it boggles the mind I can't imagine a conservative
00:15:54.220party doing that or frankly or even the liberals to give credit to them it's just it's just not in
00:15:59.880the DNA to sort of ignore the plague of the country. It's so bizarre. Yeah, I do think the
00:16:06.460NDP is treated by Kegel as the media, but in a weird sort of way, the coverage I see from a lot
00:16:11.900of mainstream media does hint at the fact they think Mr. Lewis is too extreme or too left-wing.
00:16:16.640Look, I'm convinced the mainstream media just wants everybody to be just like the liberals.
00:16:21.040They want the conservatives to be more like liberals. They actually want the NDP more like
00:16:23.500liberals, and that we have three parties that are all basically the same. They would love that.
00:16:28.220But it is funny because they're criticism of the NDP.
00:16:31.320There's a lot of sort of totting about, oh, the NDP is too extreme, but they don't actually put a point on any specifics.
00:16:36.140And they're never there saying, well, they're too extreme because they believe in X, Y and Z, because they don't want to actually do that because it just it.
00:16:44.560And then they have to engage with those ideas. And I don't think.
00:16:47.300Well, and they probably believe a lot of those ideas. I mean, Abby Lewis is cut from the same cloth.
00:16:51.160for it. He was part of the CBC. He's from the same social circles. And I think that a lot of them
00:16:55.840really do have hateful views towards Israel and probably many people who support the state of
00:17:01.380Israel, Jews. I mean, one of the things, we can get to the spectacle at this point, but there were
00:17:08.140just clips going viral. Our old friend Alex Zoltan was there reporting and taking videos of a lot of
00:17:13.700the questions and points from the floor. What I saw from these people, you know, one part, it is still
00:17:19.680working class party and you see these sort of like like ornery angry people very upset about
00:17:26.240the technical things like the teleprompters going too fast for closed captioning and the microphones
00:17:31.040are too quiet and we can't hear them and look i i've been in conventions i'm just frustrating
00:17:35.920you know not everything works it should but what i noticed is the fact that they all kind of play
00:17:41.280these identity politics scheme right they get up to the microphone and they have to tell everyone
00:17:44.480their pronouns um they had these equity card things i don't know if you caught this but
00:17:49.520The NDP apparently, they handed out equity cards to people who were apparently in marginalized
00:17:56.200groups. So if you were not white, if you were not straight or not cis, whatever they call it,
00:18:04.040if you were trans, you got a special card. And if there was a cue at the microphone,
00:18:07.740you could just flash your card and you could come to the front of the line. And so that was the
00:18:12.260idea. People were very angry about how some of these weren't working. I'll just play a couple
00:18:16.940of clips here because this is very amusing. So at one point you had a kafia-wearing woman come up
00:18:22.420and basically just give a rant about Palestine and condemning Israel as evil, exactly what you
00:18:28.240would expect. But then interestingly, this Palestinian activist accidentally misgendered
00:18:33.620the chair saying chairwoman, obviously the woman who was the chair was a woman, but she described
00:18:38.180herself as non-binary. So this is just like an amusing intersectionality Olympics where you kind
00:18:43.660of like see who's the most oppressed. This is thought six. There's a point of privilege on
00:18:48.900microphone one, then we'll go to microphone three. Go ahead, delegate. Yes. Hello. I was standing
00:18:54.500here with my gender equity card before you called on the previous speaker. Canada cannot and will not
00:19:01.220be part of the legacy of blood that was built in Iraq, in Palestine, and now in Iran. This is a
00:19:09.600no question debate, I call this question, Madam and Chairs. Thank you.
00:19:19.900Your point's quite well made, Speaker. I'll again thank delegates not to call me Madam Chair
00:19:26.700or Madam La Presidence. I'm a non-binary person. My pronouns are they, them, and their. Chair is
00:19:30.980sufficient and with regret you've spoken to the resolution it's not open to you to also call the
00:19:41.640question if the question is the will of the house someone else must call it because we heard from
00:19:46.260you in substantive debate so this this made up basically the entire all the clips that were
00:19:53.120circulating here's another one of a trans identifying dude who is very upset that again
00:20:00.420a cisgender woman got to speak in front of him because he had his he had his equity card and
00:20:05.660equity card trumps everything else. This is Sot Semmel's roller clip. Hey, this pertains to
00:20:10.120multiple intersecting parts of my lived experience. I'd like to speak. I was rejected when I talked
00:20:15.640and it's frustrating when these are my rights being directly under attack right now in Alberta
00:20:21.920and a cisgender woman had spoken over me and I understand her rights are important too. This
00:20:30.180pertains to her, too. But I don't know. I hope that in the future, the federal MVP will also
00:20:36.780have a broader interpretation of the equity cards for speakers. That's all. Thank you.
00:20:43.380I want to make one point here, Hamish, which is that the liberals are lucky that they have a party
00:20:47.940to the left that they can pawn off all the crazies onto because the liberals don't have to deal with
00:20:51.660this stuff, right? Like in the U.S., the Democrats have this problem in their party where some of the
00:20:56.140people are just totally insane. And they have the energy, you know, they're the youth. I noticed
00:21:00.020Ezra Levant had a tweet saying, you know, we like to mock these people and say it's so funny,
00:21:03.820but actually like, you know, they're the ones that are coming up with power and they are
00:21:07.800absurd in this power in absurd ways. Like we saw with the chair and, you know, getting angry for
00:21:13.900misgender and getting angry for allowing cis people there in this space. Like it's, it's totally
00:21:19.240illiberal and, and creepy. And I think it's dangerous for the country. So the fact that
00:21:25.080this is happening at a major political party, I think it should be cause for concern for everybody.
00:21:29.740What do you think? Absolutely. I mean, it shows sort of their vision that, you know, when you
00:21:36.360give people status, the fascinating thing was they're talking about how it was being misused
00:21:39.520and the cards were doing different things. And this is the fascinating thing. When you give
00:21:42.620anybody status and you stop treating everybody the same, then they're shocked that people will
00:21:47.280misuse things. If status is given, human nature as a certain percentage of humans are going to do
00:21:52.540whatever they can to get that status. That's why we hear these stories again and again and again
00:21:57.320of people pretending to be Indigenous and getting exposed and losing a whole bunch of stories in
00:22:03.680the press about this in the last year or two. And what I find hilarious is that none of these
00:22:09.400left-wingers ever ask themselves, why are people trying to pretend to be more, as they would see
00:22:16.340it, more disadvantaged or more oppressed than they otherwise would be? And it's because when
00:22:21.300give status for something people are going to flock there and none of these people have figured
00:22:25.700out the sort of basic part of human nature and the only way to resolve this all is treat everybody
00:22:29.780the same but that's probably too radical for the ndp well they they have somehow managed to create
00:22:34.660basically like a caste system uh maybe reverse to what the other caste systems in the past might
00:22:39.860have been but basically the very very bottom are straight white males possibly below them are
00:22:44.820straight white jewish males or straight jewish males um but somehow you know they found even that
00:22:48.820and elected him leader so there there is a bunch of irony and contradictions i want to just show
00:22:53.460one more card which is again another sort of plucked example of the extremists that dominate
00:22:58.740the ndp party uh but i want to play this clip for you hamish because it's very interesting that you
00:23:03.860have a person like this who's clearly trans a man dressing up as a woman and pretending
00:23:07.700uh that somehow he he he's impressed um but then also claiming that the ndp is the party of the
00:23:14.260the working man and that he wants the working class to be placed like front and center in the
00:23:19.060NDPs in the way that they describe themselves. We are a working class party. I think most of us
00:23:26.300in this room are behind that. And while we can debate on the specific words and who is and isn't
00:23:30.900included, I think our constitution needs to recognize that. And I also recognize there is,
00:23:35.540I'm sorry, I'm speaking way too fast. Let me slow down for the closed captioning. I'm so sorry. Get
00:23:40.140excited. You get a sense of what the convention was like there, Hamish. But I thought it was
00:23:46.000really interesting that this person who doesn't really fit into the mold of what you consider
00:23:49.960working class Canadians and probably wouldn't really appeal to working class Canadians is
00:23:54.000really wanting to sort of pretend that the NDP party is still this working class party. I don't
00:23:58.380think they are. And I think that Pierre Polyev has done a fantastic job of breaking through with his
00:24:03.180message to working class Canadians. I had a conversation with a friend of mine who is a
00:24:07.920working class NDP voter. And he was telling me that he watched Pierre Polyev on Rogan and was
00:24:14.260really surprised. And he said to me, where was that guy during the election? Because I would have
00:24:17.440voted for him. This is someone who has never voted conservative in his life. He is an NDP,
00:24:21.400a staunch NDP supporter, saying that he was actually kind of reconsidering Pierre Polyev
00:24:25.640after the Rogan interview. So I think that this could be a big problem for the NDP,
00:24:30.380which is that they're not working class anymore. And I think that the more that they go down this
00:24:33.600woke hard left ideological path the less appealing they're going to be to people like my friend who
00:24:39.440again you know he he he works in manual labor he's has a physically demanding job and you know
00:24:45.440the the kind of things that Pierre Polyev is saying is the thing that appeals more to him
00:24:49.760what do you think do you think that that's a trend that's happening across the country
00:24:52.640absolutely and i don't i mean i i i hate this term working class because you know people who
00:24:57.760who have jobs the number of people who live off dividends is very small in this country right
00:25:02.160um uh the the fact of the matter is is that it's it's it's they're moving from being a blue-collar
00:25:07.680party to sort of a white-collar party and the the biggest symbol of that within the NDP is the
00:25:14.000change from the dominance of the private sector unions the steel workers united auto workers
00:25:18.880the unions for for people who make things and it's now being increasingly dominated by activists
00:25:25.200from the public sector unions whether that's their health care or the university teachers
00:25:30.080or frankly just the large public sector unions deal with bureaucrats whether that's the provincial
00:25:34.720capitals or the federal capitals and when i look at uh you know i look at what those people are
00:25:39.520doing people i see in those clips remind the way they act they remind me of of civil servants they
00:25:45.200don't remind me of people working uh on the line uh building cars in oshawa or windsor
00:25:51.200and that's what that's the way to see is this party is becoming it's still a union party but
00:25:55.120it's becoming a party of a very different set and that's because frankly over the last 50 years
00:26:00.000private sector union membership has been declining as a percentage of the private sector. It's been
00:26:04.780dropping perilously quickly while it's been increasing in the public sector. And the heart
00:26:10.900and soul of the union movement these days is in the public sector, not in the auto workers or the
00:26:15.660steel workers or places like that. And I think it's very telling that Rob Ashton, who came forth
00:26:21.900on this leadership, was endorsed by the steel workers. I have to go back and check. My recollection
00:26:26.640as the Steelworkers have successfully endorsed several of the last two leaders of the NDP.
00:26:50.120Whereas the identity tick a box people are the ones in charge now.
00:26:55.580Well, clearly, I mean, Avi Lewis is a perfect representative of that sort of class of people, university professor, CBC journalist. It's a very elite sort of class of people. And to your point, more white color and not that blue color.
00:27:10.360So really interesting. I think it creates a big opportunity for Pierre Polyev and the conservatives, not just to, you know, hopefully have a diminished liberal who have now split between the left has to split between two parties, but also giving Pierre Polyev that lane to pick up more of the actual sort of blue collar.
00:27:27.960I know you don't like the word working class, but people who work with their hands and their bodies as opposed to the academic class.
00:27:34.200All right, Hamish, always appreciate your time and insight. Thank you so much for joining the show.