Juno News - NDP select Avi Lewis as leader, what does it mean for Canada？ (w⧸ Hamish Marshall)

00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is the Candace Malcolm Show. Today is Monday, March 30th,

00:00:06.260 2026. We have a great episode for you today, and today's episode is brought to you by Silver

00:00:10.380 Gold Bowl, but more on them a little bit later. We're done being on the menu, and we're done

00:00:16.620 with the ruling class. Meet the damn rich. I'll again thank delegates not to call me 1.00

00:00:23.020 Madam Chair or Madame la Présidence. I'm a non-binary person. My pronouns are they,

00:00:26.940 them and their chair is sufficient this pertains to multiple intersecting parts of my lived

00:00:31.420 experience i'd like to speak that a cisgender woman had spoken uh over me this card was used

00:00:39.580 in an inappropriate matter these cards for individuals like myself who identify as a black

00:00:45.740 woman have no value outside of this space okay so as you saw over the weekend in winnipeg the ndp 0.99

00:00:52.940 held their convention. And wow, did they ever let their freak flag fly. The craziness was out for

00:00:58.020 everyone to see. We're going to get into some of the craziest moments on the convention floor

00:01:02.700 with delegates, just showing that they are as woke as you get, as woke as you get in this country,

00:01:08.640 proudly, not really a working class party anymore, more just pure woke party. But I want to start by

00:01:13.740 talking about the new leader of the NDP, Avi Lewis. Who is he? Where did he come from? And

00:01:19.640 does he have a fighting chance to not maybe win an election, but influence the election and change

00:01:26.360 the landscape so that perhaps the conservatives have a better chance of winning? And to help me

00:01:31.660 break this all down, I'm very pleased to be joined today by my friend Hamish Marshall. Hamish is a

00:01:36.100 political strategist, pollster, and the founder of the strategy firm One Persuasion. He was the

00:01:41.180 national campaign manager for the conservative parties back in 2019, a federal election under

00:01:46.000 Andrew Sher. He's been a guest many times on the program. Amish, welcome to the show. Great to see

00:01:49.880 you. Great to see you, Candice. Okay, so the big event happened over the weekend, and the NDP now

00:01:56.540 has what I would say is a serious leader. Avi Lewis is a national figure. He is well known to

00:02:01.760 Canadians, especially of an older generation. I think boomers probably remember him fondly from

00:02:06.740 his time on the CBC. He used to host a political show called Counterspin, and he's a prominent

00:02:12.140 figure, prominent Canadian. And so the fact that the NDP now has what you would call a serious

00:02:16.660 leader, you know, does that change. Avi Lewis won handily. He got 56% of the votes on the first

00:02:23.940 ballot. There was some 100,000 members who voted in this party. So this is a serious segment of

00:02:30.000 the Canadian population. Keep in mind that most people aren't members of a party, right? So 100,000

00:02:33.900 members. You had about, what, 68,000 of them voting online, 1,200 by phone, and the rest were

00:02:40.720 in person at the convention. So again, Abby Lewis got 56%. NDP MP Heather McPherson came in second

00:02:47.000 place with 29%. Abby's not a member of parliament. He does not hold a seat. He ran in the last

00:02:52.120 election in West Vancouver, but he lost. So he doesn't have a seat. So, Hamish, what do you make

00:02:58.060 of all this? Well, look, I think it's, frankly, a lot of people are saying it's bad for the NDP.

00:03:03.240 I think it's actually quite good for the NDP to have a leader who will bring some energy

00:03:07.500 to things and will also be he's a doctrinaire leftist this guy is you know if you come up with

00:03:13.960 a left-wing stereotype it's you're going to find whatever you believe a left-wing stereotype is

00:03:18.260 it's abby lewis this guy believes on every single issue he will take the most left-wing thing 0.83

00:03:23.120 imaginable they're going to have government-run grocery stores it's going to be you know they'll

00:03:27.860 probably de-recognize israel and recognize palestine i mean you name it that's what that's

00:03:32.460 what this guy's for but i think frankly the ndp needs a little bit of that they need some people

00:03:37.380 to give them, give the leader, make them be proud to be NDPers again. And I think that's why

00:03:42.180 Abby Lewis was so successful in this leadership race. Well, I agree, Hamish. I think to people

00:03:47.040 like you and I, we look at this party, and it's just absurd, right? It's a caricature of left-wing

00:03:52.480 absurdity, right? You have the crowd chanting, eat the rich. And then they elect someone, I'm sorry,

00:03:59.900 who comes from a very prominent position. Guy went to high school at Upper Canada College, right?

00:04:04.040 Like, he's a wealthy Canadian, right?

00:04:06.820 You have a party that throughout the entire convention,

00:04:09.380 we'll show some of these clips at the end of the show,

00:04:11.280 are ripping against white males, right? 0.99

00:04:13.160 Like the worst possible thing you could be in the NDP 0.97

00:04:15.040 is a, what they call a cisgendered, 0.69

00:04:17.860 so non-trans white male, right? 0.84

00:04:20.360 And that is Avi Lewis, he's a white male.

00:04:22.780 It's like, maybe they forgot to tell him,

00:04:24.860 you know, tell the party,

00:04:25.800 but that's who they just voted for, right?

00:04:27.540 So there's sort of a lot of irony,

00:04:30.100 but I would say that Avi Lewis is a serious person.

00:04:32.920 Like, 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.

00:04:50.920 The 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.

00:05:08.100 That's exactly right. I'll play another clip. I thought this was quite powerful as well.

00:05:11.580 I don't agree with this, but there's a big segment on the Canadian population and certainly on the Canadian political left

00:05:17.080 that 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.

00:05:24.560 So here is Avi Lewis articulating that, saying Canada should have absolutely nothing to do with this war.

00:05:29.300 Let's roll a clip. It's up to.

00:05:30.900 And we need a government that doesn't just talk about Canadian values on the world stage.

00:05:36.360 we need one that acts with moral clarity when it matters when missiles are falling on schools and

00:05:44.220 hospitals when israel commits a genocide in gaza we call it by its name and we do everything in 0.88

00:05:53.720 our power to bring it to an end right so again that that's not what i i don't i don't agree with

00:05:59.720 that but i think that that the fact that somebody is out there saying these kinds of things there

00:06:03.620 is a large segment of the population, or at least a significant segment of the population that would

00:06:07.680 agree with that. What do you think? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's at least 10% of

00:06:12.100 Canadians that are very sort of ideologically left-wing, that this party should be able to

00:06:17.260 hoover up and make that their base. And 10% doesn't sound like very much. They got 6% in the last

00:06:22.200 election. So 10% is increasing their vote, you know, is almost doubling their vote. So they start

00:06:26.300 with 10, they're on the road back a little bit. But, you know, I think that what Mr. Lewis

00:06:33.520 is showing is that he's not, he's going to be, he's okay with criticizing the government for the

00:06:39.620 left. Under Mr. Singh, the NDP, like Jagmeet Singh's problem was not that he didn't want to

00:06:46.600 be an NDP leader. He wanted to be Justin Trudeau and was very annoyed that there was somebody else

00:06:50.860 doing a better job of being Justin Trudeau than Jagmeet Singh. And he never could really criticize

00:06:56.360 or attack Justin Trudeau in a very effective manner because he didn't really believe it,

00:07:01.140 because it was kind of what he wanted and that was the way he saw things. So I think a reinvigorated

00:07:07.780 NDP will be strong, could have the potential to build something and attacking Carney from the

00:07:15.080 left. It's been very interesting because Carney hasn't really had to deal with any attacks from

00:07:18.220 the left. He's been able to, there's been a lot of talk of how Carney has attacked to the right

00:07:23.400 and cut into certain chunks of sort of boomer conservative voters. There's a whole lot of

00:07:27.820 conversation around that. But he's been able to do that successfully because he hasn't had to worry

00:07:31.760 about his left flank. You have to start worrying about his left flank as things are getting very

00:07:35.860 interesting. I completely agree. I think that that was a problem with Jagmeet Singh, right? The way

00:07:39.660 that they introduced him when he became the leader was he's a lot like Justin Trudeau. He's sort of

00:07:43.360 like privileged elitist. He has a Rolex collection and he drives like antique BMW cars. But he's a

00:07:49.240 man of the people and he's a socialist and he wants to nationalize the grocery system. But it just

00:07:54.880 really work because dustin trudeau was already the avatar of left-wing canadians and so yes mark

00:08:00.320 carney really tacked to the right he ripped off most conservative uh principles and positions in

00:08:05.920 the last election getting ready to carbon tax wanting to build pipelines and sort of taking

00:08:10.320 back control of loving canada right like elbows up we love canada again and and and yeah exactly

00:08:16.720 there's no one no one fighting on the left because at that point jagmeet singh was so diminished

00:08:21.200 And 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.

00:08:45.860 Remember, 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.

00:08:57.960 Fast 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%.

00:09:09.860 20%. So 30% is the difference for the Conservatives. At 20%, the Liberals were still able to win that

00:09:16.420 election. And then we go to 2019, NDP, we're down to 16%. So again, 30% down to 20%. And then 16%

00:09:25.220 in that election, of course, Trudeau won with the smallest, I believe the smallest popular vote

00:09:29.860 in Canadian history, 33% of the voters had 34%. The 2021 election wasn't that much difference.

00:09:36.820 basically is very similar. And then it was a 2025 election that was just historically bad for the

00:09:43.900 NDP. They really should have gotten rid of Jagmeet Singh as a leader before this election. They only

00:09:47.380 got 6% of the vote Hamish. And so I, you know, I think that that was the difference. I'm just

00:09:52.720 curious, but like, what do you think Abby Lewis needs to meet? What percentage in the election 1.00

00:09:58.000 would he need to get to help the conservatives? And do you think that he's capable of getting

00:10:02.140 them there? Well, I think, I think the fascinating thing is there's a couple different paths. The

00:10:05.740 NDP lost in the 2025 election, lost votes both to Conservatives and to Liberals.

00:10:10.320 Everybody assumes left-wing voters just sort of go to the Liberals.

00:10:13.060 They were scared of Donald Trump, everything else.

00:10:14.800 And that's true for hundreds, millions of voters.

00:10:17.120 But there's also a huge chunk of working-class NDP voters, blue-collar voters, especially

00:10:22.400 in places in rural British Columbia, northern Ontario, Windsor, that blue-collar old private

00:10:29.880 sector union vote who moved to the Conservatives in a significant way.

00:10:35.220 So the question is, which votes does Mr. Lewis get back?

00:10:38.880 I think because of the way Mr. Lewis presents himself and the issues that he's focused on,

00:10:42.640 he is much more likely to do better in urban areas and in areas with more sort of traditional left wing

00:10:51.220 or more urban and public sector union type environments.

00:10:55.140 So the fascinating thing is those seats are all held by Liberals.

00:10:59.400 So the NDP actually, depending on where they grow,

00:11:02.380 and if they grow in areas that are more like Mr. Lewis, I think we're going to see them grow.

00:11:09.780 They don't actually have to grow that much to make a significant difference.

00:11:13.160 If they got 6% in the last election, if they take, say, 6% from the Liberals,

00:11:18.220 especially in a whole bunch of seats that are overwhelmingly Liberal,

00:11:20.620 that vote's concentrated there, the election, if that happened in the last election,

00:11:25.560 it would have been enough for a Conservative majority.

00:11:27.900 It'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.

00:11:37.420 They 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.

00:11:45.040 Well, and not just that, but like you said, I think with a strong NDP and an articulate leader like Abby Lewis,

00:11:50.140 It 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.

00:12:00.600 A lot of those people won't like some of these ideas.

00:12:03.040 I'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.

00:12:24.360 This is what the future would look like under an NDP government.

00:12:27.460 Let's roll that clip. 0.89

00:12:28.060 This is thought three.

00:12:29.020 Our NDP has a different offer for this country.

00:12:31.920 Our plan is to Trump-proof the economy by investing massively in Canadian economic independence,

00:12:39.340 using the unmatched power of public ownership to ensure the fundamentals of a good life.

00:12:48.420 A network of public providers for food, phones, and internet.

00:12:54.260 a public housing developer and public construction companies to build millions of non-market homes

00:13:04.180 a 21st century electrical grid an ev bus revolution and a heat pump in every home

00:13:12.500 built with canadian steel creating tens of thousands of unionized jobs

00:13:18.380 so that is the future of canada under an ndp government communism folks and uh we'll just

00:13:25.680 build a wall against the americans we won't have to deal with them at all i don't know how we'll 0.68

00:13:29.140 fund all this well we're only going to trade with north korea and cuba only like-minded countries

00:13:34.800 apparently uh but i mean this is this is the direction that the ndp is going i'll play another 0.79

00:13:40.400 clip here this is where avi lewis blasts the corporate elites uh for the high prices of

00:13:45.320 groceries and presumably a government-run grocery store would be much more affordable as the sought

00:13:49.840 for. It's why you're in shock at the grocery checkout, in tears looking at your bills at the

00:13:57.120 end of the month. It's because the wealth of this country is being hoovered up by a corporate elite

00:14:02.780 who are extracting it from you every single day. It's immoral, it's unreasonable, it's un-Canadian 1.00

00:14:09.420 and we cannot let it stand well we're gonna have a model of that because olivia chow just announced 1.00

00:14:16.340 government-run grocery stores in the city of toronto so i guess we'll see how that experiment

00:14:20.780 goes hamish i'm getting to guess not well one other point of frustration that i had with this

00:14:26.360 party last night i think we play this on b-roll but when avi lewis was named leader there he is

00:14:31.380 with his wife naomi klein famous hard left author and academic you can see a palestinian flag on

00:14:37.260 stage there, Hamish, but you do not see a Canadian flag. There's no Canadian flag in sight

00:14:42.540 at this convention, at this party. The only flag that they have is what has become sort of like

00:14:48.500 the de facto pro-terrorism Hamas flag. I mean, I'm sorry, but that's sort of what it's come to

00:14:53.640 represent in our culture at this moment. And so no, they didn't, whoever was doing advance didn't

00:14:58.980 think to put up some nice Canadian flags. This is not a Canadian party. This is a very distinctly 0.53

00:15:02.860 anti-Canadian party. The media, I don't think, pays enough attention to the fact that the NDP

00:15:07.860 is very extreme. Look, I said that I think that Avi Lewis is going to be a good leader and a good

00:15:12.220 voice for this crowd. But, you know, to take a step back and look at the things that they believe,

00:15:17.820 the things that they say, I mean, this is wild, right? Like, the media spent a lot of time sort

00:15:22.920 of policing conservatives and saying, like, that's too far. These people are extreme. These

00:15:26.720 people are hard, right? This is bad. These are naughty ideas. Don't have them. But then when it

00:15:31.080 comes to the NDP we kind of treat them with kid gloves and we just kind of like ignore it or laugh

00:15:35.360 like I didn't see a lot of media focusing in on these things but the fact that there's no Canadian

00:15:39.420 like just a Palestinian flag I thought was really really bad for this party yeah I mean it's appalling 1.00

00:15:44.240 the idea that they would put together a room like that and not have any Canadian flags in the

00:15:49.320 backdrop or anything it's just it's just it boggles the mind I can't imagine a conservative

00:15:54.220 party doing that or frankly or even the liberals to give credit to them it's just it's just not in

00:15:59.880 the DNA to sort of ignore the plague of the country. It's so bizarre. Yeah, I do think the

00:16:06.460 NDP is treated by Kegel as the media, but in a weird sort of way, the coverage I see from a lot

00:16:11.900 of mainstream media does hint at the fact they think Mr. Lewis is too extreme or too left-wing.

00:16:16.640 Look, I'm convinced the mainstream media just wants everybody to be just like the liberals.

00:16:21.040 They want the conservatives to be more like liberals. They actually want the NDP more like

00:16:23.500 liberals, and that we have three parties that are all basically the same. They would love that.

00:16:28.220 But it is funny because they're criticism of the NDP.

00:16:31.320 There'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.

00:16:36.140 And 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.

00:16:44.560 And then they have to engage with those ideas. And I don't think.

00:16:47.300 Well, and they probably believe a lot of those ideas. I mean, Abby Lewis is cut from the same cloth. 0.77

00:16:51.160 for it. He was part of the CBC. He's from the same social circles. And I think that a lot of them

00:16:55.840 really do have hateful views towards Israel and probably many people who support the state of

00:17:01.380 Israel, Jews. I mean, one of the things, we can get to the spectacle at this point, but there were 1.00

00:17:08.140 just clips going viral. Our old friend Alex Zoltan was there reporting and taking videos of a lot of

00:17:13.700 the questions and points from the floor. What I saw from these people, you know, one part, it is still

00:17:19.680 working class party and you see these sort of like like ornery angry people very upset about

00:17:26.240 the technical things like the teleprompters going too fast for closed captioning and the microphones

00:17:31.040 are too quiet and we can't hear them and look i i've been in conventions i'm just frustrating

00:17:35.920 you know not everything works it should but what i noticed is the fact that they all kind of play

00:17:41.280 these identity politics scheme right they get up to the microphone and they have to tell everyone

00:17:44.480 their pronouns um they had these equity card things i don't know if you caught this but

00:17:49.520 The NDP apparently, they handed out equity cards to people who were apparently in marginalized

00:17:56.200 groups. So if you were not white, if you were not straight or not cis, whatever they call it,

00:18:04.040 if you were trans, you got a special card. And if there was a cue at the microphone,

00:18:07.740 you could just flash your card and you could come to the front of the line. And so that was the

00:18:12.260 idea. People were very angry about how some of these weren't working. I'll just play a couple

00:18:16.940 of clips here because this is very amusing. So at one point you had a kafia-wearing woman come up 0.98

00:18:22.420 and basically just give a rant about Palestine and condemning Israel as evil, exactly what you

00:18:28.240 would expect. But then interestingly, this Palestinian activist accidentally misgendered 0.52

00:18:33.620 the chair saying chairwoman, obviously the woman who was the chair was a woman, but she described 0.99

00:18:38.180 herself as non-binary. So this is just like an amusing intersectionality Olympics where you kind

00:18:43.660 of like see who's the most oppressed. This is thought six. There's a point of privilege on

00:18:48.900 microphone one, then we'll go to microphone three. Go ahead, delegate. Yes. Hello. I was standing

00:18:54.500 here with my gender equity card before you called on the previous speaker. Canada cannot and will not 0.76

00:19:01.220 be part of the legacy of blood that was built in Iraq, in Palestine, and now in Iran. This is a 0.95

00:19:09.600 no question debate, I call this question, Madam and Chairs. Thank you.

00:19:19.900 Your point's quite well made, Speaker. I'll again thank delegates not to call me Madam Chair

00:19:26.700 or Madam La Presidence. I'm a non-binary person. My pronouns are they, them, and their. Chair is

00:19:30.980 sufficient and with regret you've spoken to the resolution it's not open to you to also call the

00:19:41.640 question if the question is the will of the house someone else must call it because we heard from

00:19:46.260 you in substantive debate so this this made up basically the entire all the clips that were

00:19:53.120 circulating here's another one of a trans identifying dude who is very upset that again

00:20:00.420 a cisgender woman got to speak in front of him because he had his he had his equity card and

00:20:05.660 equity card trumps everything else. This is Sot Semmel's roller clip. Hey, this pertains to

00:20:10.120 multiple intersecting parts of my lived experience. I'd like to speak. I was rejected when I talked

00:20:15.640 and it's frustrating when these are my rights being directly under attack right now in Alberta

00:20:21.920 and a cisgender woman had spoken over me and I understand her rights are important too. This

00:20:30.180 pertains to her, too. But I don't know. I hope that in the future, the federal MVP will also

00:20:36.780 have a broader interpretation of the equity cards for speakers. That's all. Thank you.

00:20:43.380 I want to make one point here, Hamish, which is that the liberals are lucky that they have a party

00:20:47.940 to the left that they can pawn off all the crazies onto because the liberals don't have to deal with

00:20:51.660 this stuff, right? Like in the U.S., the Democrats have this problem in their party where some of the

00:20:56.140 people are just totally insane. And they have the energy, you know, they're the youth. I noticed

00:21:00.020 Ezra Levant had a tweet saying, you know, we like to mock these people and say it's so funny,

00:21:03.820 but actually like, you know, they're the ones that are coming up with power and they are

00:21:07.800 absurd in this power in absurd ways. Like we saw with the chair and, you know, getting angry for

00:21:13.900 misgender and getting angry for allowing cis people there in this space. Like it's, it's totally 1.00

00:21:19.240 illiberal and, and creepy. And I think it's dangerous for the country. So the fact that

00:21:25.080 this is happening at a major political party, I think it should be cause for concern for everybody.

00:21:29.740 What do you think? Absolutely. I mean, it shows sort of their vision that, you know, when you

00:21:36.360 give people status, the fascinating thing was they're talking about how it was being misused

00:21:39.520 and the cards were doing different things. And this is the fascinating thing. When you give

00:21:42.620 anybody status and you stop treating everybody the same, then they're shocked that people will

00:21:47.280 misuse things. If status is given, human nature as a certain percentage of humans are going to do

00:21:52.540 whatever they can to get that status. That's why we hear these stories again and again and again

00:21:57.320 of people pretending to be Indigenous and getting exposed and losing a whole bunch of stories in

00:22:03.680 the press about this in the last year or two. And what I find hilarious is that none of these

00:22:09.400 left-wingers ever ask themselves, why are people trying to pretend to be more, as they would see

00:22:16.340 it, more disadvantaged or more oppressed than they otherwise would be? And it's because when

00:22:21.300 give status for something people are going to flock there and none of these people have figured

00:22:25.700 out the sort of basic part of human nature and the only way to resolve this all is treat everybody

00:22:29.780 the same but that's probably too radical for the ndp well they they have somehow managed to create

00:22:34.660 basically like a caste system uh maybe reverse to what the other caste systems in the past might

00:22:39.860 have been but basically the very very bottom are straight white males possibly below them are 0.93

00:22:44.820 straight white jewish males or straight jewish males um but somehow you know they found even that

00:22:48.820 and elected him leader so there there is a bunch of irony and contradictions i want to just show

00:22:53.460 one more card which is again another sort of plucked example of the extremists that dominate

00:22:58.740 the ndp party uh but i want to play this clip for you hamish because it's very interesting that you

00:23:03.860 have a person like this who's clearly trans a man dressing up as a woman and pretending 0.88

00:23:07.700 uh that somehow he he he's impressed um but then also claiming that the ndp is the party of the

00:23:14.260 the working man and that he wants the working class to be placed like front and center in the

00:23:19.060 NDPs in the way that they describe themselves. We are a working class party. I think most of us

00:23:26.300 in this room are behind that. And while we can debate on the specific words and who is and isn't

00:23:30.900 included, I think our constitution needs to recognize that. And I also recognize there is,

00:23:35.540 I'm sorry, I'm speaking way too fast. Let me slow down for the closed captioning. I'm so sorry. Get

00:23:40.140 excited. You get a sense of what the convention was like there, Hamish. But I thought it was

00:23:46.000 really interesting that this person who doesn't really fit into the mold of what you consider

00:23:49.960 working class Canadians and probably wouldn't really appeal to working class Canadians is

00:23:54.000 really wanting to sort of pretend that the NDP party is still this working class party. I don't 0.97

00:23:58.380 think they are. And I think that Pierre Polyev has done a fantastic job of breaking through with his

00:24:03.180 message to working class Canadians. I had a conversation with a friend of mine who is a

00:24:07.920 working class NDP voter. And he was telling me that he watched Pierre Polyev on Rogan and was

00:24:14.260 really surprised. And he said to me, where was that guy during the election? Because I would have

00:24:17.440 voted for him. This is someone who has never voted conservative in his life. He is an NDP,

00:24:21.400 a staunch NDP supporter, saying that he was actually kind of reconsidering Pierre Polyev

00:24:25.640 after the Rogan interview. So I think that this could be a big problem for the NDP,

00:24:30.380 which is that they're not working class anymore. And I think that the more that they go down this

00:24:33.600 woke hard left ideological path the less appealing they're going to be to people like my friend who

00:24:39.440 again you know he he he works in manual labor he's has a physically demanding job and you know

00:24:45.440 the the kind of things that Pierre Polyev is saying is the thing that appeals more to him

00:24:49.760 what do you think do you think that that's a trend that's happening across the country

00:24:52.640 absolutely and i don't i mean i i i hate this term working class because you know people who

00:24:57.760 who have jobs the number of people who live off dividends is very small in this country right

00:25:02.160 um uh the the fact of the matter is is that it's it's it's they're moving from being a blue-collar

00:25:07.680 party to sort of a white-collar party and the the biggest symbol of that within the NDP is the

00:25:14.000 change from the dominance of the private sector unions the steel workers united auto workers

00:25:18.880 the unions for for people who make things and it's now being increasingly dominated by activists

00:25:25.200 from the public sector unions whether that's their health care or the university teachers

00:25:30.080 or frankly just the large public sector unions deal with bureaucrats whether that's the provincial

00:25:34.720 capitals or the federal capitals and when i look at uh you know i look at what those people are

00:25:39.520 doing people i see in those clips remind the way they act they remind me of of civil servants they

00:25:45.200 don't remind me of people working uh on the line uh building cars in oshawa or windsor

00:25:51.200 and that's what that's the way to see is this party is becoming it's still a union party but

00:25:55.120 it's becoming a party of a very different set and that's because frankly over the last 50 years

00:26:00.000 private sector union membership has been declining as a percentage of the private sector. It's been

00:26:04.780 dropping perilously quickly while it's been increasing in the public sector. And the heart

00:26:10.900 and soul of the union movement these days is in the public sector, not in the auto workers or the

00:26:15.660 steel workers or places like that. And I think it's very telling that Rob Ashton, who came forth

00:26:21.900 on this leadership, was endorsed by the steel workers. I have to go back and check. My recollection

00:26:26.640 as the Steelworkers have successfully endorsed several of the last two leaders of the NDP.

00:26:31.860 But now their choice comes forth.

00:26:34.100 And that, for me, tells you more than anything else about how this party is evolving.

00:26:37.940 Because they're moving, you know, Rob Ashton was a longshoreman,

00:26:41.500 or is a longshoreman, very much of that blue collar, old union mentality.

00:26:48.180 And he came forth.

00:26:50.120 Whereas the identity tick a box people are the ones in charge now.

00:26:55.580 Well, 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.

00:27:10.360 So 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.

00:27:27.960 I 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.

00:27:34.200 All right, Hamish, always appreciate your time and insight. Thank you so much for joining the show.

00:27:37.500 My pleasure.

00:27:37.880 All right, folks, as Hamish Marshall of One Persuasion, that's all the time we have for

00:27:41.560 today. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Candice Malcolm. This is Candice Malcolm Show.

00:27:44.100 Thank you and God bless.

Juno News - March 30, 2026

NDP select Avi Lewis as leader, what does it mean for Canada？ (w⧸ Hamish Marshall)

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