Avi Lewis has been named the new leader of Canada's New Democratic Party, but what does that mean for the rest of the country? Is this a good or bad thing? And who exactly is Avi Lewis?
00:00:00.000Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here, and welcome back to the National Telegraph YouTube channel.
00:00:06.060The question that is in the air right now is whether or not Avi Lewis as the new NDP leader
00:00:13.120is going to hurt Mark Carney and the Liberals. The second question is, who is Avi Lewis?
00:00:19.940It's kind of pathetic just how unknown of a figure Avi Lewis is nationally in Canadian politics,
00:00:26.740considering that his own father was the leader of the Ontario NDP and then his father's father
00:00:34.460was the leader of the federal NDP. This guy has no credentials. He has absolutely no pedigree
00:00:42.420outside of his parentage and this is why I think there is probably a low chance that he's going to
00:00:49.020be threatening Mark Carney's liberals much. Although I say that and I temper it with the fact
00:00:54.300that the problem for Mark Carney right now is, in theory, Avi Lewis should not actually be able
00:00:59.900to hold a candle to him, and that the Liberals should be able to continue dominating the left-wing
00:01:05.140vote. But the Carney Liberals have also trained so many of their supporters to be so deranged in
00:01:11.640their anti-Americanism. I could see, if Carney makes a wrong step, that Avi Lewis could end up
00:01:17.700gaining quite a bit. Not overperforming maybe Jagmeet Singh's numbers in 2021 or 2019,
00:01:24.500which weren't even that good, but I could see Avi Lewis going from the 6% that Jagmeet Singh
00:01:30.400delivered in 25 and maybe going up to 9, 11, 12, and being able to expand the NDP roster
00:01:39.380from around six seats right now, although they won with seven before Idla ended up crossing the
00:01:44.780floor, up to around 14 or 16. And so we're going to be getting into the sort of strange politics
00:01:51.900around this NDP leadership race, and how it's going to affect a lot of other politics around
00:01:58.400Canada. The NDP are a technically insignificant party, but they could be highly significant,
00:02:05.360not just in terms of the outcome of a federal race, but also the outcome of many provincial races.
00:02:11.740Because remember, if you are an NDP provincial member, you are also a federal member. That is how many of the NDP parties work around the country, and so having a more controversial leader could end up having cascading effects down ballot, if you could say it that way.
00:02:30.960Anyways, but before we get into this topic, I just want to remind you guys,
00:02:35.840if you like the show, make sure to leave a like on this video, subscribe if you are not yet a
00:02:40.500subscriber, leave a comment on how you think Avi Lewis is going to perform as the MVP leader
00:02:46.100relative to their current polling position, which is around averaging seven or eight points. And
00:02:51.720then also let me know if you think this is going to end up hurting the Liberals or it's not going
00:02:56.080to damage them at all. And if you really like the show, consider hitting the join button and
00:03:00.900making a small contribution per month. It helps make the channel very sustainable for me and
00:03:05.600allows me to be less reliant on the YouTube algorithm. I always do stipulate if you are
00:03:10.140somebody on a fixed income, do not bother joining. I am not in that desperate of a need by any means
00:03:16.140and I'm always going to be keeping the content free for everybody. Anyway, so first off, here
00:03:22.640is Avi Lewis. You have probably basically never seen his face because he, again, is a deeply
00:03:28.940insignificant man with very little achievements in his life, despite the fact that, again,
00:03:34.360his father and grandfather were so successful politically. But the NDP federal account on X
00:03:40.760here says, the results are in. Congratulations to Avi Lewis, leader of Canada's NDP. After an
00:03:46.840exciting leadership race were fired up and ready for the important work ahead. Although the word
00:03:52.960exciting is doing a lot of work there because it was a comatose race. It was effectively Avi Lewis
00:03:59.800against Heather McPherson. Heather McPherson being the Edmonton Strathcona NDP MP whose profile
00:04:07.420pretty much was only born out of the fact that she was one of the remaining few NDP MPs even around
00:04:13.240to run. And she got absolutely stomped out in this race, which really demonstrates just how
00:04:20.140weak of a brand many people in the NDP actually have. So I want to show you guys what the actual
00:04:26.040voting results were in this race. I was thinking, should I do in the whiteboard? No, we can actually
00:04:32.820do something else later on the whiteboard because there is a new Abacus data poll. I might just,
00:04:36.800you know, walk you guys through in a second here. But this Polling Canada post says that the
00:04:43.060leadership results in first round were Avi Lewis, 39,734 votes, Heather McPherson, 20,899,
00:04:52.800Tennille Johnson had 5,159, Rob Ashton, 4,193, and Tony McQuail, 945. Now, the actual vote counts
00:05:03.440are not that bad here considering how dead the party is right now. I just want to compare it to
00:05:09.180the CPC 2022 leadership race, where Pierre Polyev ended up becoming the new leader of the party.
00:05:17.520Now, he got 295,000 votes. So that does make the NDP leadership race look pretty pathetic.
00:05:27.840They ended up getting like around a quarter of what Pierre Polyev had. But Polyev was historically
00:05:34.800like really, really popular in the leadership race. Usually leadership races are like multi-balloted.
00:05:41.620You know, the 2017 leadership race was extremely belabored. Even 2020 with Aaron O'Toole and Peter
00:05:46.980McKay went to the very last ballot. But in this one, Jean Charest got 48,000 votes, which
00:05:52.820demonstrates that compared to like the average Tory leadership candidate, you know, Avi Loos
00:05:57.920didn't do that that bad in terms of the overall vote count. Of course, he won and he won on first
00:06:03.520ballot, but it's more of a kind of like a condemnation of how poor quality his opponents
00:06:09.380were. McPherson was kind of, and if I say this very like with a grain of salt, she is like the
00:06:16.980establishment NDP candidate. Now that doesn't really mean much because the party is just so
00:06:23.660weak. There's no real full establishment. She's an establishment figure simply by the virtue of
00:06:29.160being an actual MP. And that's really it. Rob Ashton was like the union guy. I'm not sure if
00:06:34.940he was from the Teamsters or something like that. The interim leader who just left Don Davies was a
00:06:39.660old Teamsters lawyer. You had the, so, or Tennille Johnson was just some activist. I believe she was
00:06:46.700First Nations. And that was honestly one of her big vote getting reasons for people to vote for
00:06:51.440her was vote for the, you know, pro undrip guy. And then we had Tony McQuail and I had no clue
00:06:57.880who he was other than he had a very big white beard and he wore a straw hat everywhere but
00:07:02.260the thing is the party is run by left-wing radicals avi lewis compared to everybody else
00:07:09.340was the social activist all of them you could say tony mcquail was like the raw milk like ndp
00:07:17.500teniel johnson was the first nations ndp rob ashton was the old labor ndp and he got blown
00:07:25.100out in this race. And Heather McPherson was kind of just the continuation of the Jagmeet Singh era,
00:07:31.820and that got shot down. So the NDP has picked the form of its destructor, and it will be in the
00:07:38.520form of Avi Lewis's just insane social views. Like, he thinks we need more immigration. He is pro-Iran.
00:07:46.500He is obviously pro-Hamas, considering that he only ever finds reason to attack the United States
00:07:52.120and Israel in regards to the Middle East and has never found a reason to attack Hamas, Hezbollah,
00:07:56.760or the Houthis, this is what the NDP has become. It used to be a labor party way back when.
00:08:02.240You know, I wouldn't have agreed with their views back then, but it was at least a respectable party
00:08:07.100that you could disagree with the issues. There's some logic to why they believe they're, you know,
00:08:12.500in their policy positions, and there's some logic in why you would maybe disagree with them.
00:08:16.760they are a party now for 20-year-old anthropology students. And this is why the party is likely to
00:08:23.700remain irrelevant if Carney places cards right. But I want to now move on to the speech that he
00:08:30.400ended up delivering right after he won. Apparently, according to Mr. Avi Lewis, the establishment
00:08:38.660is very scared of him. And whenever the NDP says establishment, it borderline doesn't mean
00:08:45.440anything. Establishment just basically means people we don't like. In fact, Avi Lewis and the
00:08:52.120losers who are around him are the establishment. They just tend to be the establishment on the
00:08:59.280local level. They tend to run city councils. They run school boards. They're at the heads
00:09:05.160of labor unions and teacher unions and whatnot, even though their own people probably despise
00:09:10.580them. They are, in fact, an unpopular establishment. But when they run federally, when the voters get
00:09:16.260to see, oh, that's the crazy people party, they don't vote for them. They do very well in
00:09:21.060municipal races when it's harder to determine who are the crazy NDPers. But federally, when they're
00:09:27.100emblazoned with big orange colors, people do not vote for them. But here's Avi Lewis
00:09:31.880giving his shrill speech. Of course, we can already hear the howls from the establishment.
00:09:37.160but how will you pay for all this he won't well let's remind them that this country is a wash
00:09:49.460banks made 70 billion in profits last year alone oil companies are expecting a new windfall in the
00:09:59.700tens of billions grocery they're literally saying shame they're talking about wealth creation
00:10:06.600And these people who have more hair colors and personality traits are screaming shame. They're wearing their terror scarves and they're screaming shame at people being productive in this country. People being productive? Why, why that cannot go in my Canada, sir, trying to be productive.
00:10:24.400of now see here in the NDP version of Canada, you have to get into the ditch and dig your own grave
00:10:31.140because you dared make money on oil and gas. He actually had this just ridiculous statement on,
00:10:38.680I think it was the Rosemary Barton show, where he said that, well, we need to be involved in wind
00:10:43.240and solar because no one's ever bombed a country to take their wind and solar from them.
00:10:48.360This stupid fear mongering that Trump is going to invade Canada because we have oil just
00:12:16.460We need a government with the courage to go and get it for all of us.
00:12:24.060So I hope you see what I'm saying when I say that he is the activist of the party.
00:12:29.680The other characters, they're not even people, basically.
00:12:33.440their characters who were running for the leadership represented different things like
00:12:37.740heather like heather mcpherson very much represented the sort of rachel notley wing
00:12:43.580of the ndp she's still bad but she was like at least understands you can't freak out you know
00:12:50.740business too much you got to move a little more slowly now heather mcpherson and you know rachel
00:12:57.000notley will eventually end up in the place that avi lewis is simply by allowing their party to
00:13:02.800be taken over by these people but they do it more slowly. Avi Lewis is just saying just hit the gas
00:13:08.060let's go as fast as possible. I want to now show you some of his other another part of his speech
00:13:13.460here and then I want to move on to some of the reaction from other NDP leaders which is actually
00:13:18.640not very good. I think he's like batting maybe like two out of ten right now in terms of provincial
00:13:24.700NDP leaders who actually like Avi Lewis but here we go. The prime minister is very popular at the
00:13:30.600moment. He's a smart guy and most Canadians still want to give him the benefit of the doubt. That's
00:13:35.040fair. But I think when you connect the dots, his moves do not add up to the vision that Canadians
00:13:41.420truly want and deserve in this perilous moment. Half a trillion dollars in a decade for weapons
00:13:51.980to make Canada a major arms exporter in a war-torn world. Slashing. I'm sorry, where else
00:14:00.340should the West get weapons? I'm sorry, we shouldn't manufacture weapons. This is ridiculous,
00:14:05.760NDP thought, that the mere creation of weapons indicates that you somehow want war. And now
00:14:12.040I know there are these kind of dumb talking points around, oh, the military industrial complex.
00:14:18.060I'm sorry, was the military industrial complex, you know, a bad thing in World War II? I don't
00:14:24.420think so. I think, in fact, it's probably good to be armed to the teeth. And in the sense that
00:14:28.840I think it's good to have weapons in your home in case a criminal breaks in. I support castle doctrine. And, you know, being able to manufacture and sell weapons is kind of the castle doctrine of, you know, nation states.
00:14:42.240But the NDP is just so anti-West. They think the West should be disarmed, should not be using oil and gas, and should be basically chasing every single rich person out. All the job creators need to be thrown out of the country so that Avi Lewis can pursue his killing fields or whatever.
00:14:59.780our cherished public services sweeping aside indigenous rights sweeping aside indigenous
00:15:07.040rights mark carney just signed over the entire lower mainland of the musqueam indigenous band
00:15:15.380he's actually kind of an insane land back guy secretly but apparently he hasn't gone far
00:15:21.040enough this is sweeping aside indigenous rights full steam ahead no regulations on ai
00:15:29.040and pipelines in the last federal election canadians voted to say no to trump and trumpism
00:15:36.320what they're getting instead is our government following the us into a future of wars
00:15:42.240fossil fuels austerity and job killing generative ai
00:15:49.040our ndp has a different offer for this country our plan is to trump proof the economy by
00:15:55.280investing massively in canadian economic independence using the unmatched power of
00:16:01.200public ownership to ensure the fundamentals yeah we're gonna beat trump with communism guys
00:16:12.240A network of public providers for food, phones, and internet.
00:16:19.700A public housing developer and public construction companies to build millions of non-market homes.
00:16:29.600The one thing I would say is that there is a certain type of individual like a Laura Babcock,
00:16:34.840who I could actually see embracing Avi Lewis if Mark Carney ever committed some faux pas against her.
00:16:42.240That is the one angle for this fool, is that the liberals have bought into many of the
00:16:48.680narratives that Avi Lewis is currently pushing halfway.
00:16:51.840And so to many on the more left side of the NDP or of the liberal party, many of those
00:16:56.740voters who were poached from the NDP from the previous elections, technically, if Mark
00:17:01.840Carney doesn't deliver the like hyper anti-Trump agenda, technically, these people are already
00:17:08.840about to walk the plank and join the Avi Lewis camp anyways.
00:17:12.240since, again, Mark Carney has already bought into most of the logic that Avi Lewis is operating
00:17:17.980under. Really, the only difference between the Mark Carney housing agenda and Avi Lewis's is
00:17:23.740that Mark Carney is doing public house building by proxy of contractors. He is still basically
00:17:30.520having the government attempt to build homes, way overpriced and way overscheduled, as you would
00:17:35.860expect. And the only difference, really, is that Avi Lewis just wants the government to literally
00:17:41.300own the company that's building it. That's pretty much it. You know, we should probably, you know,
00:17:46.480the conservative party can honestly contrast really well with Avi Lewis's socialism and push
00:17:51.440themselves as the unapologetic free market party. And then Mark Carney will have to kind of be
00:17:56.840split down the middle of not being free market enough to keep the business liberals, but also
00:18:01.360not being socialistic enough to contrast with Trump properly so that Avi Lewis can say, oh,
00:18:06.860i'm the real anti-trump guy because look even i don't even believe in foolish notions like private
00:18:12.000property but yeah a little bit more on him then we'll talk about the reaction 21st century
00:18:17.080electrical grid an ev bus revolution and a heat pump in every home built with canadian steel
00:18:24.220creating tens of thousands of unionized jobs
00:18:28.060we will have guys what was the uh who's who's i think it was like william mckinley's campaign
00:18:37.440promise or it was harding actually we're gonna have a chicken in every pot well apparently we're
00:18:42.580gonna have an ev bus ticket in every wallet and a heat pump in every home has he ever has he ever
00:18:48.900been to edmonton has he ever been to alberta well it doesn't seem like it because evs ev buses do
00:18:56.220not work here. In fact, they were a massive flop. He's so out of touch with Alberta that, in fact,
00:19:02.460the already deeply out of touch provincial NDP leader, Nahid Nenshi, distanced himself
00:19:08.800immediately from Avi Lewis and his radicalism. Nahid Nenshi here says, today the federal new
00:19:14.700Democratic Party selected its new leader. It is clear that the direction of the federal party
00:19:19.380under this new leader, someone who openly cheered for the defeat of the Alberta NDP government,
00:19:23.720is not in the interest of Alberta, and he is right about that. Avi Lewis wanted Notley to lose in
00:19:29.4602019 because she wasn't significantly left-wing enough in his estimation. But going on, then she
00:19:35.420says, last year, Alberta's New Democrats voted overwhelmingly to make membership in the federal
00:19:40.240party optional. Many thousands of our provincial members, including myself, are not members of the
00:19:44.780federal party. We are a big tent and welcome the support of people who vote for every federal
00:19:50.300Party. Although I don't quite think that's true, since I've never heard him say anything nice about
00:19:55.620the federal conservatives. Apparently, the NDP is open to PPC voters and Christian Heritage Party
00:20:01.120voters, too. Although I can see why Nenshi says this, because no one wants to vote for him. So
00:20:06.140now he has to try and reach out to everybody. But Nenshi goes on again and says, we believe in
00:20:11.800Alberta and we believe in Canada. Energy and the good jobs it creates. We believe in Alberta and
00:20:17.100we believe in Canadian energy and the good jobs it creates. We believe in more pipelines and in
00:20:21.660reducing emissions. We believe in strong public services and strong job-driven economy to help
00:20:27.400pay for them. This is what we are fighting for every day. Albertans deserve federal leaders who
00:20:31.780understand the importance of Alberta and our central role in the Federation. Our focus is not
00:20:36.400what the federal NDB says or does. Our fight is with Daniel Smith and the separatist UCP, and he
00:20:41.540goes into his separatist ucp conspiracy right there but yeah that's a bit of a blow considering
00:20:47.880that the ndp currently holds a seat in alberta that being heather mcpherson's seat and mark and
00:20:54.420and he just threw them fast under the bus but it didn't just end with him there was also a
00:21:01.840separation from the from the federal ndp by the saskatchewan ndp kirk lubomov here says alberta
00:21:10.500NDP leader Nahid Nenshi has already distanced themselves from the new federal NDP party leader
00:21:18.220Avi Lewis and Saskatchewan NDP leader Carl Beck wrote a scathing reply refusing to meeting with
00:21:24.400him because of his attack on natural resources and the working people. Boom. Yeah. So what does
00:21:31.860this leave Avi Lewis left with in terms of allies? Well, he had Wab Kanu's support because I guess
00:21:39.340the convention took place in Winnipeg and Winnipeg is one of the few places left where there's a lot
00:21:43.840of federal NDP support. So Wab Kanu cannot distance himself as the provincial NDP leader in that
00:21:49.620province. He also gave this weird statement when he was like talking at the convention about how we
00:21:56.300need to oppose the Iran war because it's the Epstein war or whatever. Wab Kanu diving head
00:22:02.420first into like Islamic Iranian regime propaganda, but that doesn't surprise me. So he's got
00:22:09.160Wob Canu. That's actually not too bad of a guy to have under his belt because he is quite popular
00:22:13.820in Manitoba right now. He has Merit Stiles, the Ontario NDP leader, and he kind of has David Eby.
00:22:22.600Like, David Eby is in a really awkward position right now because he knows that Avi Lewis is a
00:22:29.020crazy person. He doesn't probably want Avi Lewis as the NDP leader. He would have probably way
00:22:34.920preferred, Heather McPherson or Rob Ashton. But Avi Lewis is from Vancouver. And so David Eby is
00:22:43.020being marched onto that cattle car right into the killing fields with team Avi Lewis because he
00:22:48.820cannot actually say anything against him. And so David Eby here says, congratulations to Avi Lewis
00:22:54.980on being elected as the federal leader by NDP members. And thank you to Don Davies for your
00:23:00.120service as interim leader. That was all the British Columbia NDP premier said about Avi
00:23:07.260Lewis. Well, congratulations for winning. Literally, Paulieff said something nicer.
00:23:12.540He said, oh, it's good that Avi has won, and now he should help fight back against the federal
00:23:17.500liberals' corporate corruption or whatever he went into, basically finding the one angle,
00:23:22.020or technically the conservatives agree a little bit with the NDP, but not really. He's just kind
00:23:26.820of, you know, basically prodding Avi Lewis to make sure he doesn't become another Jagmeet Singh
00:23:31.900who ends up just working with the Liberals at every turn. I don't think that's Avi Lewis's
00:23:36.340style. He seems kind of like a pit bull, which, again, might benefit him just by pure aggression
00:23:42.000alone. But because the NDP can pull off like 20% in Vancouver, David Eby can't just tell them to
00:23:49.640pack sand, especially because with the 38,000 or 39,000 people who voted Lewis in this NDP federal
00:23:57.740leadership race, I guarantee you they are mostly concentrated in British Columbia. And by the way,
00:24:04.020federally speaking, I like a point system for a party leadership. Provincial level, I don't think
00:24:09.340a point system works. It's just too small a piece of geography, and it ends up with these really
00:24:13.840strange leadership results like what happened in manitoba where obi khan became the progressive
00:24:20.240conservative leader terrible leader not a conservative at all awful wally daldrich
00:24:26.040would have made a way better leader and in their leadership race wally daldrich won every single
00:24:31.520riding that the pcs currently hold so the base likes him but obi khan was able to basically
00:24:37.780sweep winnipeg in terms of points even though these are ridings that they're never going to
00:24:43.100win, just like how the UCP is never going to win downtown Edmonton, and we'd be stupid to have a
00:24:48.140point system. But the federal NDP, in all of its wisdom around democracy, doesn't believe in a
00:24:54.400federal point system, so I guarantee you Avi Lewis effectively won this entire leadership, racking up
00:25:01.660points in the lower mainland, in Victoria, in Montreal, and probably in downtown Toronto, and
00:25:08.880that is it. Now, you could say that is kind of NDP land a little bit, but he's completely cut out
00:25:14.600Regina, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, you know, Waterloo, London, Quebec City. He's cut out
00:25:24.460Halifax, Charlottetown, literally every other means like big city. The NDP is not really
00:25:31.200competing for them. And maybe Avi Lewis's whole strategy is he's going to consolidate the troops
00:25:35.460and circle his wagons around his few places of strength.
00:25:39.220But really, you're just going to cut Edmonton out of the process.
00:25:42.640Edmonton had two NDP seats in 21, and now it just has one.
00:25:46.200You could try and win one back if you weren't stupid, but what do I know?
00:25:50.860This is, again, why I think this might have been a good outcome for Mark Carney.