The Paikin Podcast - Why Avi Lewis Thinks He Can Save the NDP

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

Avi Lewis joins Steve to discuss his NDP leadership bid, why he wants to be the leader of a party that 94% of Canadian voters rejected in the last election, the decline of the NDP since Jack Layton, how Trudeau passed the NDP on the left, if Jagmeet Singh was a good leader, and why the NDP needs to return to its roots as a “working-class” party. They also get into if the party focussed too much on identity politics, why the populist right has captured all those voters who also believe the game is rigged and unfair, the prospect of a wealth tax, why we’ve lost the ability to build big things in Canada, if we care about climate change anymore, the failure of the carbon tax, Alberta separatism, and his family’s long history in NDP politics. (Yes, they cover a LOT of ground.)Follow The Paikin Podcast: YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ThePaikinPodcastX: x.com/ThePaikinPodINSTAGRAM: instagram.com/thepaikinpodcastBLUESKY: bsky.app/profile/thepaikinpodcast.bsky.socialEmail us at: [e-mail]

He has been one of the most influential voices in progressive politics for decades, and perhaps that's no surprise, given that his grandfather was the leader of the Federer New Democrats, and his father was the leader of the Ontario New Democrats. Now, Avi Lewis thinks he's ready for that leadership role as well. Let's find out why. Avi Lewis on the Paken podcast one-on-ones, coming right up. The Paken Podcast One-on-Wones, presented by Beer Canada. And there is, Avi Lewis. Great to see you again. Hey, Steve. How are you? I am just great yourself.

So this is what happens after 19 seasons on the agenda. You just have a podcast now. Apparently. There's a few other things going on, but this is near and dear to my heart. You're writing another tome, another massive Canadian political biography? Come on, tell me you are. Maybe a few, actually. I'm working on three books at once right now, which is a little stupid, but anyway. That's why you retired. Got it. I never said I was retiring.

I just said I was rewiring. Very different thing. Nice. Avi, I'm really interested in this leadership bid that you're putting together here, which is why I'm so glad you accepted our invitation to come on. My first question is kind of obvious. Never mind you, but why would anyone want to be the leader of a political party that 94% of Canadians rejected in the last federal election? Well, that's an even sharper framing than the traditional question usually gets at the beginning of this round of media. I find it perplexing the question, to be honest. I guess if one's interest in politics is merely the pursuit of power rather than the pursuit of social change, then yeah, you would go, then I'd be a liberal, Steve, and, you know, I'm not.

I think this is, I mean, obviously, not to be glib, this is the down part of the electoral cycle for the NDP. We've been here before. We were here after 93. We were here in previous generations as well. But a party on a comeback cycle is a party which is open to change to new ideas, to new forms of doing politics and organizing. And I think it's a really exciting time, to be frank, in the NDP. And I think the leadership candidates are really interesting, lovely people. And I think that we've got something going here where, obviously, we're not on the map yet.

This is relatively close to the beginning of the campaign. But this is an incredibly pressing time to be arguing in the public sphere for a more humane approach to government. When people are suffering the everyday emergency of just trying to get by, this is, I can't think of a more important time in my lifetime for a force that can push the government and eventually become government and actually have. a more generous and compassionate society. We need it desperately. No, I take your point, and I really didn't mean that first question to sound as smart-assy and aggressive as it sounded. But, I mean, the reality is it's been, I guess, about, well, almost 15 years since Jack Layton led the NDP to official opposition status. Things look really encouraging for the party back then. But it has gone on a sort of inexorable

decline election after election after election since then. And Canadians for whatever reason, and I hope you'll tell me what they are, have just seemed less interested in what the NDP has to offer. Why do you think? Well, there's a couple of things. I mean, you're right to cite Jack's breakthrough as the electoral high. And Jack was a unique politician who connected with people in his warmth and loveliness, in his clear passion for justice. And he connected with everybody. And so when Mulcair told him, over, we really suffered. In particular, we suffered in 2015 when Tom O'Hare made that incomprehensible decision, apparently on the fly, with no mandate from the party, with nothing

in party policy to anchor it to, with no consultation to say that he would balance the budget in a year, which everybody knew would mean massive austerity and cuts. And, you know, he said that fiscal responsibility, I can't remember the exact words, but balancing the budget It wasn't just his political opinion, but was in his DNA, confirming for many of us that Tom didn't actually come from the same tradition of democratic socialism that the rest of us did. Well, he hadn't, right? He was a provincial liberal in Tibet. As some of us pointed out at various points in the process.

And so when Trudeau passed us on the left with a promise for deficit spending to create jobs, and that was a nadir for me. And since then, I think we've had a different problem. My own conviction is that the NDP needs to recover the capacity for straight talk. There's a little too much emphasis in political culture these days on the message box, on the talking points, on threading the needle, on keeping everyone happy. And I think what makes us different, what always made us different, is that we are a true alternative to the two old corporate parties and that we offer a completely different vision for society. And when we don't just say it like it is, and present clear, understandable solutions

that no other party would offer and actually fight for working people in a way that feels passionate, angry, whatever, involved. You know, that's when we lose our direction as a party. And I think that's been part of the problem. But there is also, and you know as a student of political history, Steve, there's a structural problem in our democracy, which only a fairer democratic system

like proportional representation can fix, which is that the liberals are the natural governing party of Canada. So many air quotes in that phrase because they run from the left and they govern from the right. And these are political cliches. But what it means at election time in minority parliaments when the new Democratic Party has succeeded in pushing major reforms through the liberals by holding the balance of power, we get structurally killed the next election because the government has such a capacity to take credit for things. the communications infrastructure of government to write the smaller party out of the story.

It happened when universal health care was taken from the Tommy Douglas, Saskatchewan model to the national model under Pearson. We got wiped out in the next election. It happened to my grandfather, after the great minority parliament of 1972 to 1974 and the corporate welfare bums campaign of 72, when we got Petrocan, like a publicly owned oil company. Can we imagine what Canada's climate policy could be if we could model a transition away from fossil fuels with the government actually as a player, having spent those hundreds of billions of dollars over many decades to make the oil sands a viable resource, we could actually govern responsibly with public ownership. That was won by an NDP holding the balance of power. And in 74, my grandpa lost

his own seat as thanks for that. And the first election finance reforms and a bunch of other extensions to the welfare state. And then it happened again in this last election when the NDP under JugMeet Singh won historic expansions, the first in a generation to pharmacare, to dental care. Millions of Canadians now have dental care who didn't before. I met with a dentist in Mississauga the other day who said business is booming for every dentist he knows because there's so many more people coming in thanks to this government program. And we just didn't get credit. And so I think there's a number of different things going on. Some are structural, some are cultural in the way that we do politics. And some have to do with kind of moving to the center and offering slightly

kinder, gentler versions of the liberal agenda when they're running from the left in elections and scooping up all of our policy ideas as they do. So there are a number of different factors. But I think right now we've got, Carney haven't taken a hard right after the last election and the two old parties now huddled on the right wing of the rink to use the prime minister's favorite sports metaphors. The lane is wide open for the NDP in from the center all the way to the left to propose alternatives particularly around this grinding, grinding difficulty that people are having getting by and the cost of living crisis is the number one emergency for all Canadians except the ultra-rich. And we need solutions desperately. And I believe

that only the NDP can offer the ones that will actually work. I have watched your work. I have listened to you speak. I have been to your website. And I look forward to talking to you about those ideas. But I want to do just a few housekeeping things before we get there, which, for starters, I am curious. Was Jug Meetsing a good leader for your party? I think there was a lot of excitement when Jugmeet first came in, winning on the first ballot and the organizing victory of his initial leadership run. And there was a tremendous amount of excitement around Jagmeet when he first came. And over the three elections, I don't think that he just didn't seem to change.

And so I think when we got to the crux moment in recent Canadian political history, of the last election and the fear of Trump, which really was the dominant spirit for the entire progressive Canadian electoral universe, nobody saw Jagmeet as the answer. And like I said, I think those are cultural, the way we do politics and the kind of messaging approach and communications approach and also the fact that we're coming out of a minority where we had done the usual thing and extracted concessions and then didn't get credit. So I think Jagmeet was a of a lot of those historic factors. He's a really good guy. I've knocked on so many doors in the last two elections. People really have always liked him. But just he just wasn't able to break through.

What's he doing now? I don't know. I see him on. I'm not, it's not that we were ever close, you know. He had a party to run and I was doing other things. And I see him on Instagram. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's all I know. Okay. I want to ask you, I mean, this is really sort of getting down to bare basics here. But obviously, a leader, to be a leader, needs to have a seat. And I know you have tried a couple of times to get a seat so far unsuccessfully. Yeah. Can you win a seat, Avi? Oh, sure. Absolutely. I mean, well, I live in Vancouver. There are a number of winnable seats in Vancouver. A federal leader can run anywhere in the country. And I don't, I'm too superstitious.

Stettel nihilism does not allow me to forecast a victory and then talk about a plan. I think that's hubris, and I don't believe in that in politics. But the truth is that, yeah, I mean, like, I've run and lost twice. Jack Layton also had the same experience when he ran for leader. He didn't have a seat. He had lost twice federally. He'd lost municipally in his run for mayor. And he had that same record.

And I'm proud of the decisions that I made to run where I did because I believe, even though I'm a fierce advocate for proportional representation, I believe that we need a better democracy that still maintains a connection between MPs and specific writings and regions. And I think that's perfectly possible in a mixed member system. But I ran in West Bend, Sunshine Coast, Cedar Sky, because that's where Naomi and I have lived for much of the last 20 years, where our son was born, a community that I'm really connected to and have deep roots in. We moved to Vancouver Center in parts so our kid could go to school here, and I ran where I lived against a very unpopular, but very longstanding MP. I think

Hetty Fry is a unique combination in Canadian politics. She is not well liked in the writing. I can tell you from knocking more than 50,000 doors with my team in the last election. We didn't see her in more than four buildings, four or five buildings, where we found her leaf I think she barely campaigned. But she wins. And I think in that last election, when almost 20 incredible new Democrats with strong, strong riding presences lost their seats, I think someone who has never won a seat maybe is not that unexpected that I wouldn't have won in the last election, it was a unique

dynamic. And it was a historic collapse that was completely dominated at the doorstep by the the fear of the American attack. And let me just remind you that we fought free trade in the 80s and 90s because we always, always argued that deeply integrating our economy with this be a moth of 10 times our size in the South, the home to the largest concentration of corporate wealth and power on planet Earth, was always going to be a bad deal for Canada. And all of the protections from the auto-packed, you know, to the wheatboard that were

deconstructed relentlessly over years of government, you know, whether liberal or conservative, essentially along neoliberal orthodox lines to privatize and deregulate. You know, this made us so vulnerable to the bullying that we're getting from Trump today. And the last election was a reflection of that. People were terrified and they voted accordingly. So I'm not sure if that one should be held against all of us. And I think, as I said, that the lane is wide open for the NDP. and we will come back in the next election.

No, I get you. And you certainly didn't run in an easy NDP seat the first time out. You ran on a place that would have been a tough win under any circumstances. But your Stettel nihilism notwithstanding, by saying, you know, the leader can run anywhere, I mean, I have to follow up on that because it certainly suggests to me that you're allowing yourself the option of not necessarily running in British Columbia, but maybe somewhere else. Fair to say? Yeah, sure.

I grew up in Toronto. until my 30s. I have deep, deep roots and all kinds of ridings in Toronto, all of which had fantastic NDP candidates in the last election. So I'm not going to talk about individual seats, but there are certainly opportunities for me in different parts of the country. And look, honestly, I'm not thinking about that. Steve, it is a huge thing to run for leader of a federal party. I'm 100% focused on that. But I don't, I certainly don't feel like the decision of where to run, should I win is like, you know, I got to win a seat. Like there's just no question. So I got to do whatever I have to do and go where I ever have to go to win a seat if I win the leadership.

And I'll do so. That's a tradition. If you think about seven MPs, though, and the magnificent seven, as I call them, rather than the group of seven, which doesn't seem to speak to their heroism in holding down the left position in this, in a huge parliament where there are only seven people, I'm not going to ask any of those people to step aside. How could you do that? You know, a bigger caucus you can ask if anybody wants to leave the playing field. So, you know, it's a very unstable political moment. We have a minority government. We're recording this before the federal budget and anything could happen. So we're going to have to take this one step at a time if that's okay with you. It's absolutely okay with me. But, you know, my memory isn't

what it used to be, but I think your grandfather used to represent a riding in Scarborough, and I think your father used to represent a riding in Scarborough. So, maybe? My grandfather was York Southwestern. Oh, okay. My memory ain't what it used to be. York South, that it was then. And dad was in Scarborough West. And I'm very passionate about the NDP organizing in the suburbs. I think the party has focused too much on downtown seats in general in the last generation. And I think that in this epic moment where we need to re-engage the working class of Canada and really build back connections so that working people are clear that the NDP is the only party that is advocating for them against the titans that run our economy and suck up hundreds

of billions of dollars of profits cycle after cycle when people are, I mean just like I went to the grocery store after I dropped my kid at school today. I bought a couple of cucumbers, a head of lettuce, a bag of mandarin's, and it was 30 bucks. I mean, this is bonkers. This is, this is, this is an indefensible extraction from human beings. We cannot have a society where people go hungry, where the homelessness crisis is exploding because of the housing crisis, because everything is costing so much in a time of astronomical profits, the riches that are being made by the 0.1% and by big corporations in Canada,

there's never been such stark inequality. And people need to hear from us in the suburbs where working class Canadians live, that the NDP has solutions and that we are the party that really represents working people in Canada. And so suburban seats are really important to me too. Gotcha. All right. Your website says, quote, it is time for the NDP to return to its roots, fighting a system that's rigged for the rich

that leaves the rest of us behind. Now, again, this may be my inference, so you correct me if I'm wrong. My inference in reading that is that you think the NDP has strayed too far into so-called identity politics and away from its traditional mission of trying to make life better for working people. Is that a fair conclusion? No, I don't think that, I think you inserted that little nifty little move there. You inserted the identity politics question. I don't think, I don't think that's the case. Well, the return to its roots, what do I infer from that? Well, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the DPP that I grew up in in the 1970s was just frankly more left wing than the NDP has been in the last couple of decades. And I think in a time,

you know, we are seeing authoritarian authoritarianism in the United States. We're seeing the hard right and fascism rising around the world. And things are looking a little bit more like the 1930s than they ever have in our lifetime. And I think in that context, the original mission of the NDP to stand up against the total unfairness of our entire system where people are really suffering amid glittering wealth for the very, very few, that's what we need to get back to. And that's what I mean when I talk about returning to its roots. One idea that I've been really consistently putting forward is a public option. A public option for groceries, public option for phone plans and internet. A public option when a company like Stalantis gets hundreds of millions of dollars to retool a plant to make EVs

and then decides after all that public money and subsidy and support that it's just going to move to the states to suck up to Trump. we should be taken over that factory and running it under public ownership. That's a kind of approach that I think is extremely popular right now. And as I've been talking about that in public, we've had amazing responses from people who say, yeah, we pay for it. We as the people should own it. That's the kind of argument that the NDP did make in decades past and the kind of argument that the CCF made throughout its life. And we're living in a time of unfairness, of inequality, of downright desperation, where fascism feeds on the economic desperation of people. And as we see more and more people realize that the system just does not offer them a

dignified life, I argue that this is a time of market failure. And our campaign is putting forward solutions that correspond to that level of emergency. Maybe you can help me understand that better because it is well for those of us we're you know a bit older than you but i certainly you know we remember those times decades ago where if if people felt like the system was rigged against them or if they felt they were being hard done by the nDP was their option and nowadays you see working people you know never mind flirting with the conservatives they're voting for trump they're voting for pier pauliav in canada what's gone on that the nDP no longer appears to be the for those who feel that they can't get ahead in life?

Well, I mean, this is the big question. If I had a magical answer, I would have offered it long ago. But I think that the, you know, in the last 20 years, I think there's been too much incrementalism in politics in general. Like if the solution, and this is why I'm offering, why my campaign is based on, harvesting from the wider community of progressive policy folks and social movements. Like, we have solutions that would actually solve these problems.

Whereas too many times, I think, over the last, say, 20 years, the NDP has said, we need to cancel the GST on essentials or policies of that scale. And when people are paying thousands and thousands of dollars for rent to live in substandard departments, when people cannot afford the price of food, when public transit every day is like a dystopian, you know, experience to try to get to work and the powerlessness of sitting there waiting and waiting for the bus and then knowing that you're getting late and not being able to do anything about it, because all of our public systems have been so defunded and degraded. This is not a time when little tweaks are going to do it. And I think the party needs.

needs to offer big solutions. And that's why we've really concentrated on that in my campaign. Okay, let's go through some of those ideas you've brought forward. And I want to start with the public option on groceries, because that has, you know, particularly because of the mayoralty campaign in New York City, I think achieved a lot of attention right now. What would that actually look like of it? What would a public option for groceries look like? I mean, there's lots of different options to explore. Mexico has 30,000 publicly owned grocery stores with 300 warehouses, distribution centers. We have the power of the federal government, which has national reach and has the kind of resources to set up those kinds of

distribution networks for grocery stores that could be municipally owned. That would take some time. So in the meantime, you know, there are already cooperative grocery cooperatives all over the country that don't get any support and they don't have any defense against the The five big grocery giants that dominate like 80% of our market. And so there's lots of different models where this could be enacted. The call for it is really simple. We are in a phase where we have these giant chains that control much of the supply chain, the shipping, the distribution, the trucking, you know.

And they're connecting to a very consolidated food system where Archer Daniels, Archer Daniel Midland and Cargill and other massive JBS, other massive food producers control everything from the fertilizer to the seed to the finished food product. And in this consolidation, we have immense amounts of corporations, price fixing and price gouging. How many bread scandals do we have to have? And when they get a slap on the wrist, even if it's $500 million, it's a price of doing business for them for fixing the price of bread for 20 years. So we have a system which is broken.

It is not fair. And it is a case, in my view, of market failure. The market is failing to provide the most essential public good, which is food, at an affordable price that people can actually manage on the wages that they're earning. So we need wages to come up, and there are other policies for that. We need government to have more revenue. Wealth taxes and other policies can deal with that. But in the provision of food, the government must step in.

where the market is failing to do anything other than create immense profits, which it returns to shareholders and share buybacks. And Gail and Weston is worth $18 billion. And I just paid 30 bucks for a couple of cucumbers, a head of lettuce, and a peg of mandarin. That's wrong. And that's what government is for. And that's why we need a public option. And we need to explore it immediately. And if I'm elected leader, I will fight like hell for it. How would you rate the level of confidence the public has in this country today in the governments, any government's ability to do that? Low, Steve. And I think this is part of the problem too, because in the era of consultants and outsourcing, governments have systematically cut civil servants, cut public servants and the public service broadly, particularly of the people who have the capacity to do things. directly and hired consultants, the KPMGing of our economy is already a scandal because of the

amount of money that liberal and conservative governments spend on consultants, but the capacity to actually build things like we did in the Second World War, like the way we built our healthcare system in Saskatchewan and nationally, governments don't have as much capacity as they did. And so I think that part of this will be rebuilding the ability of the public service to actually deliver services. And that means a shift in priority. in our whole economy and system of government, which right now is massively tilted towards corporations. And we watch our health care system fray and fall into disaster,

emergency rooms closing. No one can find a family doctor, hallway medicine. We see the child care system, which even though we won $10 a day childcare because we paid child care workers such low wages, there are worker shortages and people have been promised $10 a day child care. They can't even get it in many parts. of the country, and on and on, public transportation and on, we need to double down on the things that government actually needs to do for people. The reason that we have a government, we believe

it should provide the social safety net and the fundamental public services. And it's a real marker of how far we've gone from valuing the public in our society that we are outraged that Canada Post doesn't make money. Now, I believe that they fix the books, and I don't trust the Canada Post Corporation at all, and I don't believe that their losses, quote-unquote, because they won't open their books are anywhere near what they say.

But the notion that our oldest and most cherished public service, delivering the mail, should be jammed into a market model where it's supposed to make money is totally absurd. Did the police make money? does the ambulance service make money? Does the healthcare system make money? The Canada Post is a fundamental public service. It goes back to the origins of the state in society to deliver the mail and to connect the country. And the idea that we're all, that too many people are buying

this thing that it loses money. Therefore, it should just be basically shut down is a marker of how much we need to rebuild in what we expect from government and what government's priorities are. Let me ask you about the wealth tax proposal. We have seen in other countries around the world that when governments bring in a big tax on wealthy people, the wealthy people do one of two things. They hire very expensive accountants to shield their money away from governments, or they leave. Is there any reason to believe that if you did that here, the same thing wouldn't take place? Well, then is your suggestion that we just shouldn't try to rebalance the scales of society because there are not at all that's not my suggestion at all i'm i'm i'm merely going by

by previous examples and the previous examples actually i should have added a third thing on the list as well which is that when you because they're so good at shielding their money from in our case the CRA you wouldn't get the bang for your buck that you think you're going to get by putting a wealth tax in place so what would yours look like well there's absolutely that's absolutely no reason not to not to try we we still i think have a rule space system and you pass a law in government, you don't expect the richest people in society to simply flout it. I think they should be shamed, first of all, if that's the case, at the very least. But I believe that wealth tax would garner significant revenue. I think the liberal government

even post-pandemic showed that an excess profit tax, although it was too modest and it was only on the one sector of banking, is absolutely doable and very, very popular. I mean, a wealth tax is supported by like 90% of Canadians, even in the run-up to the budget, David Coletto was showing like 60% of Canadians supportive of the idea of the wealthiest among us paying more because we are in deficit and because government revenues need to be higher and the priorities need to be reorganized. Look, a wealth tax that would affect 0.5% of the population, like 87,000 families right on of one percent on 10 million dollars of wealth or more going up to three percent on a hundred million dollars of wealth or more would generate 32 billion dollars a year even if there

is some avoidance we need to we need to hire more people in CRA to prosecute those who are breaking the law if that's the case and I believe that more more more audits of the super rich would be would be very welcome in this country and that is again an incredibly popular position that people will vote for and that the vast majority of Canadian support and is a kind of policy on which the NDP can run and win. And we have a deficit that is concerning Canadians and we have a revenue problem in the federal government. And we have a time of untold corporate profitability. Despite the swings of the economy, profits just keep going up and up and up. And we need to balance the scales. So I think a wealth tax, I mean,

it's among the most popular of policies that when you put them in front of a Canadian public, and I think we need to do it. If you look at the polls in the United States, there's 90% approval for a wealth tax in the United States. You'd think the Democrats would be on side. There are elements of the Republican Party that are on side, and for whatever reason, it never happens. I don't know why we can never get there from here.

Do you know why? I mean, this is the reason we have a different system here. And I think the reason I believe 100% of the end of it. is going to come back and come back strongly in the next couple of election cycles is because we have a structural need for a third party in Canada. Canadians do not want a two-party system. That's how we saw the emergence of Trump. And it's how we've seen the cynicism of Americans towards the political system when Democrats can't pick up policies, you know, that are massively popular, like the wealth tax, supported by 90% of Americans, like 90% of Canadians,

because they are too captured by corporations and by the richest of Americans and by the billionaire class and by the tech oligarchs and the rest of the elites in society. When people see two interchangeable parties with slightly different messages and the same damn policies, that's when they need an alternative. And that's what the NDP can be in Canada and advocating for something as massively popular as a wealth tax on people who have $10 to $100 million or more in wealth that would generate tens of billions of dollars a year

to save our health care system, to offer a public option for groceries, to fix public transit, make it frequent, make it free, and to restore the social safety net that catches people who are falling into extreme poverty in a time of glittering wealth for the few. This is why the NDP exists, and this is why I believe we're going to come roaring back.

Okay, Avi, as long as we're on the issue of taxes, I'm going to talk about beer taxes for a second. And if you want to... Do what you've got to do, Steve. We're going to do a little ad read here in order to keep this podcast going. If you want to take a swig of beer or whatever else you've got going there, now is the time. Well, Canada, as we all know, is in an ongoing affordability crisis. We've just been talking about it here on the podcast. And that no doubt affects everybody watching or listening to this.

And more Canadians have the right to know whether their governments are making. more or making life more or less affordable. The organization representing Canada's brewers wonders if you knew that in Canada, 46% of the price of beer is government taxation. Yes, Canada imposes higher taxes on beer than any of the other great beer nations, higher than Germany, Belgium, Mexico, the U.S., the UK, Brazil, Denmark, and Ireland. And at 46% it is higher than any other country in the G7. Canada's already high beer taxes go up annually and on. automatically. And Beer Canada says the powers that be hope that you won't notice, they think that's sneaky, they think automatic is not democratic. And now that you know,

they say you can do something about it. Beer Canada would like you to help stop this practice of automatic beer tax hikes. So go to this website. Hereforbeer.ca. That's hereforbeer.ca. And ask yourself, why does the best beer nation have the worst beer taxation? And that's a message in the interest of fairness and transparency from our friends at Beer, Canada. There we go. These ad reads are most intriguing in this new life of mine. And while we're on the issue of beer, because I remember, of course, you were, you know, you came up as a journalist and a documentary filmmaker.

And I guess I always like to ask people coming out of that ad read, if you had the chance of you to sit down and have a beer with any sort of historic figure or with somebody in the country or around the world today, who's that point? person you'd want to have a beer with and talk about peace order and good government or life liberty and the pursuit of happiness? I would like to have a beer with Leonard Cohen, but I think he drank Scotch when he drank. He was not in the later part of his life when I met him. I interviewed him in the 90s when I was hosting music on City TV Much Music. And it was the most glorious conversation. He was such a gentle and generous human being.

And I'd love to have Leonard back to have a beer with, honestly. And Steve, I had an experience that you might have had as an interviewer, interviewing Leonard Cohen. He was so kind. And everything that came out of his mouth was like, oh, my God, pearls of wisdom. I mean, it was a music interview. He had been, you know, he had just been fleeced by his manager. He had come down from the mountain where he'd been living in a Zen monastery, like kind of serving his Zen master for 10 years. And he put out a greatest hits kind of cynical album with, like,

one new track just because he needed money. And yet he was so poetic and thoughtful and kind and expansive. And I got to the end of the interview and I was like, well, that was the best interview I've ever done. I mean, that was just that, I just killed it. That was incredible. Whatever I asked, that was. And then I heard it on the radio a week later before my piece had come out and he said

all the same things. But he made me feel like special. Yeah, that's the magic of it. That capacity, and he had it as a performer, and he had it as a poet, and he had it as a Canadian icon. So, yeah. What's your favorite song of his? I mean, I'm part, you know, Hallelujah has been so overhyped. And I love the way it's regularly played in completely inappropriate forums, you know, because it's like a song of celebration.

It's kind of dirty, and it's a little bit adult. So I quite enjoy hearing that song played in inappropriate venues and sung by like large crowds of earnest people who are saying some very personal things that Leonard wrote in thinking about past relationships and stuff. I think it's an amazing piece. Very cool. Okay, I want to talk to you about the environment because, well, Avi, I don't know how to tell you this, but you mentioned David Coletto earlier, the great pollster. and I think his last survey showed that climate change and concern about the future of the planet did not crack the top seven most important issues when Canadians are surveyed about them. I think to the extent that people remember, I guess it was 10 years ago, you came forward with

Naomi, your wife, Naomi Klein, with the Leap Manifesto, which attempted to do some things and introduce some ideas in this area. And yet, you know, the public just ain't there. So I guess I want to know what approach can you take to this issue that would be meaningful and that would get support? Because at the moment, I'm not sure anybody knows how to do that. I think that it's true that the climate emergency is not the first thing that comes to Canadians' minds right now, although in smoke season, which we used to call summer, it is in our lungs. And nobody is unaware of the fact that the planet is literally burning.

But the thing is we have an economy, which is just in a state of emergency, too, of the incredible unfairness and the everyday emergency of just trying to get by and pay the bills. And it's quite right that that dominates people's concerns. I think right now, in the kind of climate communications space, everyone's casting around for the magic solution. I think if there were a magic solution, we would have broken through a long time ago. but I do think that it's really, it's incredibly obvious to me having spoken to so many voters in the last couple of elections that, and this is what the leap tried to do as well,

climate solutions can be woven through every public policy that we have. And when we're in a housing crisis and we need to build millions of new homes and apartments and especially non-market housing, co-op housing, non-profit housing, there's no reason for those homes to be built and connected to fossil fuels for heating. There's absolutely no rationale for it whatsoever. It is much cheaper in the long run to have a heat pump in every single dwelling in Canada. Here in British Columbia, we never needed air conditioning before. But in the last decade, we've had the heat dome where we lost more than 600 precious lives to heat in this city where I live in Vancouver, mostly elderly people who couldn't get out of their homes. And

everybody needs air conditioning now on a warming planet. Well, heat pumps give you heat and cooling and they're less expensive. And we need a national program to get a heat pump in every single dwelling in Canada. Now, in the middle of the prairies, in the middle of winter, it's not going to do the whole job, but there's supplementary heat that can also be electrical that can heat your home and keep you cozy. And so the climate solutions that we need can be advocated through solving the everyday emergencies that we face from a local food system where we double down on growing the food we need to eat in Canada supporting not agribusiness corporations, but the comeback of local farming for food closer to where it is sold and consumed. These are all climate solutions.

We have a transportation crisis, particularly like you think about when Greyhound just abandoned the prairies and suddenly there was no public bus or no bus whatsoever to connect prairie communities. The railroad long since given over mostly to trade and the passenger service is a disaster. So we need an electric bus revolution, Steve. We need to reconnect the country with electric buses and we can slash our emissions. We can use Canadian steel, which can't be sold to the states right now because of prohibitive tariffs. We can create unionized jobs. We can save the auto sector in Ontario and Quebec with an electric bus revolution. The market is not doing it. And that's why we also need public ownership and we need a public option for the government

to actually get serious about directly solving these problems in a way that solves multiple problems at once. So whether it's food, transportation, heating and cooling, the building of new homes, there are climate smart ways to do every single one of those things that also solve the cost of living emergency, the housing crisis and all the crises that we face. And we simply have to weave a climate sensibility into how we deal with the everyday emergency. that Canadians are facing. And that's what we've been advocating on our campaign. In your view, should the current Prime Minister of Canada have dropped the carbon tax as he did when he took over leadership of the Liberal Party? No. But it was always a mistake to make the carbon

tax the signature climate policy. And we said so at the beginning. I mean, we had it here in BC under Gordon Campbell, for heaven's sake, many, many years ago. And it's just, it's a carbon tax is a perfectly legitimate part of a comprehensive climate policy. But the Trudeau liberals made it the one thing that had to take all the weight of reducing emissions. And it turned into a political poison pill. And, and, and it was never, it should never have been the one big climate policy, it was carrying too much on its own. They did, under Trudeau, establish a more comprehensive climate approach with frameworks for transportation, for food, for many different aspects of solving the climate crisis, but they didn't put any teeth into any of them. And, you know,

when it came to like a cap on fossil fuel emissions or, you know, actually dealing with the fact that the oil and gas industry, which has taken hundreds of billions of dollars of profit out of the ground in this country, mostly for foreign shareholders over the last decade, and is the number one source of growth in emissions, which is erasing all climate progress in every other sector, right? Nobody is actually dealing with the fossil fuel industry. Nobody is actually saying we can't keep expanding fossil fuel production. We have to get off fossil fuels as an existential reality, but also because our governments are too addicted to the revenue and it's unhealthy and our politics is too captured by the propaganda of the fossil fuel industry.

And there's a kind of energy, which is free coming from the sun and the wind, where the inputs are free forever. So they don't make as much money, but they make a hell of a lot more sense. And so we're kind of trapped, as the Trudeau liberals were, as the Carney liberals clearly are, as too much of our political class is, in not being able to state the obvious, which is that fossil fuels have a strangle hold on our political conversation. It needs to be broken and we need to get off fossil fuels. That doesn't mean shutting the industry down tomorrow, which is just a fossil fuel propaganda talking point that they use every time you talk about curtailing this industry

that is an undisputed driver of the climate emergency. The reason why Canada is a pariah among the G7 countries, the only country which is still up here on the graph when the UK and Spain and Italy Everyone else has gone down over the last couple of decades. Dramatically, Canada is a climate pariah because we keep expanding fossil fuels. Now, as someone running for the NDP leadership, I think it's important to say that only the NDP can be trusted to take care of the workers and not make a single worker pay the price for this energy transition that we have to make and actually make the corporations who have extracted untold well and treat their employees like garbage. Although they get high salaries

in the boom years, the oil and gas industry has figured out how to make a barrel of oil with 45% fewer workers in the last decade. They are automating their workforce out of existence. The biggest threat to oil and gas workers today in Canada is the industry itself, which is using fewer and fewer workers to make their vast profits. And so the NDP has an analysis, which is suspicious of the amount of corporate profit and the amount of corporate power in our society, we are the only ones who can be trusted to protect workers in the transition that everyone knows we need to make. I'd be interested in your view on this, though, and that is that somehow the issue of oil and gas and the role that plays in the country has been wrapped up

very much, I think in part by a skillful campaign by the Premier of Alberta, into a national unity crisis. And I guess my question is, if you come after oil and gas, too hard, are you running the risk of fanning the flames of separatism in Alberta, which lots of people who want to keep Canada together don't want to see, particularly if a party Quebequa government comes back in Quebec, and then we've got it happening at both ends of the country. Speak to all of that, if you would. Well, I think Daniel Smith couldn't be happier for people to discuss the threat of separatism. I mean, I'm not sure where Alberta is going to go. who they're going to sell their products to, the entire pipeline network is continental.

I mean, the notion of Alberta separation is, I think, a very skilled political lobby to keep the focus off the fact that oil and gas is dominating our debate and they're getting everything that they want. We bought them a $34 billion pipeline, Steve. And many people forget, although you may remember because you follow these things closely, that Krista Freeland, the Friday before she resigned as finance minister, so right when the dominoes started falling that led to the departure of Justin Trudeau and everything that's happened since, she authorized another $20 billion loan guarantee, $20 billion of public backstop to that completely outrageous pipeline project TMX, which we paid $35 billion for already. So now we're over $50 billion of

public support for a pipeline that has basically just increased the marginal price of a barrel of diluted bitumen, leading to greater profits in the oil patch, putting at risk things here in British Columbia, fragile ecosystems and communities. And it was just a gift. And not only that, the TMX pipeline dramatically changed the dynamic. And the fact that we're having these pipeline debates now, when the public, under the liberal government, has already bought a $35 to $55 billion dollar pipeline for the oil industry. Do we really think that those smart business people in the oil and gas industry are going to put their own billions of dollars behind another pipeline project? No way. They already know that if they can hold the conversation of the country hostage

around pipelines, that eventually they can get a liberal or conservative government to pay for it for them. We've already done it once. The moral hazard of the TMX pipeline is like completely changed the dynamic. And that's why no company has actually come forward, despite the fact that Daniel Smith, and even the prime minister himself are reviving all these zombie pipeline projects like Keystone XL, which has been buried long since for the prime minister to bring it up again with Donald Trump is just, I mean, it's bonkers. But there's no company that actually is coming forward with a proposal because the capacity is actually not needed. And especially when the world is moving away from fossil fuels, it is financial mismanagement of the highest order. Last year

on planet Earth, $2.2 trillion went into renewable energy in capital investments and $1.1 trillion into fossil fuels. Double. The world is moving on. Canada is being left behind and this entire newly resurrected zombie pipeline debate is just dragging us backward when we need to be going forward. Whereas Bill McKibben says, the cheapest energy on Earth is pointing a piece of glass at the sun, and the revolution in the market forces around solar, in the cost coming down, the cost of storage coming down on a very steep curve, and the immense rollout of solar energy around the world. Pakistan last year installed almost half of the country's energy needs just in balcony solar, in people buying Chinese panels, getting a YouTube video and sticking

them on their balconies to deal with energy poverty. This is where the planet is going. This is where the world is going. And Canada is just going to be left behind if we don't get it together soon. Okay. In our remaining moments, you are not going to be the slightest bit surprised by the line of questioning I want to take on now, which is about you. And that is, as I suggested off the top, your family's history in politics is not unknown. Your grandfather was a federal NDP leader. Your father was the leader of the Ontario NDP. I'm going back more than 50 years now. But I guess your decision to run for the leadership of the federal NDP, can I say in some respects was inevitable given your predecessors? I mean, I remember about 10 years ago around the time of the Leap Manifesto, you pressed me on this question.

No, I don't think it was inevitable. But I mean, there's this whole Nepo baby thing, okay? and this question of political dynasties. I know that it rubs some people the wrong way. And I don't like it either. But we don't really have dynasties on the left. Our inheritance is not like money and power. I think my father practiced deficit financing

on a personal level for his entire life. And I don't, you know, my inheritance is nothing, nothing more than debt. But so we don't get wealth and power handed down like they do in conservative and liberal dynasties. Our inheritance is struggle. The legacy that I receive from my family is resistance against a system which is disastrously unfair.

Right now, people are hurting and suffering. And stepping up in this moment to seek a role on the national stage, it's just something that I feel called to do. And it's not, you know, I spent most of my adult life, as you did in journalism. And I, the kind of journalism that I always did, though, was engaged journalism. You know, I wrote, my first film was about workers that took over their factories when they were abandoned by their owners in Argentina. And the documentaries that I've made for Al Jazeera and other broadcasters have largely been about working class struggles. and I saw journalism as a way of handing the megaphone to people who wouldn't have access to it.

In 1997, when we covered that election on much music, we handed the microphone to young people. And our slogan was, before we listen to you, listen to us. That was the voice of young people who wanted into the political system. And I saw my journalism as a path to hand the mic to others. And so in a life in journalism and around social movements and climate activism and other struggles through many decades, I saw us losing ground on the left. And I see the whole spectrum moving to the hard right and the emergence of Trump and of American authoritarianism and fascist figures all over the world is a sign that things

have tilted too far in that direction. And so trying, not giving up on the electoral sphere. believing that a truly progressive alternative rooted in the everyday lives of all of us, of the 99% a framing that my grandfather used in 1943 in a book called Make This Your Canada. I could run and get it from the shelf and show you the coffee-stained cover from the 1940s. In the 1940s, David Lewis wrote in that book that the 99% are reaching out. for the wealth and power that the 1% now control. And that dynamic of a system built for the tiny elites

versus the vast majority of us, that's the kind of politics that I want to do. That's the kind of journalism that I did. And that's in keeping with the true inheritance that I have, which is just an inheritance of struggle. I remember being five at H.A. Paubert Public School in Scarborough in my first month of school, of grade school, and the teacher, someone had done something wrong and the teacher was punished all of us because nobody would step up. So we all had to put our

heads down on the desk for like 10 excruciating minutes. And I just remember being so angry, just overwhelmed at anger, at the unfairness that everybody would be punished for something that one person had done. And that kind of rage at injustice is what's driven my whole life, my career. And, you know, rage with a twinkle. I'm not a vengeful or rage-filled person. I really enjoy debate. I really enjoy discussion.

I really enjoy community. Love to cook. And I had my heartbroken with the Blue Jays as I followed 162 games with my son before the playoffs even started. So, I mean, it's not that this is the single defining feature of me, but I have always had this deep sense that things are not right in this world and that something must be done. So this is just my latest attempt. I'm not sure agony is supposed to be part of real life, but it is supposed to be part of baseball, as you and your son no doubt now know. structural feature. Yes, indeed. Your mother, of course, was a great crusading journalist back in the day, Michelle Landsberg, and your father was, your father's the greatest speaker I've ever seen in the

history of my watching Canadian politics. And, you know, I presume, but maybe you could tell me that somewhere along the line, you have sought their advice on what you're about to undertake or what you are undertaking. And I wonder if you'd share what they told you. Well, thanks for invoking my mom. the patrilineal thing gets a little much in my family story because I am going for leader of the federal NDP when my grandpa did the same and my dad was provincial leader. But in fact, my career has been much more shaped by my mom, Michelle Landsberg, who is such a gifted writer, an extraordinary writer and who also used journalism for four or five decades as a tool to tell the story of working people, particularly women, for whom the structure of society is incredibly unfair.

And it was her kind of crusading journalism that drew me to it in the first place. And, you know, when I told my folks that I wanted to do this, there was a kind of a, oh, finally, sort of. Well, I did wonder, Avi, you're 58. Your dad was the leader of his party when he was 33. What took you so long? Well, I do think that they both communicated to me that not having done it as a younger person, maybe was a good idea on reflection because I'm past a lot of those, the struggles of the earlier part of life now. I kind of know what I'm good at. I know what I suck at. And I'm more comfortable in my own skin, which I think is a good thing to have when you're going into one of the meanest sports on earth, particularly these days, the ability to read Twitter comments and laugh is a superpower that I wouldn't have had when I was 32 years old, you know? So I think both of them, both my folks feel that this is actually the right time. And they feel, and both of them told me that they feel that the, that the NDP is in a moment

where a different NDP seems possible. And that coming out of a few decades of a certain kind of politics, that this is a moment to return to our roots. and to return to the clarity and the straight talk of the corporate welfare bombs and of Tommy Douglas and of the need for universal social programs like Medicare to actually be expanded as a nation-building project rather than doubling down on extracting raw resources and shipping them to other parts of the world. I mean, this is something that in my family, for better or worse, our dinner table conversations are like that. And I think I'm very blessed that both my folks are still around. and that they've been able to be there on the other end of the phone

at various moments in this leadership race. And I'm so lucky to have such wise folks behind me. I agree with that. And I guess I want to ask my last question. There are some of us who know how much your father has been struggling with his health for the last many years. And I guess he's going to turn 87 on Remembrance Day, which is a bigger number than I think many of his friends or family ever thought he'd get to.

given what he's been struggling with. How's he doing? 88, actually. 88? Oh, my gosh. Okay. He was 47, and he is, he is, he's hanging in. I mean, the, the, the body is weak and the mind is strong. And his trenchant commentary serves me well on regular check-ins on the campaign. And, yeah, it's extraordinary that he's reached 88. and I think he's excited for the end of March and the convention to Winnipeg. I think he will be voting and watching virtually, but I know he's looking forward to it. This has been a great conversation. I'm so glad you spared so much time for us. Stay safe on the campaign trail.

And thanks so much, Avi Lewis. Thanks so much, Steve. Pleasure. Just a reminder, any comments you want to make, the Paken podcast at gmail.com, the Paken podcast at gmail.com. What do they say, Avi? like, subscribe, all that other stuff. Smash it.

Smash it. Okay. Peace and love, everybody. Until next time.