Newly minted NDP leader Avi Lewis after his acceptance speech during the party’s convention in Winnipeg, March 29, 2026. Photo courtesy Avi Lewis/X.

The New Democratic Party’s election of Avi Lewis as its new federal leader is the rupture with the recent past that the party needed for a fresh start.

His victory speech on Sunday was bold and unapologetic. He took aim at the billionaire class, telling them that the party was coming for their money, and the tech barons who are ramming unregulated AI down our throats. He was similarly unflinching in his condemnation of pipelines and the fossil fuel economy. He also spoke with moral clarity about the Middle East.

While most of us will not agree with him on every issue, I respect the clarity and boldness of his vision for Canada. There was no ambiguity, strategic or otherwise.

Nor was there the usual drop-down listing of deserving Canadians that has been the hallmark of NDP politics since the early 1990s. What was on offer instead was a unifying vision based on the 99 percent.

One could feel him channelling his inner-Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani.

It was the most left-wing speech from an NDP leader in my lifetime (and I am 57). I was reminded of Ed Broadbent’s 1984 campaign when he campaigned on behalf “ordinary Canadians” against the “Bobsy-twins of Bay Street.”

Pierre Poilievre is effective on the political right, in part, because he isn’t wishy-washy. In recent years, Canadian politics has drifted to the right in the absence of equally determined and unapologetic voices on the political left.

The centre of political gravity is about more than the number of seats a party holds. It begins with political vision and fierce determination. I must admit to being a little surprised. Avi Lewis comes from NDP royalty—the last place one would expect to find someone willing to make a radical break from the past.

His grandfather, David, was chief architect of the New Democratic Party when it was formed in 1961 by uniting the vestiges of the old Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, with its strength in western Canada, and the Canadian Labour Congress, which was strongest in central Canada.

David Lewis modelled the NDP on the British Labour Party, seeing it as the political arm of the working-class. And, as federal leader, he fought the good fight against the “corporate welfare bums.” His grandson aims to do the same.

Avi Lewis’s father, Stephen, who had a silver tongue, served as Ontario NDP leader during the early 1970s. It was under his leadership that the left-nationalist Waffle faction was expelled from the provincial party. The New Democrats lost a generation of ideas and talent as a result.

At some point, the NDP stopped being the party of bold new ideas.

The NDP’s connection to the labour movement also loosened over time. A key moment was the decision of the Ontario NDP government of Bob Rae to forcibly open public sector collective agreements in the early 1990s. The party’s membership collapsed as did the number of affiliated union members.

It was a long and slow road back into political contention. But the mainstreaming of the NDP under Jack Layton, achieving a breakthrough in Québec in his third try, and Thomas Mulcair, served to blur the boundaries between the federal NDP and the Liberals.

Gradually, the NDP turned its back on the old redistributive politics favoured by working-class voters, many of whom did not see themselves in the modern NDP’s political vocabulary.

As a result, the party found it increasingly difficult to balance its remaining working-class voters, concentrated outside the major cities, and its university-educated middle-class voters in urban centres.

The last election saw the NDP vote collapse with many working-class Canadians opting for Poilievre’s Conservatives and urban progressives voting for Mark Carney as their last best defence against Donald Trump.

The road ahead will not be an easy one for Lewis and the NDP. His French is atrocious and Alexandre Boulerice will soon jump to Québec Solidaire. Nor does Lewis have a seat in the House of Commons. His firm stance against pipelines will enrage the provincial parties in Alberta and Saskatchewan. I wouldn’t be surprised if they re-brand themselves.

Ultimately, though, Lewis’s vision may resonate more with the party’s urban progressives than its working-class base.

But it is exciting to think that the NDP might once again be the source of bold new ideas. Canadian politics will be better for it.

Steven High is a professor of history at Concordia University. His new book, The Left in Power: Bob Rae’s NDP and the Working Class (Between the Lines) is available now.

This article also appeared in French in Le Devoir.

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