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Braid: Under new leader Avi Lewis, federal NDP looks more communist than social democratic

The economic agenda is the deeper danger

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The federal NDP, now run by cis male Avi Lewis, showed us two kinds of crazy at their leadership convention on the weekend.

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First, there was social crazy, with arguments over whose victimized identity deserved time at the mic.

Delegates who have identified with the same gender assigned at birth — “cis” people — didn’t have much chance.

Then came economic crazy. Lewis’s economic notions border on 20th-century communism.

I do not use that word lightly, having seen real communism at its worst in East Berlin, the Soviet Union and satellite Somalia.

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Lewis wants a national bank — run by Canada Post. Don’t worry, your money will be available after the latest strike.

Western NDP activists are appalled. They feel Lewis couldn’t have won without heavy membership sales to Green party followers, as well as some communists.

One outcome is likely to be divorce decrees by provincial New Democratic Parties in Saskatchewan, B.C. and Alberta.

Lewis is poison in resource provinces. He makes ex-federal minister Steven Guilbeault sound like a wildcatter.

The Alberta NDP under Naheed Nenshi tried a trial separation. New members can opt out of automatic membership in the federal party. Thousands have done so, including the leader.

Despite that, the Alberta NDP is still formally a “section” of the federal party.

The B.C. and Saskatchewan parties, wholly linked, are stuck with the abuse they’ll face on the doorsteps.

At the convention in Winnipeg, Manitoba NDP Premier Wab Kinew approved Lewis as leader.

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One suspects he was just being hospitable. Kinew’s own development plans — including expansion of the Port of Churchill — clash with Lewis’ drive to deep-six resource projects.

In Alberta, it was no coincidence that last Friday the NDP released a new plan called Building Canada’s Energy Future.

It plugs a Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, a new bitumen line to B.C., revisiting the Energy East project, vastly increasing LNG exports, critical mineral development and much more.

Nenshi’s NDP predecessor, Rachel Notley, backed TMX but couldn’t have promoted such a list.

Times have changed. Avi Lewis doesn’t seem to know it. (He once called Notley “the saint of the corporate welfare bums.”)

Conservatives, of course, had a laugh riot watching that convention.

A United Conservative caucus release began: “Nenshi’s new anti-pipeline boss spells trouble for Alberta NDP.”

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It noted that Lewis said he’s “utterly devoted to Naheed’s victory” in the next provincial election, due in fall 2027.

“Nenshi can dress up Alberta any way he wants, but they’re now the party of Avi Lewis.”

At the Winnipeg convention, Lewis’ radical prescription was blurred by the party’s fixation with “equity.”

Video of members waving their colour-coded “equity cards” prompted hilarity across the internet.

Much of it was laughable, but there was underlying sadness, too.

Some delegates were truly disadvantaged people just looking for a home and some understanding.

One young man said all the noise was amping up his anxiety.

That’s a serious condition. Similarly, the trials of many trans people are real.

But the NDP handling of all this just creates hostility even among their own.

One delegate with an equity card complained that a “cis woman” had been recognized first, which was not permitted.

The display isn’t limited to an NDP meeting. It plays out in universities across Canada and beyond.

Columnist Chris Selley labelled the convention a “faculty-lounge takeover” of the NDP. He was bang on.

But the economic agenda is the deeper danger.

“Our plan is to Trump-proof the economy by investing massively in Canadian economic independence, using the unmatched power of public ownership to ensure the fundamentals of a good life,” Lewis said.

He called for “a network of public providers for food, phones and internet, a public housing developer and public construction companies to build millions of non-market homes, a 21st Century electrical grid, an EV bus revolution and a heat pump in every home, built with Canadian steel, creating tens of thousands of unionized jobs.”

Lewis wants virtually the entire economy nationalized, including grocery stores. (Toronto has just approved a pilot project for four government groceries.)

Small-business owners would see their businesses lost to “collectivism.”

That’s not democratic socialism anymore. It’s communism.

Few people who witnessed the real thing will want that.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald

X and Bluesky: @DonBraid

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