CHELSEA, QUE.—Long before his convincing victory last week, Avi Lewis, the brand new federal New Democratic Party leader, was widely portrayed as too “radical” for the country, for his party, for the times. 

He would doom the NDP to further irrelevance, torpedo the electoral prospects of provincial NDP premiers and party leaders, frighten ordinary voters with his “wild-eyed” ideas and intemperate rhetoric. He would, in his spare time, destroy the fossil fuel industry; “nationalize” everything from grocery stores, to Netflix, to Canada Post; and, if he ever got the chance, reverse the sudden avalanche of money flowing to the ragged Canadian military. Or, as he styles it: the “bottomless money pit for war.”

Most alarming to some, he would name what is happening in Gaza a “genocide” and encourage, overall, a more forthright, morally coherent foreign policy.

Which raises the question: what, exactly, is the problem?

The problem is our narrow definition of radical. It’s a bit like “transformative,” the adjective Prime Minister Mark Carney artfully applied to United States President Donald Trump. That one word contains multitudes.

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So here is another definition of “radical”: encouraging more oil production and more pipelines at a time when climate change is breathing heavily down our collective necks. (Maybe “crazy” is a more accurate descriptor.) 

Our northern communities might be burning on the regular summer wildfire season, which is now an uncomfortable and destructive commonplace and the North is melting, and adjusting, adapting. It’s costing us more money, more lost crops and communities (driving up food costs) and more human dislocation and anxiety every year.

But, isn’t it worth pumping more oil out to the world, keeping those carbon emissions rising, all to protect a shrinking number of jobs in a time-limited industry? Apparently the sane, responsible, non-communist answer is “yes.” Spare a thought for our poor oil industry, nearly strangled by environmental regulation, understandably reluctant to invest in serious mitigation measures for fear of interrupting the gush of record profits of recent years. 

Lewis’ wild-eyed alternative: more heat pumps, an east-west electricity grid, investments in public transit and electrification of transportation, a transition for oilsands workers into green jobs, thereby exploiting the country’s abundant clean hydro, wind, and solar power. 

This may sound more familiar than radical. Many of these outlandish notions were embraced by then-prime minister Justin Trudeau—anyone remember the “just transition”?—only to fail in the face of hysterical opposition from Big Oil and its political proxies. That, and Trudeau’s meandering commitment, all but doused the long-promised green shift.

Indeed, there was a time when oil companies pretended to buy into net zero and promised technologies to produce “decarbonized” oil—which is a bit like desalinated salt—and even accepted imposition of an industrial carbon price, pioneered by former Alberta NDP premier Rachel Notley. Gone, or all but gone. In recent months, some oil producers are even complaining that more rigorously limiting powerful methane emissions (once broadly considered an inexpensive fix) would be financially ruinous.

They are also picking away at the (already weak) industrial carbon pricing regime, and insisting that governments largely finance a costly and questionable carbon capture and storage pipeline north of Edmonton intended to reduce emissions (if not by much.) The proponents of this venerable fig leaf, the six Big Oil patch giants, recently changed their name from the Pathways Alliance to the Oil Sands Alliance.

Make of that what you will.

And now, rumours are circulating that the federal government might put public money into an oil pipeline to British Columbia’s northwestern coast after all. Talk about “nationalizing” key sectors!

But back to Lewis: he is unlikely to become prime minister any time soon, and, even if he did, he is not proposing to shut off the taps instantly. But he wants to urgently jump-start Canada’s transition from oil to green technologies with the new revenues and jobs they promise. Our pragmatist-in-chief, Prime Minister Carney, made similar arguments before he transitioned into a politician.

Nor is the notion of moving away from fossil fuels considered “radical” in many parts of the world. Europe, South America, China (communist, of course) are already weaning themselves off of oil and not suffering economically as a direct result. On the contrary—and radical as this may sound—the current Middle East war makes a strong case for accelerating the availability of green energy, and freeing ourselves from the constant fluctuations in global oil prices, rather than doubling down on domestic oil production. 

Those deeply invested in protecting the status quo will say “no” to many of Lewis’ ideas, from public grocery stores, to a repurposed Canada Post, to cheaper telecommunications options, to bolstering child care, promoting head-to-toe medicare—all aimed at “a dignified life for every working person in this country, awash in wealth.” Their reasons: it’s new, it’s risky, we can’t afford it.

It is Lewis’ challenge to address that skepticism, that caution, which infects our national character, for better and for worse, and has only deepened in the Trump era. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has been effective in platforming some of the economic victims of our lop-sided economy: the homeless, the young people who can’t afford rent, rural Canadians facing joblessness and poverty. But he seems more invested in point-scoring, tax cutting and shrinking government than offering tangible help.

Lewis will never convince the beneficiaries of the current economy to change, but they are a minority. Meanwhile, everyone else hears only one version of events because of the misleading, omnipresent propaganda of the right, the Liberals’ limp, bureaucratic response, and the tendency of the shrinking mainstream media (not everyone) to write what they are told.

As Lewis told reporters after his March 29 win, right-wing populists imagine “conspiracies of immigrants, or Jews, of a tiny class of puppeteers who control the world.” Left-wing populists—also known as “left-wing radicals,” like himself—believe “that capitalism concentrates wealth and power in the fewest hands and we need … policies that actually respond to the 99 per cent.” Government on the side of the people, in other words;  a venerable and threatened ideal.

Warmth, humour and straight talk—an ability to simplify complicated arguments—will always trump slogans and shouting. Lewis is personable, articulate, and intelligent, with some of his late father’s ability to command a crowd and his feminist journalist mother’s clear progressive vision. If he can stay “hard on the problem, soft on the people” he may prove more than a shooting star.

The country needs his voice. The current Parliament—our skilled and affable prime minister, our negative and shopworn opposition leader—are too much in the thrall of powerful interests, such as oil executives, big banks, or telecommunications giants—or, perhaps, just too comfortable with the way things are—to go to the mat for the public interest, be it fighting climate change or saving medicare. 

If Lewis can get elected—even before then—he could be a much-needed prod, an antidote to complacency, a hopeful voice for disaffected and discouraged Canadians, including some currently drawn to Poilievre’s politics of resentment. 

He hopes, he said, “there is some curiosity in the storytelling class in Canada about what left-wing populism can offer.”

Some of us are all ears.

Susan Riley is a veteran political columnist who writes regularly for The Hill Times.

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