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green new deal
Progressive Activist Avi Lewis Launches Bid for NDP Leadership in Canada
Lewis said NDP must “fling the doors wide open, and build a party for the 99%.”
Sep 25, 2025
The longtime progressive activist Avi Lewis officially launched his bid for leadership of Canada's New Democratic Party, which he aims to revitalize with a platform of economic populism.
Lewis, a journalist and documentarian whose grandfather helped to found the NDP in 1961, says the way to bring the party back to relevance amid an electoral low point is to “fling the doors wide open, and build a party for the 99%.”
At a kickoff party in Toronto on Wednesday, the former parliamentary candidate from Vancouver railed against the “Liberal-Conservative alliance” that dominates Canadian politics. The two major parties' leaders, Lewis said, "compete fiercely in public, while behind the scenes, they collude to boost corporate profits."
"In the name of protecting the country, the government is rapidly passing and proposing legislation that will change the culture and character of Canada," Lewis said. "From sweeping aside Indigenous rights and environmental protections for so-called nation-building projects, to rolling back higher taxes on the uberwealthy and digital giants, to the generational austerity of 15% cuts to public spending, to the $9 billion that materialized in an instant for the military this year, ramping up to $150 billion a year a decade from now—the changes afoot are extreme."
Lewis pledged to “build a government that is an instrument for the people, not for corporate Canada.”
The NDP—once Canada's third-largest national political party—has been ailing of late after a dismal showing in the nation's most recent parliamentary elections. The party, which held over 100 seats 14 years ago, dropped to a new low of just seven seats in 2025, not enough to even be recognized for committee assignments or federal funding.
The humiliating showing resulted in the resignation of Jagmeet Singh, who'd led the party for eight years, but was widely criticized by those on the left for his coziness with the establishment of the dominant Liberal Party and his failure to keep the NDP competitive. It is in this state of "political wilderness" that Lewis has emerged with an ambitious change agenda.
(Video: Avi Lewis for NDP Leader)
"Life in Canada today feels on the edge," Lewis said in a video released last week announcing his leadership run. "Everyone seeking a little stability, everyone being told 'You're all on your own.'"
He identified several causes of that precarity. One was the "economic attack" from US President Donald Trump, whom Lewis described as sending "disruption grenades" in the form of steep tariffs and annexation threats. But Lewis said that Trump merely "magnifies... the everyday emergency of trying to get by in an impossible economy."
According to one survey conducted in July, 57% of Canadians said their current incomes did not allow them to afford basic necessities like housing, groceries, energy, and cell phone plans.
"Working hard doesn't earn you a living," Lewis said.
"These days, every politician claims to be shocked by the costs," he continued. "What they don't talk about is why: The billions in profits for the tiny group of corporations that control every part of our economy. Three phone providers, three grocery giants, five oil companies, and the five big banks that fund them."
Lewis' plan to confront corporate power is years in the making. Alongside his wife, the acclaimed journalist and author Naomi Klein, Lewis rolled out the Leap Manifesto in 2015 as an agenda for the NDP. Leap focused on confronting the climate crisis, but its contents formed the basis of what he now refers to as a "Green New Deal." The accelerating climate emergency remains at the center of his agenda in 2025.
"Oil and gas CEOs," he said in the video, are "not just hoarding extreme wealth," but "foreclosing on our shared future."
Lewis has never held a parliamentary office, though he has run for a federal Vancouver-area seat twice before and achieved two third-place finishes, receiving 26% of the vote in 2021 and 12.5% in 2025.
In his bid to lead NDP, he has so far leaned heavily into his family legacy and his reputation as a lifelong activist who has "butted heads with the powerful," over issues like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the privatization of healthcare and public transit.
"For four decades," he said, "I have stood with workers, telling stories of working-class heroes and organizing for dignity in factories and fields, classrooms and care homes, shop floors and fishing fleets."
Lewis, who also identified free trade deals as job killers, proposed a "Green New Deal" as a means to revive Canadian industry and create "millions of good-paying jobs."
He has also proposed a wealth tax, a national cap on rent increases, a public option for groceries, and expanded universal healthcare that covers "medication to mental health."
During his speech Wednesday night, Lewis described NDP as "the only party that can accurately diagnose the cause of our everyday emergency, and offer solutions as big as the crises we face."
"The federal government has the power, the resources, and the responsibility to ensure the fundamentals of a good life—healthy food, truly affordable housing, functioning public transit, and hey, maybe a proper vacation once in a while," he said. "But we won’t get it if we don’t fight for it. And that’s where the NDP comes in. After all, the NDP is the original party of workers’ struggle. And in this moment of epic change and uncertainty, the party is needed as never before."
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Climate Experts Urge Democrats to Embrace 'Green Economic Populism' for 2028
"We must replace the Prius economy with one focused on affordable green housing, higher wages, cheap clean energy, lower commuting costs, and expanded mass transit. States, cities, and towns can get the ball rolling."
Jan 07, 2025
Amid reflections on Democrats' November losses and fears of what the Republican-controlled federal government will mean for economic justice and climate chaos, a pair of professors on Tuesday published a New York Times opinion piece connecting future U.S. elections, the transition away from fossil fuels, and working people's priorities.
"If Democrats want to win voters with policies that avert catastrophic climate change, they need to bring immediate, material benefits to the working class," Daniel Aldana Cohen and Thea Riofrancos wrote in the Times. "That means folding climate policies into an agenda that tackles the cost-of-living crisis. This is green economic populism."
Cohen, an assistant professor of sociology and director of the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative at the University of California, Berkeley, explained on social media that the piece with Riofrancos, an associate professor of political science at Providence College, emerged from a project with Climate & Community Institute "articulating the links between climate crisis, economic struggles, and the imperative to end genocide and forever wars."
If we're going to secure a livable future, cities and states need to tether the green economy to changes that everyone can see and touch, not just the 1%. Thanks @aldasky.bsky.social and @triofrancos.bsky.social for making the case and getting it out on a big platform
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— Alex Miller ( @notamiller.bsky.social) January 7, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Their essay followed Republicans taking control of both chambers of Congress on Friday and came less than two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House. Cohen and Riofrancos made the case that "even under Mr. Trump, progressives can build momentum around this agenda" at the local level while planning for the future.
Biden campaigned as a "climate president" during the 2020 cycle. His major legislative achievements on that front—the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—were watered down due to narrow congressional majorities and obstructionist right-wing Democrats who later left the party.
"The problem with the Inflation Reduction Act was that it was an awkward compromise between neoliberal, market-based policy and government intervention. By mobilizing public investment through tax credits and other incentives, it effectively asked companies and affluent consumers to lead the transition," Cohen and Riofrancos wrote, citing statistics on electric vehicle purchases, job creation, and rooftop solar.
Gustavo Gordillo of the Democratic Socialist of America's New York City chapter called that an "excellent description of the IRA, and by extension current Democratic Party orthodoxy."
The professors continued:
The law's all-of-the-above approach also supports oil and gas extraction. Under Mr. Biden, the United States cemented its status as the world's largest oil producer.
All told, this looks less like an equitable green transition than what we call a Prius economy—a hybrid model of green energy and fossil fuels, wedged together side by side. Like hybrid cars, which can't run on electricity alone, the Prius economy yields some climate progress while holding back more ambitious change. And it puts the burden of transforming sprawling energy infrastructures onto companies' balance sheets and consumers' bank accounts.
While acknowledging the long-term benefits of the IRA's investments, Cohen and Riofrancos stressed that securing the political support needed to achieve the swift, sweeping reforms that scientists say are necessary for a livable future will require "a green economic populism that helps voters more easily get from one paycheck to the next."
Working people, held back by limited wage growth, face high prices for food, housing, transportation, and utilities—and fossil fuel-driven climate breakdown exacerbates those costs. According to the professors: "We must replace the Prius economy with one focused on affordable green housing, higher wages, cheap clean energy, lower commuting costs, and expanded mass transit. States, cities, and towns can get the ball rolling."
The pair highlighted recent examples at the local and state level, including: tribe-owned companies' development of renewable energy; New York City's rezoning policy and rent regulations; New York state's Build Public Renewables Act; Pennsylvania's Whole Homes Repair program; Illinois' restrictions on utility shutoffs during extreme heat; and California's funding for electric vehicle chargers.
"To be sure, local governments' role is relatively limited. Some of their best policies depend on federal funds, which may be cut under the Trump administration," they noted. "Still, local governments can help fold green economic populism into a broader agenda for economic security—from a $17 minimum wage floor to universal health insurance to universal prekindergarten and affordable childcare. Ideally, governments would coordinate countrywide, as some have done around protecting undocumented migrants and abortion access. If progressives win a national governing coalition for these ideas in 2028, they can hit the ground running."
Tying the climate emergency to the economic concerns of working people is not new—for example, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) first introduced a Green New Deal resolution in Congress in 2019 and the Green Party was campaigning on the concept years earlier—but there is an urgency in the current moment, in the wake of the hottest year on record and the November victory of Big Oil-backed Trump.
The essay came as political observers as well as critics and members of the Democratic Party—including Ocasio-Cortez—are urging leadership to learn from losses in the last cycle. Based on dozens of national surveys of likely voters, the left-leaning think tank Data for Progress concluded in December that "by branding itself as an active party of economic populism that fights for needed changes for the working class the Democratic Party can put itself in a position to regain the support of the voters it lost in 2024."
That potential path has some right-wingers scared. Victoria Coates, a former Trump adviser who is now a vice president at the Heritage Foundation, shared Cohen and Riofrancos' essay on social media Tuesday and said, "Thank heavens the hands of the radical environmentalists have been removed from the levers of power but this should serve as a cautionary tale of what they intend to do if reelected."
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To Confront Trump and the Climate Crisis, Democrats Must Stand Up for Working People
Taking on corporate power and putting workers at the center of the party's agenda is the best defense against the divide-and-conquer strategy of the populist right. That means backing policies like Medicare for All, creating green union jobs, and raising the minimum wage.
Dec 11, 2024
The Democratic Party is at a crossroads. To defeat Trump and those who back him, the Democratic Party must change course and fight for working-class people. With the climate crisis bearing down, this task is incredibly urgent and important. The cost of failure is planetary catastrophe.
For the first time in years, Democrats won with voters who made over $100,000 and lost those making less than that. The Republican Party made huge gains among working-class people of color and those without a college degree. Youth turnout dropped eight points from 2020. Harris won only 54% of the youth vote and was the first Democratic nominee since 2004 not to win young voters by at least 60%.
The Democratic Party urgently needs to take the right lessons away from this election, or they risk handing elections to Trump-like candidates for years to come, and burning away any chance of stopping catastrophic climate change. In the first days after the election, I had a lot of hope this would be a turning point when the Democratic Party shifted to embrace populist, people-centered policies that took on corporate power and addressed voters’ economic pain. News coverage focused on how swing voters didn’t trust Democrats on the economy and how Senate candidates like Ruben Gallego and Sherrod Brown who ran on an anti-corporate message outperformed Harris. Mainstream politicians like Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy were echoing this argument.
The Democratic Party must loudly and vocally fight for populist, people-centered policies and take on corporate power in our democracy.
But, then the spin from corporate consultants and pundits began. They have flooded the opinion pages and podcasts with a medley of reasons why Democrats lost the election. They have argued that “woke politics” and groups like Sunrise pushed Democrats too far left on social issues. They have argued that the campaign was poorly run, or that Biden should have dropped sooner. Conveniently, this analysis often leaves out the economy and doesn’t challenge the corporate donors that bankroll many of the candidates and consultants.
This is an incredibly dangerous interpretation that misses the forest for the trees. If Democrats’ takeaway is: “be less woke,” they will continue to fracture their coalition and set the GOP on the path to electoral majorities for years to come.
For the sake of our democracy and our planet, Democrats must tackle the underlying reasons they are losing working-class voters, young voters, and voters of color. They need to proudly take on corporate interests and fight for an economy and politics that works for all of us.
That starts with listening to what voters are saying. This year, Sunrise made over four million voter contacts. Again and again, we heard young people saying they were struggling to afford groceries and rent, anxious about job prospects, and grappling with the economic uncertainty that has made the American Dream feel out of reach.
In 2024, simply being "Not Trump" wasn't enough to win, especially among young voters. If you turned 18 this year, you were just 9 years old when Trump first descended the golden escalator to launch his campaign. Trump in politics is all they know. So, Harris’ closing message of “I’m not Trump” didn’t hold up against Trump’s message about remaking the economy and upending business as usual.
Seeing this, we dug in with people, talking about the Inflation Reduction Act and capping of insulin prices. We pointed out Trump’s allegiance to his fellow billionaires. But, those conversations often only got so far — people didn’t trust that Democrats actually understood their struggles. They had seen Biden and Harris on TV for years celebrating how the economy was good, but that wasn’t how it felt to them in the day-to-day. If people don’t feel understood and respected by a political party, it’s hard to get them to believe that party will actually do something to help them.
For the sake of our democracy and our planet, Democrats must tackle the underlying reasons they are losing working-class voters, young voters, and voters of color. They need to proudly take on corporate interests and fight for an economy and politics that works for all of us.
Trump, on the other hand, hardly went a minute without talking about how prices were rising and the economy wasn’t fair. He managed to convince people he understood their pain and would act on it — despite being a billionaire championing regressive economic policies.
This isn’t to say that social issues were irrelevant in this election. However, Harris’ inability to gain the trust of voters on the economy made these attacks from the right more potent. When people can't afford rent or food, they look for people to blame. Trump and far-right politicians have told people to blame immigrants or trans people or people of color. That was a core part of Trump's closing message: “Kamala Harris is for they/them. Trump is for you.” Pundits are spending a lot of time talking about the first half and missing the 2nd half. If Democrats can’t convince working-class voters and young voters that they will fight for them, it’s going to continue to be hard to fight back against these attacks.
The Democratic Party must loudly and vocally fight for populist, people-centered policies and take on corporate power in our democracy. It’s the way to win back the trust of young voters, working-class voters, and disillusioned voters. And it’s the best defense against the divide-and-conquer strategy of the populist right. That means backing policies like Medicare for All, creating green union jobs, and raising the minimum wage. And, it means challenging Trump for the populist mantle by pledging to shake up the status quo and make it work better for everyday people.
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