WINNIPEG — Left-wing firebrand Avi Lewis cruised to a first-ballot victory as the results of the NDP leadership vote were announced on Sunday morning.
Lewis
—
an unapologetic eco-socialist running on a sweeping platform of public ownership and decarbonization
— finished with 39,734 of 70,930 first-round votes. Edmonton NDP MP Heather McPherson finished a distant second with 20,899 votes.
Lewis promised to uphold party unity in his victory speech.
“Folks, this is a tremendous result. But even more important than the results of this leadership vote is the unity in our party,” said Lewis.
Lewis invited his four fellow leadership candidates and the six members of the party’s federal caucus to join him onstage in his first official act as leader.
Social worker Tanille Johnston, labour union leader Rob Ashton and organic farmer Tony McQuail rounded out the field, with 5,159, 4,193 and 945 votes, respectively.
Sunday’s announcement comes less than 24 hours after a pro-Lewis slate
, putting the Lewis-led democratic-socialist wing in near-total control of party infrastructure.
While Lewis has never held elective office — running federally for the NDP in British Columbia in 2021 and 2025, and finishing third both times — he was the clear favourite heading into this weekend’s leadership convention in Winnipeg. He raised an impressive $1.4 million in donations through the six-month campaign, an NDP leadership race record and more than the other four competitors combined.
Lewis’s big win throws the NDP’s traditional voting coalition into flux. The worker-focused party has historically punched above its weight in resource communities with high concentrations of blue-collar labourers. Lewis’s campaign pitch to
and transition hundreds of thousands of resource workers into the “green” jobs of the future will no doubt be a tough sell in these places.
Lewis has acknowledged as much at campaign events.
“‘Transition’ is the last word workers hear before they get fired,” goes one oft-repeated line in Lewis’s stump speech.
The result also puts into question the federal NDP’s longstanding ties to its provincial sections, especially the provincial NDP parties in the four western provinces, which are all either in government or the official opposition.
Unlike the other Canadian parties, the NDP has a federated structure formally affiliating the national party with its provincial wings. Members of the Alberta NDP voted overwhelmingly at the party’s convention last year to allow provincial members to opt out of joining the federal party.
Likely in anticipation of Lewis’s win, Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi released
on Friday, promising to back the construction of new heavy oil pipelines and the development of natural gas.
When the UCP government creates chaos, Albertans are the ones left paying for it.
It’s time to show Albertans, and the rest of the country, what our energy sector can look like under strong, steady, competent leadership.
It’s time to build Alberta’s energy future. ⬇️…— Naheed Nenshi (@nenshi) March 27, 2026
Nenshi said
shortly after the leadership announcement that Lewis leading the federal NDP “is not in the interest of Albertans.”
He blasted the NDP’s membership for electing “someone who openly cheered for the defeat of the Alberta NDP government.”
Saskatchewan NDP leader Carla Beck said in a Mar. 28 letter shared with the media that she won’t meet with Lewis until he “publicly reverse(s)” his anti-fossil fuel positions.
“The positions that you have taken when it comes to natural resource development are ideological and unrealistic,” wrote Beck in the letter to Lewis.
Manitoba NDP Premier Wab Kinew said in a Sunday media scrum that he disagreed with the Alberta and Saskatchewan party leaders and welcomed Lewis’s leadership.
Kinew called Lewis a “great speaker” with a “timely message” and said it was a “great day for the NDP.”
Kinew had a clear message for the federal NDP in
on Friday: “Winning matters.”
Lewis and his wife, author Naomi Klein, were two of the co-authors of the 2015 Leap Manifesto, a document calling on the party to pivot to a bold agenda of eliminating fossil fuels, redistributing wealth, and returning land to Indigenous communities.
The two created a lasting fissure in the party when they unsuccessfully tried to ram the document through as official party policy at the 2016 NDP convention in Edmonton, drawing the ire or the host Alberta section.
Lewis
NDP premier Rachel Notley the “patron saint of the corporate welfare bums,” for her support of the province’s oil and gas sector.
Lewis defended the Leap Manifesto in a media scrum on Saturday, calling it as relevant today as it was a decade ago.
Lewis will be a third-generation NDP leader, following grandfather David Lewis and father former Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis.
He revealed in an emotional moment in his victory speech that his ailing father recently told him the same thing that his father told him on his deathbed: “Not in my lifetime, by maybe in yours.”
”I refuse to tell my son the same thing,” said Lewis to thunderous applause.
Lewis, who is Jewish, has been a fierce opponent of Israel’s defensive war in Gaza following the Oct. 7 terror attacks in southern Israel. He’s called for Canada to suspend diplomatic ties to Israel, investigate residents who’ve served in the Israeli military and defund various pro-Israel groups.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish affairs
that it was “left with a deep sense of sadness” after Lewis’s win.
“Jewish identity is not a shield against accountability,” read the statement. “When a leader declares that Zionism is inseparable from ethnic cleansing, he is not engaging in legitimate policy critique. He is telling Jewish Canadians that a core part of their identity is illegitimate.”
Veteran NDP strategist Jordan Leichnitz said she’s not sure where, on the electoral map, Lewis will be able to pick up seats with his abrasive, anti-establishment politics.
“Avi has certainly generated enthusiasm, but it’s not totally clear how his brand of movement politics will translate into seats in a first-past-the-post system,” said
Leichnitz.
All five leadership candidates took the convention stage on Saturday night in support of a resolution to change Canada’s electoral system to proportional representation.
Lewis is expected to speak to the media on Monday.
National Post
rmohamed@postmedia.com
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