NDP Leader Avi Lewis begins his term with the task of rebuilding the federal party in his unapologetically progressive vision, but there is already resistance from the leadership of the Alberta and Saskatchewan branches.

Lewis won a first-ballot victory with a platform built on bold ideas that he says meet the issues Canada is facing head-on. He won with about 56 per cent support, nearly doubling the vote count of runner-up Alberta member of Parliament Heather McPherson.

This includes ideas like publicly run grocery stores and telecom companies to deal with affordability and opposing new fossil fuel development to address climate change.

It’s this energy and environmental policy that sparked pushback from Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi and Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck. In separate statements after Lewis’s win, they said the federal position is out of touch with the reality of workers in those Prairie provinces.

Lewis is scheduled to hold his first media availability as leader Monday in Winnipeg.

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said Sunday that disagreements are part of being a big tent and they are all united on core values.

Keira Gunn, the NDP’s new treasurer and a Calgary delegate, said that both provincial leaders are up against governments that like to link them to the federal NDP.

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Gunn said while she sees the comments from Nenshi and Beck as strategic moves, she’s disappointed in how they did it.

“It’s maybe a strategic choice to then try to distance yourself immediately from the federal party, and I think that that’s where the comments come from,” Gunn said Sunday.

“But I have concerns that they’re fairly divisive at a time when we really need to come together and support each other as parties that have progressive values. Yeah, I’m a bit disappointed.”

Gunn said that she’s seen the Lewis campaign bring many active young people to the party, and the Alberta and Saskatchewan branches should see that young people are excited by Lewis’s message.

One of those young people is 17-year-old Milo Clarke from Brampton, Ont. He volunteered on the Lewis campaign and said he was drawn in by Lewis’s ideas and the authenticity he brought to the message.

As Lewis takes the reins of the party, Clarke said that he wants to see the new leader get out to working-class communities and make direct connections as a first order of business.

“I think the first thing he needs to do is go to a lot of industrial working-class areas, like Hamilton, like London, like Windsor, like Port Moody, like Halifax, areas that have like a lot industry,” Clarke said Sunday as the convention closed.

“He needs go and talk to those people, define himself to them before he can be defined by people who are not acting in good faith.”

Another question Lewis is expected to face is about when he plans to try to win a seat in the House of Commons.

He’s previously said that he isn’t in a rush, and plans to start the building process with the grassroots and meeting people at “their house” instead of the House.

Kinew encouraged Lewis get a seat, but said it’s up to him on the right place and time.

Former Ontario NDP MP Matthew Green spent about six months last year travelling the country and meeting with grassroots party members. He said that Lewis’s priorities should be outside Ottawa because of the reduced visibility of the NDP in the House due to not having recognized party status.

“I spent six years where we did have those things, worked diligently as a parliamentarian on the Hill, spent hours and hours in debates, spent hours and hours in media scrums only to go back to my community. And have them have no idea what was happening in Ottawa,” Green said.

“What is required for us to come out of the wilderness is having a real and deep connection to our membership. And if we don’t have that, we’re in trouble.”

If Lewis does take his time in trying to win a seat in the House, it would not be the first time the NDP has had a leader begin their term outside parliament. Former leader Jagmeet Singh worked outside Ottawa as NDP leader for just over a year before winning a Vancouver-area byelection in 2019.

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Avi Lewis is the new federal leader of the NDP, but the leaders of provincial counterparts in Alberta and Saskatchewan are making it clear they want no part of his policies.

Lewis won the leadership on the first ballot Sunday with 56 per cent of the vote, a decisive victory over four competitors.

But as Lewis begins his role, Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck says she’s turning down his invitation to meet.

“The positions that you have taken when it comes to natural resource development are ideological and unrealistic,” Beck said in a letter released slightly more than an hour after Lewis’ election.

In her letter, Beck expressed concerns about previous statements by Lewis on issues like the fossil fuel sector, and said policies and positions Lewis has supported would risk $13.6 billion in economic activity for Saskatchewan.

“The NDP is the party of working people,” she wrote. “It’s impossible to support – and respect – working people without respecting the jobs they have, not the ones you think they should have.”

Beck said until Lewis reverses his stance on issues involving the province’s resource sectors, she won’t meet with him.

Lewis has previously criticized both the Liberal and Conservative governments, saying the spread of wildfires was due to a failure to limit fossil fuel emissions.

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He also recently said in an interview with The Canadian Press that Prime Minister Mark Carney had “thrown climate under the bus.”

During the leadership campaign, Lewis promised to slap an export tax on oil and gas shipped to the U.S. and to end all federal approvals for new pipelines.

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Following his victory on the first ballot, Lewis said Sunday that he’s focused on party unity.

“This is a tremendous result. But even more important than the results of this leadership vote is the unity of our party,” Lewis said.

Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi criticized Lewis over his policies and noted that his provincial party voted to make membership in the federal party optional.

“It is clear that the direction of the federal party under this new leader, someone who openly cheered for the defeat of the Alberta NDP government, is not in the interests of Alberta,” Nenshi wrote in a post on X.

Nenshi released his own energy policy on Friday, which includes expanding Trans Mountain pipeline capacity and revisiting projects like the Energy East pipeline.

“Albertans deserve federal leaders who understand the importance of Alberta and our essential role in the federation,” he added.

Not all provinces share the same opinion though, with Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew saying he loved Lewis following the new leader’s first speech in the role and the mandate received.

Kinew said he acknowledged they may not agree on everything, but believed he and Lewis could do “big things together.”

“The big things are health care, education. Yeah, we can have debates, heated debates about any manner of other issues, but the values are there,” Kinew said. “The values are we’re fighting for the average person, we’re fighting for the people who don’t have a voice right now and that’s the most important thing.”

British Columbia Premier David Eby congratulated Lewis on his election, but was measured in his response.

“Our priority is lifting up working people and growing prosperity,” Eby wrote on X. “We will work with anyone and any federal leader who shares our priorities, and stand firm against those who put that progress at risk.”

Lewis has said he isn’t in a rush to enter the House of Commons, instead planning to start his leadership by strengthening the grassroots before seeking elected office.

–with files from The Canadian Press

&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Avi Lewis has been named the new leader of the federal NDP, drawing to a close a six-month leadership campaign.

The new leader won on the first ballot, receiving 56 per cent of the total votes cast during the election, or 39,734 out of a possible 70,930.

“This is a tremendous result,” Lewis said in his first remarks following his victory. “But even more important than the results of this leadership vote is the unity of our party.”

While people in the room applauded Lewis, the result did not generate universal praise.

Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi said in a post on X that Lewis becoming the federal leader was “not in the interests of Alberta.”

“Albertans deserve federal leaders who understand the importance of Alberta and our essential role in the federation,” Nenshi wrote.

The election of a new leader came months after former head of the party, Jagmeet Singh, said he would resign after the NDP’s overwhelming loss in the 2025 federal election.

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The party was reduced to seven seats in April 2025, but that number has dropped to six when Nunavut MP Lori Idlout crossed the floor to the Liberals earlier this month.

“If it isn’t already obvious, we are building a new foundation for our party and we are ready to come roaring back on the Canadian political stage,” Lewis said. “The NDP comeback starts now.”

Heather McPherson came in second place with 20,899 votes, with Tanille Johnston, Rob Ashton and Tony McQuail coming in third, fourth and fifth respectively.

Lewis went on to commend each of his fellow candidates, calling Johnston a “rising star” and saying McQuail reiterated the importance of changing the First Past the Post electoral system. He also said Ashton was the “real deal” and that workers were at the heart of the party while adding McPherson knows “how to win” and that she helps others win.

The NDP’s new leader went on to stress the party’s need to tackle issues Canadians are facing.

“Canadians are living on the edge, we’re under economic from the U.S. while Donald Trump stomps around the globe, grabbing foreign leaders and oil fields and starting wars he has no idea how to stop,” Lewis said. “At the kitchen table in Canada, there’s an even bigger crisis the everyday emergency of just trying to get by in an impossible economy.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney congratulated Lewis in a post on X, saying he would take a “collaborative approach.”

“I look forward to speaking about how we can work together to keep delivering for Canadians,” Carney wrote.

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The NDP leadership candidates began the final official debate with a general acknowledgment they agree on policies, but have different visions for how to achieve their most existential goal — rebuilding the party.

At the close of the debate, each candidate was asked if they are running to rebuild the party or become the prime minister. Four of the five candidates said they are running to rebuild the party, while Ontario organic farmer Tony McQuail was the lone candidate who said he is eyeing the Prime Minister’s Office.

During opening remarks in the Vancouver-area debate, Alberta MP Heather McPherson said the party needs someone who knows how to turn NDP policies and values into electoral wins. She said she has a track record of beating Conservatives in her home province and can expand that nationally.

Following the debate, she said that the NDP has always been the party of “big ideas” but to get them implemented you need get people elected.

“What we really need to do is look across the country and pick up seats where we have lost support, and I think we can do that,” McPherson said after the debate.

“I think there are many areas across the country where we have seen New Democrats are strong, where people actually thought they were electing — they were voting for something they didn’t get,” McPherson said after the debate, alluding to votes lost to the Liberals in 2025.

She then pointed to areas she sees as winnable for the NDP including Vancouver Island, Metro Vancouver and southern Ontario.

Documentarian Avi Lewis said the same approaches seen in past elections will not work and the NDP needs to be putting forward big, bold ideas. He said this can be a winning strategy as his campaign has pulled in the most donations, nearly $780,000 as of Dec. 31, 2025, and is getting significant member support.

Lewis disputed the assertion that they all agree on what the NDP needs to do, and talked about his push for government-run options in groceries, telecoms and banking as a means of addressing affordability.

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“We’ve raised almost as much money on our campaign as all the other campaigns combined, we have signed up new members in 338 out of 343 ridings and we have giant events packed with hundreds of people across the country. So something about our offer is resonating,” Lewis said after the debate.

Dockworker union leader Rob Ashton disputed this, and said people need quicker fixes to address the affordability crisis and establishing these new Crown services will take too long.

Ashton said in his opening statements that the party needs to go back to its working-class roots if it wants to try and win back ridings that it lost in the last election to the Conservatives and Liberals. Ashton said that without that support, their ideas will remain ideas.

He later took a shot at Lewis for his authorship role in the Leap Manifesto, saying it killed the Alberta NDP’s chances of being re-elected under former premier Rachel Notley.

“The part that I disagree with is not communicating with the provincial NDP, the Alberta NDP, before bringing it forward, before dropping it on the table in Alberta,” Ashton said after the debate.

“Because that’s when the sitting government, sitting NDP government had to fight and defend themselves.”

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Natural resources key in upcoming NDP leadership race: analysis

Lewis defended the Leap Manifesto saying it had wide union buy-in and was adopted as a resolution by three-quarters of NDP members as a federal policy resolution at the party’s 2016 convention in Edmonton.

McPherson said that the party only agreed to look at the Leap Manifesto and it gave provincial conservative leaders, including former Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, a cudgel to beat the NDP with.

Social worker Tanille Johnston opened the debate saying that she is honoured to be the first Indigenous person to be on a federal leadership ballot.

She said Canada needs to bring in a universal basic income to pull people out of poverty, end fossil fuel subsidies and have proper government-to-government relations with Indigenous communities.

Johnston said that the party and leader need to physically go to more places they don’t have seats, speak to people and more importantly listen to those community needs.

“Not going to the places and spaces where we have big opportunities is not helping us. Prince Albert, huge opportunity in Prince Albert, (Sask.) and a lot of people might not see that. Prince Albert has a very high Indigenous population and people tell me all the time well Indigenous people don’t vote,” Johnston said during the debate.

“I’m like ‘well have you had a gone and had a conversation with them?’ … No we haven’t.”

McQuail said Canada needs a radical societal reworking to address climate change and the affordability crisis. He said Canada needs to redistribute wealth and shift the country’s capitalist, consumer society to a more sustainable system.

“We have to talk about how do we not only change the economy and transition it to renewables, but how do we redesign to drastically reduce the amount of energy and resources that economies use,” McQuail said during the debate.

“Because our economic growth, which has been promoted for the 45 years since I got involved in politics is actually becoming a cancer on the planet.”

Yves Engler, a Montreal activist who was not allowed to run in the race, and a small group of protesters tried to enter the studio during the debate. They banged on the doors, shouting “Let us in!”

Local police arrived at the studio in New Westminster, B.C., to remove the protesters.

The broadcast of the debate was not interrupted by the protest.

Engler had promised to disrupt the race after his candidacy was not approved.

The race will be decided through a ranked ballot vote. Voting opens on March 9 and closed on March 28 at 7 p.m. Voters will be able to cast their ballot online, by phone or mail.

The next NDP leader will be announced on March 29 during the party’s convention in Winnipeg.