NDP Chickens Come Home To Roost On The Carney Farm

The amazing shrinking federal NDP is the fallout from a deepening rightwing political consensus the party signed onto long ago.

Lori Idlout endorsing Avi Lewis -- image via the Avi Lewis campaign on Facebook

By Gabriel Haythornthwaite

The Ides of March came a little early to Ottawa this year with the defection of Nunavut MP Lori Idlout from the NDP to the Mark Carney Liberals on March 11. That day, as the banker-PM paraded the newly minted Liberal MP Idlout to a caucus meeting, interim NDP leader Don Davies led a grim press conference where he bitterly summed up the desertion as an “anti-democratic move” on Carney’s part to “stitch a majority” behind closed doors. Davies also reiterated the party stand that any such defector should face a by-election to win a new mandate from their constituents.

Carney’s Majority Crusade

Idlout publicly declared her inclination to cross over to the Liberals in January but decided to not immediately act on it; presumably out of consideration for the federal NDP leadership contest, which concludes on March 29. Perhaps that was indeed the NDP caucus arrangement until Carney demanded that Idlout pick up the defection pace.

Carney has aggressively sought defections to an unprecedented extent in order to break free from third-term minority rule to the grand prize of parliament-sanctioned autocracy. Three Tories have jumped from Poilievre's listing MAGA-lite ship since November but patronage appointments and a court ruling annulment has kept the Caesar's crown just out of Carney’s reach. With Idlout’s floor crossing, Carney is now only two seats shy of a majority.

The Liberal Budget 2025 kicked off this robust defector trend and it is turning out to be a runaway success in regressive political gaslighting. This most reactionary budget in living memory headlines a plan to dramatically expand corporate welfare, including quadrupling war outlays over 10 years, while lopping 32.5% off federal Ministry operational spending by the 2028-29 fiscal year. This plan is PM Carnage’s declaration of war against public service and social provision, so its allure to hard-Right Conservatives is clear.

Luring MP Idlout from the nominally progressive NDP was a trickier operation but the first public sign that a defection was in the works came with Idlout’s abstention on the Carnage Budget 2025 vote in November, which includes an American-style pork-barrel sweeter of infrastructure funding for the Nunavut territory.

The Idlout defection is one of those moments where the veil of the parliamentary talk-shop is temporarily lifted to show how apparent adversaries regularly co-operate behind the scenes. The media scrum after the Liberal caucus’ triumphant reception for Idlout produced interesting comments from two of Carney’s Ministers, revealing in part how the ground was prepared for Idlout’s decampment.

On a Global News broadcast, Justice Minister and Attorney-General Sean Fraser described Idlout as a “friend” with whom he previously had “the opportunity to work together when I went to her community in my role as Housing Minister” while making a funding announcement she participated in, even going to the trouble of organizing a community tour for her future colleague.

Jobs and Family Minister Patty Hajdu also gushed about Idlout’s collaboration with the Liberals when Hajdu was the Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) Minister. Hajdu explained that, despite Idlout being the NDP critic for ISC in the last parliamentary term, “we worked actually really well together. What you see in the House is sometimes not what’s happening in the background.” Such collaboration belies establishment media mythology which contends that Canadian politics suffers from a serial failure of elite parties to act in unison.

With three federal by-elections set for April 13th, two of them safe Bay St. Liberal seats, gaining MP Idlout from the hapless New Democrats gives PM Carnage margin for his malevolent majority. The by-election in Scarborough Southwest--vacated when Bill Blair was gifted the preeminent patronage plum of High Commissioner to the UK--features another turncoat, Doly Begum, who deserted the post of ONDP deputy leader to run as Carney’s candidate.

As with every setback the Not Democrats contend with, their evident lack of self-awareness as an establishment party is best encapsulated by their irresistible urge to see fault only in the stars rather than in themselves. In this case, from the Dipper point of view, it is the devil Carney seducing MP Idlout without even a hint of reflection on how the party’s own behaviour over the last two parliamentary sessions has set the stage for this defection.

Even before the confidence and supply agreement (CSA) of 2022, which pledged formal support for the Trudeau minority government, the NDP repeatedly backed regressive Liberal policy, most notably, the Trump free trade agreement and massive COVID corporate welfare initiated in 2020; the latter of which largely drove an outlandish $327.7b deficit in the 2020-21 fiscal year. Idlout was elected as Nunavut’s MP in 2021 and, therefore, was part of the NDP cohort which participated in the Liberal-supporting CSA. Joining a Liberal government today is the logical extension of yesterday’s political collaboration.

Poisoned Chalice

The timing of the Idlout defection is terrible for NDP morale as member voting in the leadership contest started on March 9. This political bombshell suggests that Carney has been taking some pointers from Trump on well-timed sneak attacks.

The federal party is about to get weaker with another direct hit to its caucus. On February 23rd, CBC reported that NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice, the lone survivor of the Layton Orange Wave which swept Québec in 2011, announced a serious intention to seek the Québec Solidaire (QS) nomination for the National Assembly riding of Gouin in the upcoming fall provincial election. The riding of Gouin overlaps with Boulerice’s Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie seat and QS has opened the door to the federal MP’s nomination by setting aside a party policy of gender parity for Gouin, whose QS nomination contest opens on March 25.

Boulerice’s all but certain departure is a different kind of blow to the federal party than Idlout’s but may prove as least as devastating. Boulerice’s move is somewhat to the political left with QS being not just an actual social democratic party but a sovereigntist one to boot. Considering the baffling disgrace of a leadership contest whose only ‘French-language’ debate was conducted mostly in English, the chances of the Anglo NDP regaining a francophone Québec MP in any feasible time frame seem very remote indeed.

In this last leg of the contest, the political stars point to a blow-out win for NGO-celebrity activist Avi Lewis on March 29, whose campaign has raised almost as much money as the other four candidates combined. In certain respects, Lewis is a logical choice for a federal party desperate to regain its standing as a viable progressive vehicle. Certainly the media savvy and fundraising acumen of the Lewis NGO trust will be helpful in restoring the party to its rightful place as the loyal liberal conscience of Parliament.

If Lewis does win, he will inherit a party at the weakest point in its 65-year history. The unprecedented parliamentary low for the NDP magnifies a critical downside of a Lewis leadership from a narrow electoral point of view. Lewis has never held political office and badly lost two attempts to get a federal seat in 2021 and 2025 which makes him a less than ideal candidate to regain official party status. During the leadership campaign, Lewis publicly stated his intention to remain outside of the House until the next election so as to focus on rebuilding the party. However, for a party whose only raison d’être is to be relevant in parliament, three years is a long time to not have a leader in elected office.

Conflict with more powerful provincial sections of the NDP is another stormy front for a federal Lewis leadership. Albertan NDP leaders hate Lewis in particular for leading a policy challenge at the 2016 federal party convention against fossil fuel extraction under the rubric of the 2015 Leap Manifesto. Not content with the ease by which the NDP deep-sixed the symbolic Leap gambit, ANDP leader Naheed Nenshi has warned the federal party from undertaking any ‘ideological’ stands that could foul his bid for power in 2027.

After cutting the provincial party's ties from dual-jurisdiction membership last May, Nenshi has gone out of his way to further communicate his general contempt by pointedly saying in February that he would not support any candidate for the federal leadership. Nenshi, who overwhelmingly won the ANDP leadership as a rightwing outsider in 2024, is eager to put himself as Premier at the service of the US corporate-dominated oil and gas sector. The last thing he needs is a federal party gumming up with the works with talking points which fall short of total capitulation to the fossil fuel cartel.

Another steep challenge for the winner on March 29 is in rebuilding a grassroots tradition which was jettisoned by the party long ago in favour of an establishment marketing approach to election campaigns. In the 2021 federal campaign, the NDP spent $25m with a resulting one-seat gain over the results of their $10m 2019 outing. One electoral district president at that time decried the results, noting with dismay that the party lacked any kind of ‘ground game’ on E-Day to get the vote out (a historic advantage the NDP deployed from the 1960s to ‘90s) and instead relied on robocall software…which crashed on the big day! In 2025, the NDP spent a record $35m (the maximum allowed by Elections Canada) only to find themselves relegated to the parliamentary dog-house once the vote came in.

Progressive Pantomime

While the unprecedented problems of the federal NDP are not the fault of Avi Lewis nor his NGO-activist base, there are a number of factors which suggest that Lewis’ tenure over the next three years will be a progressive pantomime; one that is increasingly out of touch with the rightwing reality of the political system of which the NDP is very much a part.

The most important factor to consider is the federal party’s adamant refusal to honestly come to terms with its very recent political behaviour which directly set the stage for the Idlout defection; namely, years of propping up a rightwing Bay St. Liberal government as described earlier. While the NDP leadership ‘debates’ have been full of exhortations to ‘reconnect’ with the working class voter, no candidate has expressed serious contrition or regret about the party’s 2022 CSA with Trudeau. Instead, the contenders have touted the miserly means-tested dental and pharmacare programs produced late in the last parliamentary term while ignoring all the regressive Liberal garbage backed by the caucus.

The NDP’s backing of free trade and reactionary fiscal policy under Trudeau the Younger continued a decades-long trend of bending in the direction of rightwing power. This rightward trend became visible at the national level during the 1988 election when NDP leader Ed Broadbent soft-pedaled opposition to conservative PM Brian Mulroney’s corporate free trade deal with Reagan’s America, allowing the John Turner Liberals of that time to outflank the New Democrats on the central matter of that contest. The NDP went on to embrace the rightwing agenda of deficit reduction (i.e., austerity) under Audrey McLaughlin, who succeeded Broadbent as federal leader in 1989.

The pace of rightwing capitulation picked up speed in the 1990s with the federal party’s cheering of the US-NATO war on Serbia in 1999. This taste for imperial war was further acquired by Jack Layton in his fair-weather embrace of Canada’s participation in the bloody US-led occupation of Afghanistan, a unilateral endorsement of NATO in general and the US war alliance’s destruction of Libya in 2011. The federal election that year featured a New Democratic platform which emphasized the party’s commitment to regressive business tax cuts.

In addition to the Trudeau Liberal legislation and policy cited earlier, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh’s tenure also included support for the renewal of free trade with apartheid Israel in 2019 as well as enthusiasm for NATO arms to prosecute the ongoing US-UK-EU war against Russia in Ukraine, which formally began in 2022. Lewis is an avowed supporter of the NATO war camp in Ukraine.

While Lewis and three of the other leadership candidates now say they oppose apartheid free trade with Israel, official NDP policy strongly affirms the Israeli colonial state’s ‘right to exist’. Similarly, while Lewis has criticized NATO’s 5% GDP war spending diktat, his party under Singh criticized Trudeau’s doubling of the war budget for being too stingy.

A second factor which exposes the farcical nature of ‘left’ posturing by the federal party is the evermore rightwing character of the NDP in provincial power. Both BC and Manitoba NDP Premiers David Eby and Wab Kinew are firmly behind Carney’s Orwellian national agenda of mega-war spending and the state-sanctioned surge of corporate resource plundering. In BC, despite consistent political support from both union and First Nation leaderships, Eby has seen fit to launch a frontal attack against the public sector--with 15,000 terminations planned for starters--and is currently pruning the 2019 Declaration Act’s commitments to Indigenous consultation rights in corporate extraction projects.

Lewis’ defensive response to rival accusations that his perceived criticisms undermine provincial NDP governments is telling. Declaring his ‘passionate’ support for the party’s provincial sections, Lewis has downplayed political differences with NDP Premiers, claiming, for example, that there is shared perspective against the increasing concentration of wealth at the top of the economic pyramid. Try telling that to Premier Eby who, in an October 2024 BC election debate, chided BC Green leader Sonia Furstenau for what he suggested were discriminatory ‘tax-the-rich’ proposals.

Finally, Lewis as the candidate of choice for liberal activists in English Canada rounds out the progressive pantomime act he will play as NDP leader. Lewis is closely tied to the NGO-led activism which came out for a cross-country ‘draw the line’ action last September 20th around five social themes--people over profit, Indigenous self-determination, migrant rights, opposing war and ending fossil fuel reliance. Lewis announced his candidacy for the federal NDP leadership on September 19th citing these five themes as the key priorities of his campaign.

Lewis and other leadership candidates have promoted an ongoing progressive mythology that NGO-led activism constitutes a dynamic political force which speaks for large sections of the public. While the deeply confused and analysis-wary public does share sentiment with progressive activists on some issues, the ability of the latter to mobilize the public around its fluffy boutique notions appears highly limited at this point. The example of the September 20th ‘draw the line’ action produced modest mobilizing results (according to organizers, around 20,000 people in 70 locations) and, more importantly, has not been succeeded by any serious organizing over the last six months.

What is more, the most dynamic cross-country movement of the past two years--Palestinian solidarity--has noticeably declined since the October 2025 faux-ceasefire in Gaza with no visible reorientation in response. The movement’s decline was already evident earlier when its only serious political intervention during the federal election took the form of a disgraceful ‘Vote for Palestine’ pledge trimmed to humanitarian concerns tailored exclusively for Liberal, NDP and Green candidates. All three of these parties are deeply complicit in supporting Israeli colonialism in a number of ways including in the 2019 renewal of the apartheid free trade agreement cited earlier.

Political Prospects

This is not to say that a progressive pantomime cannot hustle some success, at least for a time. After all, banker-PM Carney has had wild success in peddling his hard-Right political agenda as progressive hokum for public consumption.

It may well be that the federal NDP will recover some ground even if only by default as it did after the last electoral disaster in 1993 when the party made a 1997 regional breakthrough in the Maritimes under Nova Scotian leader Alexa McDonough. The Lewis leadership strategy for party rebuilding is reportedly aimed at southern Ontario and BC where Lewis’ support is strongest.

There is certainly a plausible scenario in which PM Carnage generates backlash over the next three years from progressive liberals who may wake from the banker's economic 'steady hand' spell as it dishes out record favour to the corporate Rich and repeatedly smacks the public with heavy austerity. A media-connected progressive leader like Lewis may be well placed to make political hay of this backlash and restore the NDP's hallowed place in Ottawa.

Of course, events could go hard the other way as a progressive posturing NDP flails for breath in an increasingly Americanized political system. The next three years could see the party become politically unconvincing either as establishment fish or progressive fowl. There will be no shortage of corporate media deploying McCarthyism against a Lewis NDP attempting to combine elite pragmatism (e.g., sucking up to rightwing provincial NDP regimes) with liberal social activism. The mechanical porting of progressive activism into mainstream politics can easily be framed as ‘radical left’ and deeply out of touch with cold rightwing realities. At the same time, the party will struggle to rediscover long-dispensed grassroots methods especially in circumstances where activist energies are low and whose small perpetual mobilizations highlight public indifference.

The Lewis camp is fond of talking up what they claim are ‘bold’ policies. Lewis gives this impression with proposals of publicly owned utilities and grocery stores as well as a wealth tax on the ‘billionaire class’. Like the NDP leadership contest itself, Lewis’ policy pitches are very much in a vacuum separate from the actual governing authorities of our day--particularly NDP provincial governments--as well as any consideration of how rightwing corporate interests will fiercely fight any proposal which suggests basic democratic decency.

Taking the wealth tax proposal as an example, this policy was featured in the past two NDP federal campaigns under Jagmeet Singh--and then promptly abandoned during Liberal minority rule and the 2022 CSA. As noted earlier, the NDP in provincial power adamantly refuses to raise taxes on the rich. The BCNDP, which formed government in 2017, has maintained the sweeping income tax cuts brought in by the BC Liberals in 2001-2; tax cuts that have overwhelmingly benefited high income earners for 25 years.

And what would a Lewis NDP do about provincial governments, including NDP ones, that flout the Canada Health Act by pouring billions of working class tax dollars into privatized health care services? In 2023, almost $15b was spent in BC on privatized health care in a combination of public handouts and rip-off out-of-pocket costs; a staggering 30% of health care expenditures in the province. Spending on privatized long term care--a model that proved so lethal during the COVID pandemic--more than doubled between 2014 and 2023, most of that time being under an NDP government’s watch. The Lewis campaign is silent on this score.

In considering the actual political character of NDP provincial ruling records, Lewis’ opining about the virtues of ‘democratic disagreement’ within the NDP represents a disingenuous deflection from the rightwing realities of the party. If apparent left-liberals like Lewis are content to be in a formation that not only includes rightwingers but is in fact dominated by such regressives in power, what role can such progressives play other than the hind end of a political abomination which cries crocodile tears for the poor while advancing corporate material interests?

Democratic Politics And The Annexation Threat

‘Boldness’ in policy rings hollows as democratic politics so long as there are no credible answers to how key anti-democratic challenges, like privatization cited above, will be strategically taken on. Nowhere is this clearer than in the consideration of current far-Right agitation and organizing for American Annexation; a project that is being serially enabled by establishment politicians of all party brands who use Trump threats as cover for speeding up the Americanization of public policy.

Despite occasional conventional liberal bashing of Trump during the NDP leadership contest, there has been virtually no mention of the annexation campaign under way, particularly the Albertan separation ballot currently organized by the far-Right. What does it mean when progressive politicians ignore this concentrated existential threat to the democratic concessions of national rights, public service, social provision and civil liberties in Canada? Will a reminted NDP champion an end to American military presence in Canada considering Trump’s continuing takeover threats? What will the new NDP leader say and do around the current massive expansion of handouts to American war companies, the Canadian military’s subordination to the Pentagon and Canada’s overwhelming dependence on US murder hardware which is vulnerable to the external controls of a hostile military threat?

Whatever the political prospects for a Lewis NDP, the currently unopposed danger of American Annexation and its offshoot effects will shape the terrain of political struggle in Canada for years if not decades to come. The NDP in power demonstrates that the party is firmly dedicated to American-style policies which nakedly advances corporate material interests. No progressive pantomime performance by a federal Lewis NDP is going to change that reality.

The rightwing political record of the NDP, both federally and provincially, demonstrates that it is foolhardy to expect that party to provide real leadership in determined struggles against the dire threats faced by the working majority of the various peoples in Canada. For those few among us who understand that democratic politics requires a foundation clear of the rightwing NDP swamp, we are hereby challenged to build a new leftwing political network which aims to develop and deploy viable strategic initiatives against both a Trump-USA takeover and the Canadian establishment which enables this.

Gabriel Haythornthwaite is a former labour-allied school board trustee in BC and currently advises First Nations around political and intergovernmental relations. He is also a leftwing writer and political organizer.