Who's afraid of Avi Lewis?
Canadian politics, meet left wing populism
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There was a revealing moment on the episode of CBC’s Power and Politics that followed the New Democratic Party convention in Winnipeg a few weeks ago. Unsurprisingly, the panel’s Conservative voice Fred DeLorey had little nice to say about the NDP’s new leader Avi Lewis, speaking dismissively about his association with “extremists” and casting him as an electoral dud incapable of moderating sufficiently to win (by way of contrast, DeLorey favourably cited the example of former NDP leader Thomas Mulcair — a funny thing to do given what happened in 2015 when the latter made his pivot to the so-called “centre”, but I digress).
This is the kind of spin we’re liable to get from these panels and it’s par for the course. But, in describing the left wing policy agenda with which Lewis won the NDP leadership, DeLorey abruptly shifted into a more alarmist register:
DELOREY: “This is a guy who wants to nationalize grocery stores, defund our military…”
CATHERINE CULLEN [HOST]: “He was very specific earlier this week that he does not want to nationalize grocery stores…He wants there to be publicly-run grocery stores…”
DELOREY: “Maybe that’s a slippery slope to his eventual plan to nationalize. But even then, having Canada Post delivering groceries, is that next on his plan too?”
