I hadn’t listened to Lewis much before he won leadership. I had basically heard him in the NDP leadership debate and in his social media posts, but having listened to his post-victory speech and couple of appearances since on CBC, I’m impressed by how good a communicator he is. That bodes well for the party imo. The NDP really need someone who can be out in front loud and clear bearing a standard for values and policies that are differentiated from the other parties. Lewis definitely seems like he could be that guy.
I hope that Avi can raise the profile and electoral chances of the NDP. I voted for Heather McPherson in the leadership, but my heart isn’t broken by Avi winning. I met his father 35 years ago at a speaking event I hosted, and I have to say that that family are certainly deeply committed socialists. Avi comes by those bona fides honestly. I think the grocery thing is a bit nonsensical in practice, but having a conversation about it (and threatening suppliers with it) isn’t the worst idea ever.
Olivia Chow has just announced Toronto will do it. And also we have a whole shadow system of thousands of food banks that are currently under immense strain. It is really not that far fetched.
This 100%. So many people rely on those food banks that were basically relying on non-profit grocery stores already. GVFB seems to be better run than an average small store, they deserve more support.
Like Jack Layton, he’s a white heterosexual Anglo male with a good pedigree; and like Layton, I think he will win the NDP lots of seats.
We aren’t all that different from the Yanks.
(Here’s to you, wp:Jagmeet Singh: at least the Liberals remain a minority.)
He ran for parliament twice, got 25% of the vote in 2021, and 12% in 2025.
The NDP needs to be as radical as possible and draw attention to the fact that both parties on the top are fucking us over equally.
Yes but also we need proportional representation so that the NDP isn’t there just to re-calibrate what left/right means
The problem I see is there a lot of hair brained ideas like government run grocery stores. Margins on grocery stores are tiny, so prices will be unable to fall significantly. The thing I was hoping the NDP would tackle is zoning, which is where corporation like Loblaws do have high margins, due to the scarcity of land due to regressive and sprawled zoning laws; alongside a lack of mixed use residential.
The NDP also supported mass immigration to depress wages for Canadians and create a double digit youth unemployment, there was no rebuke of that policy that Loblaws and Tim Hortons lobbied for. This is how Pierre was attaining the youth and the union vote, people obviously dont want massive money printing that inflates the price of goods, followed by mass immigration to reverse the created wage pressure as per the phillips curve.
I think that more Crown Corps would be best. People often are reminiscent of the good old days, while ignoring that those days had way more government involvement and public companies, wages were higher (compared to goods) when there were more and stronger unions.
The same people who want the those old times back are the same people who fight social services, public sector jobs, etc.
“Why won’t the government do more for me, also I want less taxes and those in public sector positions to make as little as possible”
I would love to see a return of a public oil company like when we had pertolcanada or our nuclear industry to make a comeback.
Margins on grocery stores are tiny, so prices will be unable to fall significantly.
Loblaws made $2.7B profit in 2025.
Sure and how much of that was things like their REIT, or the higher margin non-food items? Loblaws is a franchise so like McDonalds, it makes money from owning and leasing land if I’m not mistaken.
In the end you’re taking a risky gamble when its pretty obvious food prices are elevated due to all the Covid stimulus we printed, and it wont come down unless the money supply falls. We are still buying half of all mortgage bonds to artificially inflate asset values, while people complain about “greedy grocery stores” as if they are fully to blame.
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/markets/canada-mortgage-bonds-government-purchases-and-holdings/
Maybe the indigenous should determine our immigration policies, or at least have a say in them;
otherwise, I’m pretty much open borders.
Ya I mean you wont have a social safety net then, as is shown by our failing healthcare and infrastructure after we did mass immigration; you’re essentially enacting a far right libertarian policy at that point.
Ironically he also wants to kill one of our largest exports by stopping pipelines, so fewer jobs that are being debased by a large influx of labor, failing services from a lack of tax revenue and productivity, and I think you can see how this far left fantasy ends in ruin.
I’d also say the BoC is ringing the alarm bells on investment into Canada, it seems people dont trust this place to put their money, and that makes us poorer. The idea that “tax the rich” is a panacea is silly.
Our healthcare system was already going to shit during Harper.
Well I go by wait times generally. They were reasonable during Harper.
Maybe because the current crisis didn’t happen overnight? We are witnessing the culmination of decades of neoliberal underfunding and enshittification and of smothering the healthcare worker education pipeline, including putting unreasonable barriers to the recognition of foreign trained healthcare professionals?
Right now, as we post, the Sun is radiating on Canada:
((at least 100 watts/sq meter x 1 million sq m/sq km x at least 4 million sq km) ÷ 1 billion watts/gigawatt =)
at least 400 000 gigawatts of solar power.
If we harvested 0.1% of it, that’d be about 400 gigawatts of solar power, or about 10 kilowatts per Canadian.
Maybe we could line highways such as the 401, and the Canada-US border, with big beautiful windmills.
As electrical storage would not have to be mobile, the batteries need not be lithium or even lead acid, but wp:nickel–iron batteries, or maybe use wp:Pumped-storage hydroelectricity.
I think we could take 400 000 immigrants a year—probably less than 1% of our current population—particularly Americans, and maybe some Mexicans.
We could end subsidies for the rich, and change our so-called “intellectual property” laws to say ending it after 28 years.
Also we could purchase far less overpriced crap from the US military-industrial complex. It might be time to leave NATO and NORAD as Trump’s America is perhaps a greater threat to Canada than the PRC, Iran, and Russia combined.
To electrify nearly everything, Canada would need 1000 twh/year extra solar. 0.25-0.5% of your your 400tw potential. Hydrogen is a practical way of covering energy transport, heating needs, and storage.
More profitable is huge solar/battery systems meant to create $2/kg Hydrogen for use or export from Canada’s long summer days, 24/7 availability, and still provide energy needs of winter, and Quebec level cheap electricity.
I’m not sure if most of the electricity generated needs to be converted into hydrogen.
Indeed, I’m not sure if some of the solar power even needs to be converted into electricity: how many millions, or at least 100 000s, of homes could make use of wp:solar water heating. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think they covert a greater percentage of solar power/surface area than PVCs and might be less harmful to the environment. Their use would be limited given our climate, but not so much as to make it an impractical supplement.
Most of the electricity generated could be used as is, or stored in batteries or with pump storage hydroelectricity.
Presumably electric vehicles could (continue to) use batteries and railways be electrified.
Hydrogen, or something else fluidic that could be produced by electricity, might power aircraft.
Electricity could be exported to the US, as well as products that require a lot of electricity for manufacture, such as aluminum, cement, refined metals, maybe even compressed and/or liquefied gases such as helium;
and yes, I suppose hydrogen could also be exported.
I mean you’re talking about removing an energy export and replacing it with imports. How do we get the money to begin with to pay for the solar and batteries we will need to import from China, who refine all the rare earth and builds all the solar panels using cheap coal?
It’s easy. Solar costs the least. Export oil/lng/other resources trade for solar. Cheaper than using our own energy. Still ton of local jobs deploying solar.
Nickel and iron aren’t rare earths.
Well sure, but all the metal processing is China, I assume most people don’t understand the intricacies.
Fun fact, the materials needed for an renewables-electric based economy are not single use consumable, the way hydrocarbons are. So if anything, the best use of our current petro-economy is to …build the renewables-electric based infrastructure. Not to mention that “Canada holds some of the largest known resources of rare earths globally”. Maybe if instead of subsidizing oil and gas or spending ridiculous amounts of money on becoming an arms exporter, we funded research and development in renewables technologies we could actually develop home grown technologies of scale?
Let’s fucking GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! WOOT WOOT!
