‘We need a mass program of deshittification’: Avi Lewis on rebuilding Canada’s public services

Avi Lewis is no newcomer to the fight for social justice. The filmmaker, broadcaster, and lifelong activist has spent decades at the intersection of media and movements, from co-authoring the Leap Manifesto to making documentaries on economic inequality and the climate crisis. His political roots run deep as well: his grandfather, David Lewis, was a founding figure of the NDP, and his father, Stephen Lewis, led the Ontario wing of the party.

Now, Lewis is seeking to bring his movement energy into Parliament. He has pushed back against being cast as a “celebrity” candidate, framing his run instead as part of a broader effort to deliver real, structural transformation. His pitch rests on big ideas: public ownership, a Green New Deal anchored in justice, and a renewed left vision that connects grassroots activism with party politics.

I was happy to sit down and chat with Lewis to talk about his campaign, his vision for Canada, and his plans for the party. While the challenges the NDP faces are real and substantive, his roadmap offers a clear direction that may well appeal to many party members and those on the Canadian left who are not inside the party.

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Christo Aivalis: Mark Carney has in many ways failed to live up to his tough talk against Donald Trump, choosing to actually align with him on key policies, both foreign and domestic. How would a Lewis-led NDP respond to the Trump menace more effectively?

Avi Lewis: I think you can see the entire Carney period so far, including and especially the budget, as a series of appeasements of the Trump administration. Slashing public spending with these almost surreal levels of defence spending commitments. He’s even floated the Golden Dome fantasy. So, the changes afoot in our country under Carney are gigantic. And I think naming them and the direction that the country is taking as opposed to the direction the country needs to take in response to the economic threat from the United States is the core work of the NDP.

The Conservatives are uniquely unable to do it because they basically agree. And the daylight between Conservatives and Liberals has not been this narrow in a generation. What we really need to do to confront the threat from the United States is to double down on what makes Canada, Canada. The people of Canada, I think, are in the mood for big changes, for nation building projects, for economic sovereignty. The problem is that we’re doubling down on big industrial projects. Now, I’m not against all industrial development by any means. I believe in public ownership over critical minerals mining, for instance. But we’re completely leaving aside the everyday emergency of people just trying to get by in an impossible economy, and the potential for nation building projects that actually make people’s lives better is almost unlimited in this period, especially when so much public money is suddenly, apparently available.

Take the care sector—the more than three million people who work in health care and education and long-term care and child care. These undervalued and underpaid essential workers provide the very connective tissue of society. They strengthen the country directly, contribute to economic activity, and serve the lowest-paid workers in the highest-value fields. They’re nowhere in this conversation. And yet they are the very deepest tradition of the NDP: fighting for health care, fighting for universal public services, fighting for the most undervalued, underpaid and marginalized workers. So, I think there are many specifics within this that we could get into, but the direction is clear where the NDP would take Canada versus the Carney path, which looks like it’s going to be disastrous.

You’ve spoken frequently about the need for increased public ownership. Explain your vision for this, and how it can be achieved to bring results for working class Canadians?

Let’s get concrete. Just last week I was at the New Flyer factory in Winnipeg. It’s one of only two facilities in the entire country manufacturing electric buses. And I was talking to Mike, the UNIFOR rep on the floor. He’s worked in that factory for 30 years. He was talking about the sense of pride and the vibe on the floor of the factory since they started making EVs completely from Canadian materials and parts. They have $13.5 billion of back orders waiting to be fulfilled—a huge demand and multi-year waits for electric buses going to municipalities across this country. They’re making the parts in the plant and then they’re moving them over to the assembly side to make them into buses. So, it’s soup-to-nuts bus manufacturing and it’s being done with Canadian steel.

This is a model for how we tariff-proof the economy, how we return economic independence in key sectors, how we slash emissions with zero emissions vehicles, how we create unionized jobs using Canadian steel. And if it was a war, we would do it faster. And if you were doing it because we’re in an emergency, we’re under attack from our largest trading partner. And we need to do this quickly. We need to create unionized jobs quickly. We need to use Canadian materials quickly. We need to slash emissions quickly. Then the federal government would step in and just make it happen. Are you telling me that we can’t do this? To have electric buses under public ownership at an accelerated wartime level of urgency that would actually create all these jobs and slash emissions, connect communities, and use Canadian steel. This is what we’re talking about.

The public should be beautiful. It’s ours. #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/3e8X9v7tKl

— Avi Lewis (@avilewis) October 31, 2025

Another major element of democratic socialism is worker and cooperative ownership. How will a Lewis-led NDP facilitate this?

Oh, I mean absolutely. My first documentary film, The Take, which I made 20 years ago in Argentina, was about this extraordinary movement of workers who had been abandoned after their factory owners left the country. And I’m thinking about the Stellantis plant now, where hundreds of millions of dollars of federal and provincial money has gone into retooling that plant to make EVs. And then the company just decides to appease Trump by moving the jobs back to the United States. We should be saying, “Ciao, bye-bye! We’re keeping all the stuff we paid for.” And a plant like that could be run as a democratic worker cooperative. And I think that democratizing the economy is, of course, at the heart of a democratic socialist approach. There are many cases where a business goes bankrupt because capital has fled or it has been taken over by private equity. In those situations, it’s an easy legislative move—and one that has been done in other countries—to make worker ownership the first option in a bankruptcy when there’s a public interest in keeping people working. You can actually turn a disaster in a community into an incredible success story. That’s one concrete measure that would encourage this in the economy, and I’ve always supported it.

Many left-wing Canadians have looked to Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City, as a potential model for the NDP. Mamdani was able to win a recent election on improving affordability and public services. How will you do the same?

You know, I think about something that a friend told me recently about public transit. The intentional breaking of our essential public services has an effect on people to remind them of their powerlessness. It’s the enshittification, to use Cory Doctorow’s phrase, that late-stage capitalism has inflicted on the daily things we do. We need a mass program of deshittification. The things that are public should be beautiful, should be functional. They represent our collective aspiration and our daily experience. Why do we think that the mail service should make money? Does the ambulance service make money? Do the police make a profit? Canada Post should be a public company that actually provides the essential service of 21st century digital connection among Canadians. And these things should be frictionless. They absolutely can be. We are capable of unbelievable things and it’s a question of “by whom, for whom.” The public needs to be put back at the centre because that’s the ultimate socialist value that I think goes way beyond ideology and all of the jargon that we attach to it.

All these things that we’re talking about in the cost-of-living emergency connect directly to the big systemic issues, and that’s why we’ve been laser-focused on that because the solutions of public options for groceries, for phones and internet, the public role in housing, and undertaking a massive buildout of non-market housing, non-profit housing, supportive housing—these are the ways that we reach people with expansive cooperative ideas that connect to their daily lives.

One concern some members have is that you don’t have a seat. If you become leader, do you have a strategy for getting into Parliament?

I welcome this question because I ran twice in ridings where the NDP had never won, in places where I live and feel deeply enmeshed in the community. I think I need to get into the House of Commons as fast as possible if I’m lucky enough to win. But we’re in a minority Parliament where there has already been a floor crossing and some retirements. I’m open to any seat that’s winnable in the country.

One thing I don’t think I would do is ask one of the Magnificent Seven, the embattled and heroic current caucus, to step down. When you have a caucus of 25 or 50 or 150 members, it’s one thing, but when you have seven people, you’re not going to ask one of those people to step aside. But, obviously, you need to understand that once you win the leadership and you’re trying to rebuild the party, you’ve got to get into the House of Commons.

We have to pay off the debt from the last election before we can borrow money again to go into another one. It’s a tough path ahead for the NDP. I don’t think anyone should candy-coat it. However, I believe the party can come roaring back and I believe that our support is already starting to grow again. And I think with a new leader and a new approach, we could come back pretty quickly. We have a lot of work to do at the democratizing level of our own internal processes, to rebuild the faith and excitement at our base, which I think the leadership race is helping with—but this has to be priority number one on the day after the Winnipeg convention.

One issue with the leadership field is a lack of deep French-language proficiency. What have you been doing to improve on that front?

I’m talking every day with members of my team in French and working hard on it. It’s a lot to juggle while you’re running for leader, but I feel confident because French is my third language. I learned Spanish as an adult when I was making my first film in Argentina 20 years ago. It’s just a question of having the time. What I really need to do is live in Québec, which is something I’m looking forward to doing. I would love to immerse myself in Québec culture and language for three or four months, and if I think I had three or four months to live in French, I think I can reach a level of bilingualism.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Christo Aivalis is a political commentator and historian, holding a PhD in Canadian History from Queen’s University. His writing has appeared in Jacobin, The Breach, Ricochet, Maclean’s, the Globe and Mail, and the Washington Post.