REGINA — The new federal NDP leader Avi Lewis spent his birthday in the birthplace of democratic socialism on Friday.
Lewis was in Regina, meeting supporters and looking to revive the fortunes of the party in its traditional heartland. It was part of his tour of the province from May 14-17 which includes stops in Moose Jaw, Saskatoon and Prince Albert, among others.
His Regina visit included canvassing with supporters as part of a Regina Day of Action during the afternoon. That was followed by an evening event at the Artesian for the screening of his documentary The Take. In making that documentary, both he and Naomi Klein went to Argentina to tell the story about how workers took over co-operative ownership to restart their factory there — part of a widespread co-operative movement there during the early part of the 2000s.
That screening was followed by a question-and-answer session between Lewis and those in the audience, which included discussions and some frank talk on a variety of issues important to NDP supporters, including health care, labour, homelessness, the Leap Manifesto and other topics.
“There is nowhere that I would rather be on a birthday than with you here tonight,” Lewis told the audience.
“And at the very beginning of what I think is going to be an incredibly exciting time in Canadian politics, despite the bleakness of the everyday, remember this feeling that we have in this room together tonight. This is something that is so real. There is so much appetite for this. We have data centres to fight in our community and get a pause on these terrible incursions into our community. We have a health-care system to save, and we have all kinds of positive proposals around the public option for groceries. A whole bunch of progressive ideas that people are so hungry for right now.”
The Regina events were organized by grassroots supporters on the ground in Saskatchewan, and drew so many people to the Artesian that a number of supporters ended up watching the movie on a computer screen downstairs because there were not enough seats in the main hall.
“Yeah, I mean, we knew that this was going to be a well-attended event," Lewis said in speaking to SaskToday. "We had no idea that we would basically have two events tonight, because the overflow crowd of people who couldn't get into the room was enough to do a phone screening on their own. And I went down there, and I had an hour long Q&A discussion with them. It was a fantastic conversation. And yeah, this has been, has exceeded my wildest hopes and expectations.”
Lewis is seeking to revive federal NDP fortunes following 2025’s disastrous federal election for the party, both nationwide and within Saskatchewan. The party finished a poor third throughout Saskatchewan’s 14 federal ridings — a far cry from the days of Tommy Douglas, the CCF or the Regina Manifesto.
The national result left the party in a financial hole and with only a handful of seats, and without a leader following the defeat of Jagmeet Singh in his B.C. riding.
Lewis won the party leadership in March and he said the Saskatchewan events marked his first tour since that time. He told SaskToday that he saw this tour as “an experiment and a very important test of our organizing philosophy.”
He said local organizers in the province “set out an agenda to tour seven communities in four days in Saskatchewan and said they would arrange everything. And that is very much the kind of trust the local organizers, base-building party that we want to build. This is how we believe that the NDP is going to come back at the national level by actually unleashing the power of our base.”
Lewis made it known he came away from the evening feeling energized. He said local organizers “knocked it out of the park and have given me a huge amount of confidence that we can do this across the country.”
“I mean, this is supposed to be a party that is circling a drain. If you read the corporate media, this is a party that's on life support. We just filled a theatre overflowing on a Friday night of a long weekend for a 22-year-old documentary about workers in Argentina.”
He said the 150 or so people who attended would be “spilling out into the street, talking to their friends, excited about organizing with the NDP. And, I mean, this is a glimpse of the future where the party's in really good shape.”
In addition to a grassroots approach, Lewis made it known he is looking for a "very clear political offer" from the NDP in order to get back into contention in Saskatchewan, saying "it's not just like we're a party of anything."
"I think a lot of what we see from progressive parties that kind of move to the centre to reduce the difference between them and their political opponents — you know, sort of craving that 'big messy middle' of Canadian centrist voters — those projects have not been as successful in the long term."
He pointed to the previous Parliament when the NDP supported the Liberal government to get legislation passed.
Lewis acknowledged the party had “worked with the Justin Trudeau government for some really good things, like dental care for nine million people. But when we supported them for too long, people didn't see a big difference between the NDP and the Liberals. And so they vote for the real thing. If we're going to be liberal-lite, people are just going to vote for the real Coke, right?”
Lewis said what they have is “a very distinct political offer now. It cannot be co-opted by the Liberals or confused with the Liberals. And it maybe takes a bit more patient organizing and we might not have the quick wins.”
On the other hand, he said, “things change fast in politics these days and authenticity works. And I believe local organizing works as well.”
“So we might come back to national prominence a lot faster than people expect, but whether or not we do, we'll stick to our principles. We don't expect everyone to agree with every single thing that we fight for, but we know that we have a big base out there that is aligned on values of using the wealth of this country to take care of everyday people, and to deal with the cost of living emergency. And we're going to organize everywhere in this country, not in 24 priority ridings only.”
AI a hot topic
How to bring back the federal NDP was one topic discussed prominently by Lewis and the supporters at Friday’s event, but another major issue was AI — a particularly timely topic for Saskatchewan with the Bell AI Data Centre project happening outside Regina.
At the Artesian event, Lewis did not hold back in his criticism of AI and big tech companies. He told SaskToday that people are “concerned about being under surveillance by the apps in our pocket all day, every day. This is a non-partisan issue that Canadians as a whole are really concerned about."
Lewis questioned the contention from politicians that building data centres was about data sovereignty for Canada.
"Now we have these big data centres coming in that, in the case of the Bell one here, is actually hosting U.S. military contractors," he said.
“I mean, this is not what Canadians want in the middle of their neighbourhoods, especially if [Prime Minister Mark] Carney and Evan Solomon, the Minister of AI, are talking about data sovereignty and, like, Canadian 'made in Canada' AI."
Lewis said the projects that are being promoted and put in first are "big Canadian corporations like Bell and Telus and… the Telus announcement from last week in B.C. where there are big American companies like Google that the data is being hosted in."
"There's no such thing as digital sovereignty when the big American tech companies are the ones using our data centres. That's just, like, obviously not true.”
Lewis also saw the AI issue as a “great organizing opportunity” to “form community coalitions to halt these data centres until we can have some real regulation and guardrails around this world-changing technology, and to build a citizens' movement that actually calls for responsible development of this technology in our society.”
