OTTAWA — NDP leadership candidates are entering the final sprint to sign up members and raise the last of four $25,000 payments required to be on the ballot.
The membership cutoff for voting eligibility and the final fundraising deadline both land on Jan. 28.
A spokesperson for the Avi Lewis campaign claims he had raised nearly $783,000 at the end of December. The other candidates declined to share preliminary fundraising data.
The spokesperson said the campaign is averaging almost $8,000 in donations daily, with almost 5,500 contributions from 4,400 individual donors in the fourth quarter of 2025.
Individual candidate fundraising data will be revealed when the party announces the sums raised up to the end of December in a financial report through Elections Canada later this winter.
Both the Heather McPherson and Rob Ashton campaigns have said they are confident they’ll hit their fundraising targets.
The self-described underdog campaigns of Tanille Johnston and Tony McQuail have had to launch fundraising blitzes in the days before each fundraising deadline in order to stay in the race.
Karl Belanger, president of Traxxion Stratégies and a former NDP strategist, said that while it’s difficult to interpret the Lewis campaign’s fundraising claim without data from other candidates, raising more than $700,000 is “pretty good.”
“That said, is that an indicator of fundraising performances of the future? I don’t know. The question is, can you reach outside the current NDP membership and raise money? That’s the key because you need to be able to broaden your base in order to grow the party,” he said.
Ashton, who is calling for a worker-led NDP, released a video Sunday saying the party does not need a leader that “second guesses” or “lectures” provincial NDP branches and “that’s why Avi takes us in the wrong direction.”
McPherson, the lone MP in the race, is running a campaign focused on a promise to expand the NDP tent and has said the party lost its connection with regular people.
Interim NDP leader Don Davies cited this lost connection with voters as a factor in the party’s worst-ever federal election result last year.
Lewis is running a campaign based on what he calls “bold solutions” to issues like affordability and the climate crisis. They include putting two per cent of GDP into climate-related projects and introducing publicly funded grocery stores.
“They’re moving from signing up members and convincing members or convincing people to be interested in the NDP to really making sure that people who have identified their support, or maybe bought a membership in support, that those folks are actually going to fill out their ballot,” said Erin Morrison, vice president of Texture Communications and a longtime NDP strategist.
Once the last fundraising and membership deadline passes on Jan. 28, all eyes will be on the English debate scheduled for Feb. 19.
Morrison said she expects to see the candidates focus on contrasting themselves with their rivals, and a shift from the relatively friendly tone of the Montreal debate in November.
“The members are looking for that, to be honest. New Democrats are notoriously kind. They’re people who like to get along and be supportive people, but they really need to hear the candidates lay out the ways in which their vision for the party and for the country are different from each other,” she said.
That friendliness was on full display before the Montreal debate when McQuail gave each candidate a jar of homemade apple butter.
Belanger, who moderated that debate, said he hopes to see more moments in the English debate where the candidates differentiate themselves.
“I think the English debate will be the key opportunity for these candidates to establish that contrast and to persuade NDP members that are still on the fence. The French debate was not an exercise that worked that way. I mean, they were all playing defence, to be honest,” he said.
Belanger said the next leader will have to reconcile factions within the party.
“People are in dire need for jobs. The economy is not doing well. The trade war is taking its toll … So there’s a reason why the environment has fallen off the radar when it comes to Canadian voters’ priorities,” he said.
“But there’s also political opportunities with the different positions taken by the Carney government, and so can you seize that moment as well? So those are the difficult dilemmas that these candidates are facing.”
The new NDP leader will be announced at the party’s annual convention in Winnipeg on March 29.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 7, 2026.
David Baxter, The Canadian Press
