Avi Lewis, New Socialist Leader of Canada's NDP: "Life Just Doesn't Have to Be S [5:01-10:01]

our economy, how to create an independent economy. And this is a very, it's a unique and historic moment for me, I've been running for office for a few years unsuccessfully, but I won the leadership of the NDP at the low point in the electoral cycle, but at a pivotal moment in Canada's history, when we need concrete proposals for how to make our economy more independent and how to protect the basic social safety net and the values of solidarity and community that are, you know, our storied Canadian difference. So it's a very, it's a momentous time. The NDP has a lot of rebuilding to do, but, you know, we ran a campaign that was really forthright as the Carnegie government was elected and Carnegie is a central banker. And so, you know, his first job was at Goldman Sachs, but he was elected as a kind of Canadians felt that he would be the progressive protector of Canada in the Trump era. He's moved very fast to the right. He's advanced a project of doubling down on resource extraction, of oil and gas pipelines, and a massive infrastructure projects that will largely benefit foreign corporations, fast tracking them, sidelineing indigenous rights, sidelineing environmental consultation, and the conservatives under Pierre Paulier have voted with him on many of these, on many of these big, big items. And so the NDP has wide open political space now to advance real solutions for a cost of living crisis in a country where a handful of corporations dominate every sector of our economy, and their jack-and-up prices and rents and mortgages are completely out of control and out of affordable. I think the affordability crisis is even worse in Canada than the United States because there's such tight control of a handful of corporations over groceries, cell phones and telecommunications, the oil sector, big bags in Canada. So we have advanced really populist left agenda, a heat pump in every home, an east-west electricity grid, an electric bus revolution, a public option for groceries and public ownership in telecoms and many sectors of the economy, and a huge build-out of public housing. We need non-market solutions to a time of market failure, and we've struck a chord, our base is growing fast, and now we've got to reach out to the whole country and grow a political movement in a time of crisis. And Abhi, could you talk about how your party, the NDP, fits into this broader political and ideological landscape, especially given the fact that the party in recent elections suffered a big defeat? Yeah, we had a high point about 15 years ago when Jack Layton was our leader and we broke through especially in Quebec and became the official opposition for the first time. And over the last 15 years, we've been going down and down in the NDP. We have failed to connect with working class voters in Canada who have been, like in the United States and around the world, have been, there's a lot of successful rage harvesting on the political right, punching down and blaming immigrants and trans folks for society's problems, which have obviously been created by the incredible extraction of wealth by the 0.01 percent who now dominate our economy as working class life gets impossible. And so we have to get those folks back. And we're at the low point of the electoral cycle, as I said. But the space for us to move is enormous and I think young people in particular are really responding to a vision where life just doesn't have to be so grindingly unfair. And you know, in a rich country, a country of wash and wealth. But we need a party that's going to say we need wealth taxes. We need to go and get all that wealth or at least a significant chunk of it that is stuck at the top of society and actually put it behind things that will improve the daily life of Canadians. Public transit that actually works. Public housing that is beautiful and affordable and not governed by speculation. And we've got to take on the tech bros who dominate our economy like they dominate the global economy. So we came out right away when I was first leader and came to Ottawa for the first time with a call for the government to ban surveillance pricing, which is happening now in states across the country. We've got a human first AI policy where we're calling for a moratorium on data centers, much as Bernie Sanders is doing in the states. And I think there is a common surge in democratic socialist politics, which is really speaking to people's everyday emergencies of just trying to get by in an economy that is completely impossible and rigged in favor of the rich. And I'm very optimistic about our chances in Canada. Right now, I don't have proof points, you know, in the polls. We've got five seats in the House of Commons, but I can feel something shifting in politics. It is underneath the mainstream radar. The corporate media wants to declare us on life support in a death spiral every day is