Leadership 2026 Candidate Profile - Heather McPherson

What We Knew

McPherson entered the leadership campaign with both the  advantage and the burden of being the first choice of the party establishment at a time when the party itself isn’t seen especially positively, and when that establishment itself is made up disproportionately of a niche (urban contenders for government in two-party Western provinces) which fall far short of covering the ground the federal party needs to win.

What We’ve Learned

McPherson has predictably won a slew of endorsements throughout the campaign. But her experience as an MP hasn’t translated into an advantage in either organization or communication. Instead, she’s tried to walk a fine line between avoiding being seen as the pro-dirty energy candidate, while trying to benefit as the alternative to Lewis’ more focused commitment to a clean energy transition.

What She’s Proposing

One standout proposal from McPherson however is her combination community work placement program as associated job transition plan. While it’s important to deal with the loss of hope throughout the working class, there’s a particular need to offer young voters reason to think they have a path forward - and McPherson has done well on that front.

What to Watch For

Ultimately, McPherson hasn’t been able to turn her advantages into a great deal of momentum for herself - so while to would be a surprise to see her rank below second on the first ballot, her prospects will likely come down to the efforts of the other two main contenders. 

There’s a chance Lewis could take an insurmountable lead early with his greater appeal beyond party lines, or conversely if he can’t match his fund-raising momentum with motivated voters there’s a chance McPherson could win out as the default alternative. Or it’s possible that Ashton could pave the way for her to win by both mobilizing labour, and persuading members not to support Lewis (particularly in down-ballot rankings).

But it’s hard to see what would change for the better in the NDP with McPherson at the helm and the current powers that be left in place. 

Leadership 2026 Candidate Profile - Tony McQuail

What We Knew

McQuail entered the campaign with the lowest profile in the field, but his bona fides as a voice for rural environmentalism were clear from the jump. 

What We’ve Learned

While McQuail has stayed within his expected lane, he hasn’t done much to move beyond it (again aside from the laudable mutual aid between his campaign and Tanille Johnston’s).

What He’s Proposing

For all the environmental messages in the campaign, McQuail stands out in emphasizing community-level projects which work within planetary limitations, rather than high-speed rail lines and national Crown corporations. And while I’d think both deserve discussion, the former seems to have particular potential to reach communities who don’t tend to be prioritized first for megaprojects.

What to Watch For

McQuail doesn’t appear likely to last past a first ballot. But his supporters could still be key in determining the outcome of the leadership race, while his ideas and organizing principles are worth including in the NDP’s future plans.

Leadership 2026 Candidate Profile - Avi Lewis

What We Knew

While Lewis’ campaign narrative has normally been framed in terms of his family history in the NDP, the aspect of his track record that strikes me as more significant is his time as a journalist. While it’s been some time since I found political panel and interview shows to be worth much attention, Lewis’ intelligence and insight on CounterSpin both made for worthwhile watching, and earned him credibility with all kinds of political actors.

It’s always a challenge for an NDP leader to both earn attention and be taken seriously within the broader political scene - and Lewis’ track record gives him a major head start on that front, even as he also laps the field in progressive movement credibility. 

The challenge for Lewis has been to translate those traits within the membership, particularly when they haven’t yet resulted in riding-level electoral success, and when much of the party establishment seems fairly determined to stop him.

What We’ve Learned

In another field of candidates, Lewis might have been vulnerable to being beaten out in personability or French language skills. In this one, he’s been the standout in both communications and organizational strength - while also giving NDP members plenty of intriguing ideas to work with. And while he’s taken the few barbs that have been launched during the course of the campaign, he’s responded with messages of unity without sacrificing principle in the process.

What He’s Proposing

Maybe most ambitiously - if also most optimistically - Lewis’ plan to turn constituency associations into community organizing hubs on a systematic basis looks to be an ideal fit for the political moment. We can count on the next few years featuring plenty more abuses from the Trump regime as well as inspiring responses at the community level; the path toward rebuilding involves turning increases outrage and awareness into lasting involvement.

What to Watch For

While it’s rightly been pointed out that Lewis’ fund-raising prowess (in both donors and dollars) likely signals a lead in the campaign, it’s also worth noting that he doesn’t seem to have an advantage on the same scale as Jack Layton or Jagmeet Singh in the campaigns where they cruised to victory. 

At this point, the race seems likely to take more than one ballot to decide, which would require Lewis to earn down-ballot support to come out ahead. And if the next candidates in line end up seeing their support go to each other, Lewis may need to count on a push from Johnston and McQuail supporters to put him over the top.

[Edit: corrected name of Lewis’ show.]

Leadership 2026 Candidate Profile - Tanille Johnston

What We Knew

Tanille Johnston’s pitch to NDP leadership voters includes a strong combination of community governance and personal activism as an Indigenous leader. And she’s highlighted those themes throughout the campaign, while also going through several rounds of mutual aid with Tony McQuail which offer an example as to how to provide distinct visions while ultimately pulling in the same direction.

What We’ve Learned

Unfortunately, Johnston’s personal appeal and strengths on paper don’t seem to have translated into a particularly strong campaign. 

While she and McQuail have both managed to assemble enough support to stay in the race, neither has been able to do much more than that. Johnston’s list of endorsements is modest based on her track record, and she hasn’t been especially impressive in the course of the debates.

What She’s Proposing

While Johnston hasn’t presented as comprehensive a set of policies as the front-runners, she can take credit for dealing in depth with a couple of issues. Her detailed and principled proposals for Indigenous reconciliation and empowerment should offer the eventual winner an ideal starting point for the party to embrace, and her thoughtful AI platform offers a helpful counter to the blind hype espoused by the Libs and Cons.

What to Watch For

In any ranked-voting campaign there’s always potential for the first supporters of a lower-ranked candidate to substantially affect the voting process if the final outcome is close, and Johnston’s support could plausibly go to either of the primary candidates if she makes an endorsement of her own. Beyond that, Johnston has certainly confirmed her place as one of the leaders who should be able to rebuild the NDP’s Vancouver Island stronghold, and help set the party’s long-term direction. 

Leadership 2026 Candidate Profile - Rob Ashton

With voting set to begin tomorrow in the federal NDP’s leadership campaign, I’ll take the opportunity to offer candidate profiles - focusing on what we knew at the start, what we’ve learned over the course of the campaign, and what’s worth keeping an eye on in their skills and policy proposals. 

What We Knew

At the beginning of the campaign, Rob Ashton was the political neophyte in the race. That meant we had relatively little to go on in terms of his personality, plans and prospects - other than the general impression that he had ample support from the labour movement.

The sense of the unknown them built further when Ashton declined to offer policy proposals, stating instead that he’d develop those in talking to people over the course of the campaign. But he did start off strongly on the organizational front, getting successful events organized from the early stages of the race.

What We’ve Learned

If any candidate’s position has improved meaningfully over the course of the campaign, it’s Ashton’s. He’s managed to win coverage delivering an oppositional message against Avi Lewis’ front-running campaign, elevating him above the other lesser-known candidates to the point of having a plausible path to benefit from an effective candidate alliance with Heather McPherson.

Yet if Ashton’s organization has built up over the course of the campaign, his personal appeal hasn’t done the same. He’s still a distinctly less effective communicator than the top tier of candidates, as a middling speaker in English and a write-off in French. And while he’s gone further than I would have expected in winning labour support, he hasn’t moved meaningfully past its boundaries.

What He’s Proposing

For the extra time Ashton took in presenting his policies, he hasn’t offered much that doesn’t echo other candidates. Perhaps the most distinctive proposal he’s put forward is to tie an explicit tax surcharge to pay disparities between the CEO and median worker of a single company - but that looks to be a relatively minor piece of puzzle in addressing inequality which largely arises out of disparities both between organizations, and between types of income and wealth. 

What to Watch For

At this point, the best guess for Ashton’s result is to finish a solid third, with the ability to direct much of his support to McPherson to put her over the top. An extreme best-case outcome for Ashton would be to have those standings reversed to allow him to win as the leading alternative to Lewis, while a drop to fourth or lower would be a disappointment.

But perhaps more important will be his choices after the campaign is over. 

Ideally Ashton and his labour movement supporters will want to stay involved in building the party no matter who wins, including by having him take a prominent role going forward. But his relatively negative messages again Lewis raise the risk he’d choose to do so if the leadership campaign doesn’t turn out as he hopes - and that could only further attenuate the connections between the NDP and its labour base.

Musical interlude

Donovan Woods - Back For The Funeral

 

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging

Elevated cat.

Tuesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Brian Beutler comments on the Trump regime's absolute lack of distinction between war and politics, and what that means for any hope of a peaceful transition to reflect electoral choices. And Robert Reich discusses the absurdity of the U.S. launching increasingly destructive wars without having the slightest clue what their endgame is in any of them. 

- Dave Levitan writes about the dangers of allowing people to gamble on choices and outcomes in war. 

- Meanwhile, Alexander de Croo points out that development is no less an exercise of hard power than military action - while providing a much-needed prospect of positive outcomes. 

- Surya Sakhar-Suot writes about the myriad benefits of remote work - and the concurrent folly of imposing return-to-office mandates. 

- Finally, Ben Steverman discusses how the rise of 19th-century billionaire robber barons is being reflected in the emergence of the trillionaires of the near term. And Hugh Gusterson writes about the elite gifts and manipulations that tied together Jeffrey Epstein's network of influence and control. 

Monday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material to start your week.

- Bruce Boccardy writes about the continued centrality of class struggle. Melissa Ryan comments on the realities that "Epstein class" is by far the most apt description of the people currently in charge of the U.S. (and far too much else). And Nick Chater and George Loewenstein highlight how self-serving corporations and billionaires are trying to force individuals to bear the responsibility and consequences for systemic ills. 

- Meanwhile, Jason Koebler writes that the gamification of war crimes in Iran has turned into just another appalling example of the depravity economy. And Rana Foroohar discusses how the U.S.' increasing adherence to petrostate logic is making everybody worse off (other than a tiny number of the most exploitative tycoons).

- The Economic Security Project examines how we could be ensuring a dignified life for everybody - even while helping individual recipients' employment prospects - through a readily-affordable guaranteed income. 

- Finally, Isaac Callan and Colin D'Mello report on the Ford PCs' decision to just stop informing the public of the measured consequences of their policies. 

Sunday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Mark Kreidler notes that people from around the globe are staying away from the U.S. in droves - due to both the risk of being a foreigner in a country looking to detain anybody fitting that description, and the desire to avoid rewarding a rogue regime. And Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson write about the increasing number of Americans choosing to leave the U.S. rather than suffering under the violence and corruption of the Trump administration. 

- Sadiq Khan highlights how UK Labour has only hurt itself by imposing right-wing bigotry as policy rather than giving effect to the progressive values of its base. And Justin Ling questions Mark Carney's cheerleading for the U.S.' wars of conquest, while Lloyd Axworthy discusses how Carney has chosen to enable (and indeed embrace) U.S. aggression in violation of international law. 

- Ajit Niranjan reports on the shocking loss of marine life as a result of the climate breakdown, with drops in marine biomass of up to 20% in a single year. Greg Harman discusses new modeling showing that over 2% of all deaths in a Texas summer - numbering up to a thousand in any given year - can be traced back to extreme heat caused by global warming. And Sadie Harley examines how carbon dioxide levels in the human body are increasing dangerously. 

- Hayley Smith discusses yet another pernicious application of artificial intelligence, as fabricated "public comments" were used by a California environmental authority as reason not to phase out fossil gas appliances. 

- Finally, Erika Edwards reports on the tens of millions of dollars in traceable losses caused by the anti-vaxxers' choice to spread measles in the U.S. - while hinting at far more severe damage which may never be observable. 

Musical interlude

CHVRCHES - Killer

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Owen Jones writes that a stunning Green by-election win in the UK can be traced to their offering meaningful hope that things can get better while Labour has chosen a strategy of reactionary centrism. And G. Elliott Morris highlights how the problem U.S. Democrats face with voters is one of being perceived as weak rather than falling offside of people's values. 

- George Tsakraklides discusses the myriad ways in which our existing systems and structures are being wrecked - as well as the need to build up again from the wreckage. 

- Seth Klein points out the desperate need for public investment as part of Canada's economic reorientation, including through new or revitalized Crown corporations. But Taylor Noakes reports on yet another instance of Mark Carney instead serving the interests of dirty capital, this time by facilitating the development of fossil fuel-powered data centres following a flurry of lobbying. And Darius Snieckus reports on Investors For Paris Compliance's warning that the capital class' push to lock us into fossil gas infrastructure represents a losing bet for Canadian savings. 

-  Finally, the Norwegian Consumer Council offers a painfully apt take on the enshittification of our world:

Thursday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Adam Serwer points out the glaring contrast between real accountability for bad actors in other countries, and the U.S.' culture of absolute elite impunity epitomized by the Trump regime. And the Boston Globe reports on the Republicans' deliberate trashing of institutional knowledge which served to benefit the general public. 

- Norm Farrell weighs in on the reality that clean renewable energy is also far more affordable than dirtier sources. But Carl Meyer reports on the Moe government's determination to burn a billion dollars and large amounts of avoidable coal just to prove it's above the law - even as the Libs show little inclination to enforce it. 

- Alexander Gazmararian, Nathan Jensen and Dustin Tingley study the Biden administration's failure to promote or take credit for its green investments - making it far too easy for Republicans to both take power and reverse course. 

- Dean Baker discusses some of the factors which figure to cause the eventual bursting of the AI bubble. And in case public opprobrium wasn't already high enough on the list, Clare Duffy and Leah Eadicicco report on Anthropic's sudden dismantling of any binding guardrails against the misuse of its system.   

- Finally, David Dayen writes that Kalshi and other prediction markets are inadvertently conceding that their platforms create the potential for deliberate manipulation that far exceeds any innocent or neutral purpose.