Tammy Robert: The federal NDP's would-be leaders wrestle with a familiar question
After the disaster of the last election, will party members want someone to rebuild the movement, or someone who intends to govern the country?
By: Tammy Robert
Last month’s NDP leadership debate was less a clash of personalities than a 90‑minute group therapy session for a party that still hasn’t decided whether it wants to govern or bear moral witness. The five contenders all talked about rebuilding, justice and solidarity; only one talked like they actually wanted to be prime minister.
And it was definitely not the right one.
The most revealing exchange of the night, and one that remains significant as the leadership race enters the final stretch, came in response a deceptively simple question: are you running to become prime minister, or to rebuild the New Democratic Party? Four of the five — Heather McPherson, Avi Lewis, Rob Ashton and Tanille Johnston — said their first goal was reconstruction.
Tony McQuail, the farmer in the straw hat, was the lone hand raised for becoming prime minister.
That answer tells you everything about the state of the party. After a historic defeat, the candidates on that stage were far more comfortable talking about rebuilding the “movement” than asking Canadians to hand them the keys to the country. It’s the same tendency Canadian political pundits have been warning about for years: parties that sell disruption or purity in a risk‑averse electorate simply get tuned out. If you can’t even say out loud that you want to be prime minister, voters will assume you don’t really mean to replace anyone.
On paper, Avi Lewis is the star of this race. CPAC’s coverage of the debate and surrounding commentary made it clear his fundraising has dwarfed that of his rivals: roughly $800,000-$900,000 to McPherson’s mid‑$400s and much less for Ashton, Johnston and McQuail. Lewis has clearly occupied the left in a race he sees as a contest between bold socialism and professional and political cowardice.
That dominance didn’t translate into a knockout performance in that debate, the rare time during a low-key race when the candidates could be measured against each other. Lewis’s best moment came when he finally said out loud what every Alberta New Democrat needed to hear: “Nenshi needs to become Alberta’s next premier.” That line, and his acknowledgment that he has had “frank” talks with Naheed Nenshi and won’t be picking fights with provincial wings, was enough for Ashton to say he was “encouraged” by Lewis’s “growth as a New Democrat.”
But the subtext of that praise was brutal. Ashton used his time to remind everyone that Lewis’s Leap Manifesto, dropped on an NDP government in Edmonton without warning, “killed the Alberta NDP’s chances of being re‑elected under former premier Rachel Notley.” Lewis replied that the manifesto had “wide union buy‑in” and was endorsed by a large majority at the 2016 convention — but that wasn’t true at all. All NDP members did at their 2016 convention was approve a motion to “debate” the Leap Manifesto at the constituency or riding level, not endorse it, yet Lewis clearly doesn’t grasp the damage even that caused, particularly in Western provinces. In other words: he can raise money in one part of Canada, but Lewis still had to spend precious debate minutes explaining why he wouldn’t kneecap Alberta New Democrats again. It has been a concern of the campaign.
That’s the risk with a fundraising‑first candidacy. You can dominate the donor spreadsheet and still come out of the final debate looking like the candidate who has the most to prove to his own side when it comes to earning power.
CBC’s coverage described Heather McPherson as entering the final debate “with a distinct advantage over her competitors,” the lone sitting MP, seen as the establishment choice with backing from veterans of the Layton and Singh eras. McPherson didn’t offer big rhetorical flourishes, but she did something more valuable for a battered party: she sounded like someone who has actually has experience in federal politics, and who has had to live with the consequences of NDP decisions.
Her sharpest intervention came on the Leap Manifesto. She pointed out that the party had only agreed to “look at” the document and that it handed conservative premiers “a cudgel to beat the NDP with,” mentioning that figures like Brad Wall used it to club New Democrats in Saskatchewan and Alberta alike, which he absolutely did. For those of us who watched Saskatchewan campaigns from the ground, that line was a reminder that one federal resolution can define your brand for an entire election cycle in the Prairies.
More broadly, McPherson stressed federal‑provincial co‑operation: “We should focus on the values that unite us as New Democrats and not burden the provincial parties,” she said when pushed on conflicts between Ottawa and the provinces. In a debate where the others were tempted to relitigate internal fights or sketch utopian wish lists, she kept dragging the conversation back to how the party actually wins seats in Alberta and beyond. It wasn’t flashy. It was effective.
Ashton played the role you would expect from a dockworker and union leader: the institutional conscience. The sharpest attack of the night was his shot at Lewis for detonating the Leap Manifesto “on the table in Alberta.” That’s as close as the NDP gets to a public dressing‑down. The federal NDP’s culture is identical to that of all left-leaning or Democrat-adjacent parties: avoid on‑stage knife fights even when a front‑runner is begging to be knocked down.
Tanille Johnston brought energy and moral clarity. Earlier coverage summarized her pitch as a rejection of “diluted policies” and a demand that the NDP become “bold, progressive, and impossible to overlook.” In the final debate she leaned into that identity, talking about Indigenous rights, affordability, and social services from the standpoint of a front‑line organizer rather than a parliamentary veteran… or a potential front-line leader.
Tony McQuail’s lone hand for “prime minister” was probably the most honest moment of the evening. He’s the candidate who actually said the thing everyone in any leadership debate is supposed to be there to say. Yet his broader presentation: straw hat farmer, pacifist roots, a kind of Quaker‑adjacent folksiness, turn him into a caricature. McQuail speaks to a very old instinct inside the NDP: the idea that authenticity is its own strategy. In 2026, it isn’t. His presence on stage was a reminder that the party still hasn’t fully come to terms with the gap between the self‑image of the movement and the expectations of voters who want a competent, modern government.
If you step back from the individual performances, the defining feature of this debate was, unsurprisingly, how polite it was. CBC’s write‑up called it “a fairly agreeable final debate,” with candidates aligning on most issues and saving their sharpest lines for past strategic blunders rather than present rivals. That’s very on‑brand for the NDP. It’s also exactly what critics like David Herle and Kory Teneycke suggest is a problem: a party that seems more interested in being right together than in fighting to win.
For an audience beyond the party’s core, the message was mixed. The NDP clearly understands that it needs to rebuild, reconnect with workers, and repair relationships with provincial wings. It is much less clear that all of its would‑be leaders are comfortable saying, plainly, that their goal is to govern Canada. The one candidate who carefully threaded that needle — talking about rebuilding while sounding like someone prepared to sit across from premiers and CEOs — was McPherson.
The donors may be with Avi Lewis for now, but debates are about something different than fundraising: they’re about showing who looks most like a leader on television for an hour and a half. On that test, in this debate, McPherson, the calm, pragmatic prairie MP quietly did what the NDP now most needs from a leader — made the party look like it could be taken seriously again.
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