After the unmitigated disaster that was the NDP’s 2025 election result, prominent members are pushing back against an “elitist” leadership race and want the party to rebuild from the grassroots up.
“We lost touch, and we have to be honest about that,” former MP Charlie Angus said at a June 11 press conference in Ottawa. “We have to re-engage with people.”
When asked about Angus’ comments, NDP interim leader Don Davies said it was a “tough election” but he doesn’t think the party lost touch.
The question of how to rebuild has become existential: the NDP is down to seven MPs and lost official party status for the first time since 1993. This limits the party’s influence significantly. They no longer get a seat on committees to study issues and amend legislation, and no longer have the right to ask daily questions of the government during Question Period, among other lost privileges.
The party is searching for a way out of the wilderness, and doing so without a leader.
According to Angus, the party needs two things: a strong leader and a return to grassroots organizing. But the NDP must do more than just rally behind a leader, he emphasized.
“Nothing against Jagmeet [Singh], but we stopped being the New Democratic Party. We became Team Jagmeet, and that wasn't selling,” Angus said in an interview with Canada’s National Observer.
“If it's all about just going to cheer on the leader, then the riding associations start to disintegrate,” he said.
Proposed leadership contest rules controversial
Angus, who once again ruled out a bid for the leadership, has run before: he ran against Singh in the 2017 NDP leadership race. At the time, the entry fee was $30,000. Now, there are rumblings among a handful of prominent New Democrats that the entry fee could go up to $150,000, the Globe and Mail reported last month.
Angus said he doesn’t know what an acceptable fee for entry is but said $150,000 “seems like a high number.”
Brad Lavigne, a key member of former NDP leader Jack Layton’s leadership team who also participated in Thomas Mulclair’s race, said the leadership campaign needs to strike the balance between duration, financial viability and broad support.
Running a long leadership race can make the costs of a campaign for both the candidates and party unsustainable, Lavigne said.
Lavigne didn’t speculate about an appropriate leadership fee, but noted fee thresholds self-select tenable candidates that have grassroots support from across the country.
"If you can't find 1,000 people to contribute $20, then how viable are you as a leadership candidate?” Lavigne said.
The primary objective of running any leadership campaign is to find a leader that has broad support from party members and get the majority of Canadians to vote NDP at the polls so it can implement the party’s policies, he said.
“Grassroots members that I’ve talked to want to see a successful electoral game plan,” he said.
“It’s not enough to make the case for policy ideas in the hopes that other parties will adopt them and enact them in Parliament.”
Grassroots ‘tired of this top-down approach’
Des Bissonnette and Ashley Zarbatany, co-chairs of the Indigenous People's Commission, criticized the proposed leadership race fee and short race, arguing the plan is the brainchild of an unelected party elite that wasn’t vetted by the executive council and will potentially exclude grassroots supporters and ideas.
“There are a lot of grassroots and team members who are tired of this top-down approach by the consultant class in our party,” said Zarbatany, who added the proposed fee is “abysmal” and didn’t represent the values or pocketbooks of a working-class party.
Ideas about the leadership race were floated in the press before discussing them with the federal executive, she added, reflecting the poor internal communication that also led to pushback by half the elected caucus around the selection of the interim leader, Don Davies.
Bissonnette, the NDP candidate for Lakeland, Alta. in the last election, agreed.
“There's never really any consultation with [federal NDP] council members on what direction the party is going to take most of the time,” she said.
‘You're rubber-stamping decisions that they've already made, rather than actively engaging in the democratic process.”
The party has also shifted away from grassroots progressive values, she said, citing the decision to remove socialist language from the party’s constitution and the failure to push hard for electoral reform while backing the Liberal government or in the election campaign.
“People like myself in the grassroots, the volunteers who are passionate about progressive politics want to see a real progressive party,” Bissonnette said.
Bissonnette and Zarbatany said the climate crisis is a key issue with many grassroots members of the party who feel environmental policy proposals get ignored.
Doubling down on centrist ideas that are too similar to the Liberal Party isn’t going to lead to the renewal of the party, Zarbatany said.
“They are the reason why our party has suffered catastrophic electoral losses.”
‘Kill Zoom’
Rebuilding the party is about far more than the leadership race, and last time round, the party’s leader-centric focus undermined the role of local riding associations, Angus said.
“People living in 12 ridings probably decided the leadership last time and that left a lot of parts of the country out in the cold,” he said. The party must find a way for members in New Brunswick or rural Saskatchewan to feel like a part of the movement.
Angus’ main recommendation to bring the party back to its grassroots origins? “We need to kill Zoom,” he said.
“Everything by the NDP is done on Zoom. Zoom doesn't include anybody,” he told Canada’s National Observer at Parliament Hill.
“We used to do pub nights. We used to do bean dinners,” he said. Angus said “doing old-school organizing” with an emphasis on public meetings and getting people involved to vote at the party’s convention are key, adding that TikTok views did not translate into votes.
Mobilizing the grassroots is trickier when you’re strapped for cash, Dennis Pilon, a political science professor at York University, told Canada’s National Observer last month.
“On the right, they just buy people, they just hire people to go out and go door to door, but the NDP don't have the resources to do that,” Pilon said.
With fewer people voting in general elections, the NDP is suffering more than other parties, Pilon said. In the postwar period, voter turnout was about 75 to 80 per cent, but in recent elections, it has slipped to between 60 and 65 per cent.
“The missing voters aren't just anyone. They tend to be poor. They tend to be less integrated with the political system. They tend to have less sense of social entitlement,” Pilon said.
The NDP needs to reconnect with these missing voters, but it will be challenging because you have to actually go out and meet them, he said.
The party lost touch with its traditional working-class base because it lacked an “on-the-ground force,” Angus said.
“We need an honest appraisal of what went wrong,” he said. “New Democrats aren't very honest when it comes to disasters. We sort of blame strategic voting, or we blame something. We made a lot of mistakes. I think people just want an honest accounting.”
Angus would not speculate on who might run for the party leadership.
“At the end of the day, this has to be about winning,” Angus said.
Rather than repeat the mistake of gambling everything on a likeable leader, Angus prefers to focus on how the party finds its people again.
“We don't need big ideas. We’ve got tons of big ideas … We don't need dramatic and bold moves. We need to re-engage and be the party that ordinary people feel has their back. It's pretty simple stuff, but maybe that's the hardest thing, is just going back to the grassroots, going back to coffee shops, going back to inviting people in and making them feel like they belong and that they're welcome, regardless of whether they say the right thing or not.”
Natasha Bulowski & Rochelle Baker / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer
This article has been corrected to note Des Bissonnette was the NDP candidate in the Lakeland riding in Alberta, not Saskatchewan.
Comments
The last paragraph says a lot for me.....gatherings that are inclusive and that organize themselves in ways that allow more people to express their concerns and ideas seem key. The lecture system has been studied in educational circles.......its' the least effective way of presenting ideas. But we love the podium in western culture, and there are always more than a few than can lecture us by the hour if need be. Even in question and answer sessions....try keeping track of how many rise......not to ask a question, but to give a speech.
Moving away from centralized, top down and often one way communication......toward small circles, dialogic formats and forms of organization that give more time for listening to the grassroots is more engaging.........for everyone. Once you feel heard, once you feel you belong, engagement usually follows....and it is engagement we need.
Out of such conversational gatherings we on the left might learn to truly value the working person. As long as its just one man talking, what feminists called 'one hand clapping'.....its hard to argue that we are either a worker's party or a party of the people.
But sure.....let the professional central insiders pick a time and a format....set the entrance fee high, and get it over as quickly as possible. It may be too late for a national democratic movement that does credit to the hard work of a Tommy Douglas..........or Jack Layton.
Still: In our family, we have a motto: If you don't value our work, you don't get our money. We voted for Charlie in 2017....knowing the hard work he's done on a number of fronts, including real reconciliation. We came to admire Jagmeet, but at the time of his election, he was mostly an unknown, with no experience in parliament.
Let's try not to repeat the mistake of putting so much expectation on a single person...and expecting the grassroots to get on board. We're sorry Charlie isn't running.......because he's earned the honour and most NDP'ers know it.
People "make speeches" at open mikes because the people at the front of the room are not making the points. They're not making the points because they've lost touch.
Charlie's right about "the poor" being disengaged and feeling disentitled. But more than that, they have consistently over the past few years been less and less able to access their rights. You can't travel to a meeting halfway across town on TTC if you've only got $10 for groceries for the whole month.
I've been a proponent of "plain-speak" for decades. Politicians and policy people speak in jargon that has no meaning to anyone who doesn't follow them fairly closely.
And when push comes to shove, no one at all cares about the lot of poor people, where the feet hit the pavement. Let alone about their vote. That much is clear from candidates' and parties' platforms.
And Charlie speaks truth, not only to power, but to media and to people. Team Jagmeet was a bad idea. As was the campaign airplane, and the vanity van ... and asking people to show up -- then arriving late -- and treating them just as bodies to fill a room for a 5-minute photo-op. I wouldn't name names, but I could otherwise easily list 4 or 5 dozen people who held their noses and voted NDP anyway, because they were the least bad option with any chance of electing a candidate.
That's not how they felt about "Bon Jack."
I've been lucky in that very good candidates ran in my riding: but none of them ran twice, and I think that was partly because of the new way to allocate campaign funds ... and it being very much harder to donate to a local campaign than to the leader's campaign. People want to be able to direct who benefits from their campaign donations, and that ought to be made easy for them to do.
To me, it's not only that Charlie "earned the honor" but that he's more electable than anyone else out there that I know of. He connects with people, almost without trying. He always cuts to the chase, tells it like it is, and understands the viewpoint of "the common man."
I wish the NDP would stop its exclusive focus on unions. I can't tell you how many union members I know who always vote Conservative. It has to do with payscale.
I wish the NDP would actually include an informed view of the needs of people who barely scrape by, whatever their employment situation. Many people who aren't workers don't work because they can't: they once were workers. That includes pensioners: low income pensioners (and that's probably most of them) are perhaps the most excluded demographic of all -- that goes double if they're also non-coupled, female, and/or disabled.
“Bissonnette and Zarbatany said the climate crisis is a key issue with many grassroots members of the party who feel environmental policy proposals get ignored.”
I agree with Bissonnette and Zarbatany..it’s the reason I no longer offer monthly contributions to both the Federal and Provincial NDP. Here in BC, the No Damn Principles have been captured by the fossil gas industry and are subsidizing a reckless expansion of fracked fossil methane.
Absolutely! Those are exactly my feelings as well.
Me too. When politicians come to my doorstep and ask about the most important issue, I say Climate, #1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ... because without a liveable climate and a healthy environment, nothing else is any more than rearranging deck chairs the best way to keep people quiet. I agree with Dylan Thomas, and see no point in sliding quietly into oblivion.
So the NDP are doubling down on the perfect being the enemy of the good while also choosing to describe themselves as representing "a movement," a claim also made by the rebels without a pause CPC.
But are we talking about a religion or a cult here, or winning governance of Canada?
It reminds me of what I heard on CBC radio this morning. The topic was the hockey playoffs and despite the Oilers obviously being the ONE team representing Canada, and EVEN when Canada is very much having a moment, a "die-hard Flames fan" was interviewed. Obviously I switched off the radio because tribalism is stupid.
I realize it's all in good fun when it IS just a game we're talking about, but there's a reason why politics is referred to as a BLOOD sport, because the quality of life for millions is actually at stake, never more than now when conservatives DENY climate change, AND when Trump is currently rolling out the real-time consequences of CHOOSING such an insane direction.
Tellingly, the term "grassroots" was introduced by the Reform Party, the most noxious and destructive political party in the history of this country, but in keeping with my understanding of that term, and in the context of this article, how about the NDP show some respect for the Canadian voters who recently came through for all of us by voting STRATEGICALLY? This has become a tradition of sorts in Canada since the progressive parties are split, thereby splitting the vote. Embarrassingly, the right wing figured this math reality out long ago in order to WIN as Charlie points out, but also to address the fact that more people in Canada are actually moderate progressives?
And btw, disrespecting anyone who didn't vote for them has also become a feature of the long time "grassroots" advocates, the CPC....
Again I say, how is this NOT a classic case of the narcissism of small differences UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES? The never more dire ones i.e.....
You really smell blood, don't you?
All it took to vote Liberal was to really-really-really not want a Conservative government. Just like when Trudeau won his first term.
PS:
Grass roots - Origin & Meaning of the Phrase - Etymonline
Origin and history of grass roots. grass roots (n.) 1650s, from grass + root (n.). The image of grass roots as the most fundamental level of anything is from 1901; U.S. political sense of "the rank and file of the electorate" (also grassroots) is attested from 1912; as an adjective by 1918.
Charlie! You're making me weep!
"Angus’ main recommendation to bring the party back to its grassroots origins? “We need to kill Zoom,” he said.
Everything by the NDP is done on Zoom. Zoom doesn't include anybody,” he told Canada’s National Observer at Parliament Hill."
Zoom has meant EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE to me! As a climate activist with an underlying autoimmune condition, Zoom is the means by which I can organize, participate and complain. When social gathering restrictions were lifted in 2022 and people went back to "normal" even though Covid was still ravaging through the population, I was stuck on the sidelines. Fortunately for me, the climate activist group, in which I'm on the board of directors as well as chair of the political action committee, decided to stay on Zoom for all our meetings. Between 2022 and now, I've watched just about all of our active people get ill over and over again - but never from our meetings or even the demos or delegations to our city council. The reason - the online option.
This is also the case for my local Field Naturalists. Monthly meetings, always with an interesting guest speaker, went online during the height of the viral outbreak. Then that board decided to dispense with Zoom. I contacted the board and made the case for accommodation for people like me. Realizing that accommodation was a "thing" and that I was not the only one who might need this, all meetings became hybrid. A useful solution!
So please, Charlie, stick accommodation in the back of your mind when you make blanket statements like "kill zoom" because if that happens, I'm blowing in the wind.
I can't figure out how to contact Charlie directly. Help?
I gave up on Zoom meetings, because they're exactly what Charlie described: a few pontificating from the front, usually some or all of them ill-prepared and often fairly inarticulate. I sometimes attend, but more often than not just watch the YouTube video after. It's no more and no less participatory: but I can pause the whole thing if I need to.
I don't understand why these things are being seen as necessarily either/or. Whatever happened to and/and??? Either/or is never inclusive.