Federal NDP looks to Nova Scotia as blueprint to rebuild

New federal NDP leader Avi Lewis gave a rousing speech at the Nova Scotia NDP convention Sunday morning, where he told party supporters that Nova Scotia is a blueprint for how the federal party can rebuild.

“We have a proud history here,” said Lewis. “We have a fantastically strong and active opposition party in the Nova Scotia NDP and in many ways, they are a model for what we want to do.”

This was the first provincial party convention Lewis has attended since becoming the leader of the NDP party. Although he currently holds no seat in the House of Commons, Lewis told CTV News his immediate priority is to cross the country and connect with the grassroots of the party and then see about where he can run in a byelection.

“I’m going to be crisscrossing the country for some months at least,” said Lewis.

The federal NDP is rebuilding. It has some major fundraising to do ahead of any election. Lewis said he is looking forward to running but can’t point to any election opportunities yet.

“We’re really focused on the ground game and on building our base from the bottom up,” he said. “This is more patient work than just shooting for headlines and sound bites and getting in the first byelection.”

Lewis talked about affordability issues and grocery prices and shared his plan to create 55 publicly owned grocery stores to address skyrocketing food prices and compete with the major grocers. He argued the concept isn’t foreign and pointed to a list of other publicly owned stores and services.

“We have public liquor stores across the country,” said Lewis. “We have pubic cannabis stores across this country. We have public auto insurance and we have public banks like in Alberta. So the notion of public ownership is actually not arcane, or bizarre or unnatural for Canadians. It’s very familiar.”

Lewis said there’s a market failure in Canada where five giant grocery chains dominate 80 per cent of the sector. He said he believes breaking the monopoly and opening a public option would bring competition and lead to lower prices.

The convention was the first one hosted by the Nova Scotia NDP since party leader Claudia Chender helped move them into Official Opposition status.

Chender said the weekend focused primarily on policy and ideas but a lot of work is going into growing the party in rural parts of province where they don’t hold any seats.

“This is an opportunity to bring people together from across the province and to remember that there’s more that brings us together than divides us,” said Chender. “We have delegates from every corner of this province here and we have people who are interested in our party who want to know what we’re talking about and who want to understand what our promise is for all Nova Scotians.”

Approximately 200 people attended the convention on Sunday. Promising numbers for the party, said Chender. The party plans to build off the convention to form government in the next election, she said.

“Over half of the people in the room today are new, they’ve never been to an NDP convention,” said Chender. “We are gaining a lot of steam. You know, we’ve seen our fundraising numbers double. We have a lot of really positive momentum. And so we’re trying to build on that.”

Although there’s no set election date in Nova Scotia, the next provincial election must be called before the end 2029.

For more Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page