New NDP Leader Avi Lewis says he'd be 'delighted' to get advice from Jagmeet Singh

WINNIPEG — Newly named NDP leader Avi Lewis says he’d be “delighted” to take advice from predecessor Jagmeet Singh, who led the party to a near-total collapse in last year’s election.

“I would be delighted to get advice from Jagmeet,” Lewis told reporters in Winnipeg in his first press conference since winning the party’s leadership on the first ballot on Sunday.

“There’s so much love out there for Jagmeet out there in our base, in our party and beyond. And he’s got some kind of magic that I would love a part of,” said Lewis.

Lewis said that Singh reached out to he and the other four leadership candidates after Sunday’s announcement, adding that he was trying to arrange a call with Singh.

As of Monday morning, Singh had not put out a public message of congratulations to Lewis on social media .

Singh led the NDP to it’s worst ever result in last April’s election, winning seven seats and losing official party status.

Former Nunavut MP Lori Idlout has since crossed the floor to join the governing Liberals, leaving the NDP with just six seats in the House of Commons.

Lewis’s words for praise for Singh come after he said in an interview last week that he had “no intention” of taking advice from another former NDP leader, Thomas Mulcair. Mulcair, who became the party’s leader in 2012 following the death of Jack Layton, led the party to 44 seats in his only election at the helm in 2015.

Lewis made the comments when responding to a question about Mulcair’s advice that he run for a federal seat as soon as possible.

He doubled down on Saturday, telling reporters that fiscal moderates like Mulcair — who promised to balance the federal budget in his first year as prime minister — have no future in the NDP.

“We represent different kinds of NDP, and that’s not one that’s part of our future,” said Lewis.

Lewis said that Mulcair’s campaign promise to balance the budget immediately cost the NDP the 2015 election when it was on the “verge of taking power.”

“We all understood at the time that (balancing the budget) would mean eviscerating social spending,” said Lewis. “It was an irresponsible decision.”

Lewis, a democratic socialist who represents the party’s far left, campaigned on massive public spending on programs like comprehensive public health care, including dental and vision, and a public option for food and groceries.

Lewis ran twice for a seat in British Columbia under Singh’s leadership, in 2021 and 2025, finishing in third place both times.

He told National Post in an October 2025 interview that he thought Singh’s 2022 supply and confidence agreement with then prime minister Justin Trudeau was a strategic blunder.

“From knocking on around 10,000 doors myself … I can tell you that Canadians, at least in Vancouver, were super confused. Jagmeet seemed so angry at Justin all the time, and yet he was still supporting him and keeping his government in place,” said Lewis at the time.

Lewis said that he felt ambivalent about the deal itself, which planted the seeds for federal pharmacare and dental care programs.

Singh, who first became leader in late 2017, also led the NDP into the 2019 federal election, where the party lost 15 seats and 3.74 per cent of the popular vote nationally.

National Post
rmohamed@postmedia.com

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