Niagara 610 CKTB’s Gene Valaitis and guest Jon Liedtke discuss how the federal NDP’s recent convention in Winnipeg signaled a final, clinical Severance from the Canadian working class. By trading the pragmatic labor focus of the past for the performative “equity cards” and academic radicalism of Avi Lewis, the party has retreated into a faculty lounge echo chamber. While delegates debated linguistic orthodoxy, industrial workers in towns like Windsor and Oshawa aren’t being spoken to, left to face the looming 2026 trade wars and a plummeting standard of living without their traditional political and labour champion.
This shift has created a power vacuum that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals are more than happy to fill, essentially buying the NDP for parts. As provincial wings in Alberta and Saskatchewan scramble to build “digital moats” to protect their local brands from federal toxicity, the national party sits at a dismal 9% in the polls. The NDP is now a party of the seminar, not the shop floor, decorating a progressive “room” that the modern economy has already demolished.
Transcript (Gemini Generated):
Gene Valaitis: On Tuesdays and on Thursdays, we love talking to one of our great storytellers on the show. He is Jon Liedtke, a former newspaper publisher, he’s a journalist, he publishes a lot of articles and also a broadcaster. Hey Jon, welcome.
Jon Liedtke: Good morning Gene.
Gene Valaitis: Okay, as usual you’ve come up with something very, very interesting. You’re calling it the relevance of irrelevancy, the NDP’s severance delusion. So you’ve just published this rather scathing take on the NDP convention over the weekend in Winnipeg. It’s called the clinical severance procedure, and for those who haven’t seen the HBO show Succession, what on earth does Succession mean for the party? I can’t wait for this one.
Jon Liedtke: It’s a political lobotomy Gene. In the show the characters have their brains split so their work selves don’t have to know their home selves. It’s the dream, right? Someone else does the work for you, you get all the time off work. That’s essentially the NDP right now. On the inside, the innies, you’ve got the faculty lounge activists. On the outside are the outies, the industrial workers in towns like Windsor and Oshawa who are staring down a 2026 gun of a trade war. It’s severance meets the Communist Manifesto light because let’s be honest, even Avi Lewis won’t commit to nationalization, just a public option expansion, but I digress. But the directors here forgot to include the people who actually are building the sets of this real-life sitcom, the workers. The NDP isn’t just on a different set themselves, they’re in a different political reality today.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. Now I watched a little bit of the convention and I was just shaking my head because I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about. Now you were critical of what they called the equity cards used at the convention. Why did that bug you so much?
Jon Liedtke: You know, it was just because it’s performative theater in a world that’s under an administrative siege. There’s nothing wrong with ensuring that minority voices are heard, but there were moderators in this case lecturing grown adults on how to form straight lines and then being concerned that they said the word straight because that would run against LGBT orthodoxy I suppose. It was ridiculous. They reprimanded people publicly for misgendering the chair when it was an honest mistake while again the geopolitical turmoil is at the door right now. But equity cards aren’t going to lower the price of milk or gasoline. This is a faculty lounge obsession. If you’re at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy instead of at the top of an ivory tower and you’re wondering how to pay rent, being told you can speak two minutes earlier because of your card feels less like progress and more like a joke. This is just a proxy for actual power and workers know this.
Gene Valaitis: You know, I’m not making fun of delegates, okay, because you know they run their convention a certain way and good for them. But I mean there, what I could understand was one gentleman getting up and he was being very sincere. He said I’m a man of color, white, I’m Korean but not by blood. And then he went on to describe a problem he had with premature ejaculation and I’m just thinking what on earth does this have to do with electing the leader of the NDP? In any event, you described the new leader Avi Lewis, who I know by the way, as trading Jagmeet Singh’s Rolex for his academic radicalism. So I’m picking up on the fact you think he’s the wrong guy at the wrong time.
Jon Liedtke: We’ve just witnessed a coronation that proves the elevator of the NDP still only goes to the penthouse and not to the shop floor. They traded custom suits for a guy from Upper Canada College dynasty who talks about factories full of sunlight. This is the, you know, it’s just they’re propping up 1970s radicalism and hoping that the workers won’t notice the smell of tenure wrapped up all around this. Lewis wants AI full stopped, he wants wealth taxes, but he’s talking to a base that’s just worried about their factory closing right now. This is academic opium for people who are just hoping that the paycheck shows up again next week.
Gene Valaitis: You know, one thing that I found interesting and we talked a little bit about this with Dave Trafford earlier. Once Avi Lewis was elected, and he still eventually is going to have to win a seat and the party is in terrible debt as well. But New Democrats in places like Alberta and Saskatchewan, you know, they crossed their eyes, rolled their eyes back in their head, shook their heads back and forth and said, “Uh no, no, no, no, no, this is not our New Democratic Party in Western Canada.”
Jon Liedtke: We’re watching provincial restraining orders and firewalls being built up Gene. Naheed Nenshi and the Saskatchewan NDP equally from Alberta are essentially building digital moats around their provinces to keep themselves away from the federal brand sinking their local chances. This is like when I chatted with you about the whiskey war in the Arctic. This is polite on the surface but everyone’s marking their territory right now. When your own provincial cousins are treating you like a pariah the second that Avi Lewis took the stage, you know that you’ve reached a level of toxicity that’s usually reserved for subprime assets. And let’s be honest, they’re measuring the distance from Ottawa in light years because reality and the faculty lounge that I was chatting about just don’t mix.
Gene Valaitis: Interesting quote in your article here. You claim Carney, our Prime Minister, is buying the party for parts. Now that’s really something. I mean do you in your opinion, do you think the NDP has really become that irrelevant?
Jon Liedtke: Well look at the numbers. 9% is a total woof moment if I’m going to quote Kevin McCallister from Home Alone here. This is the political equivalent of a Red Wedding. Mark Carney is the ultimate elite but he speaks the language of a managerial class that’s actually winning Gene. The NDP is busy with this innies versus outies drama but the Liberals are picking them apart for parts like I said. It’s like a fire sale and they’re picking up members who are crossing the floor while the NDP is acting like a niche pressure group. This is a new style of politics that’s moving on without them. They’re standing still while the floor is being pulled out from underneath them. So yeah, Carney is being able to pick it up and I think pretty soon he’ll be at his majority government.
Gene Valaitis: You say the NDP is decorating a room that’s already been demolished. Yikes. That’s pretty brutal Jon. So what’s your final takeaway for the average Canadian worker who in the past would look towards the NDP as the party that supported unions and supported the working class of Canadians?
Jon Liedtke: The takeaway is that the severance procedure is complete. Inside the house you’ve got the Avi Lewis party decorating a room with fair trade coffee and equity cards but outside the worker is staring at an empty lunch box because filling the gas tank to get to work that day was more important than faculty lounge procedures. This is a delusion in real time. The NDP used to be the party of the worker but now they’re the party of the seminar and lecture. If this doesn’t find a way to bridge this gap, they’re going to be the most irrelevant relevant party in history. A cautionary tale of how to lose the heartland while winning the faculty lounge Gene.
This aired on 610 CKTB
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