8 comments

1. Ugh. Pass.Sent from my Bell Samsung device over Canada’s largest network.

2. I have been following Yves for some time and find him to be a very credible candidate. Unfortunate that the NDP exclude him from their debates. He has challenging ideas and forward thinking views on global issues. Canada needs his voice .

3. Hi Peter
   Look forward to watching this interview when I return.
   Stephen

   Get Outlook for Androidhttps://aka.ms/AAb9ysg

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4. I hope Yves Engler keeps his campaign going, his contribution to our cause is immeasurable, but I’d like to set the facts straight.
   All the other candidate in the NDP race submitted their papers to the NDP on time , got vetted, paid the entry fee and raised the donations to their campaign through the NDP.

   Yves refused to go through that process, he did not submit his paper, he mislead his donors, claimed that he is a candidate when in fact he was not.

   And he raised over 100k$, in utter non compliance with the regulations of Elections Canada and the NDP

   1. Hey Ahik,
      thanks for your comment. Yves can answer for himself, if he wants to. Do you have any substantive critiques of what he said in the interview, or are your comments entirely on process?

5. Yves Engler’s bid for the federal NDP leadership is a classic “insurgent left” campaign: it is programmatically coherent and strategically radical, but faces serious feasibility, credibility, and governance questions inside the actual party he wants to lead.��Who Engler IsYves Engler is a Montreal-based author and activist who has written extensively on Canadian foreign policy, positioning himself as an ecosocialist and anti‑imperialist.��� He is known for confrontational tactics such as disrupting press conferences and directly ambushing ministers in public, which has generated a reputation as an “agitator” rather than a traditional parliamentary figure.��Core Program And AppealHis platform centers on democratic socialism, including de‑growth, economic democracy, immediate shutdown of the Alberta tar sands, and a sharp left turn on foreign policy (ending what he calls Canadian complicity in Gaza and drastically cutting military spending).��� He also calls for weakening intelligence agencies, ending terrorism listings, and dramatically expanding Indigenous jurisdiction under “Land Back,” framing this as a necessary systemic break rather than incremental reform.��This program has clear appeal to segments of the activist left who view the NDP as having drifted into “conservative milquetoast” centrism and want a leadership campaign that reopens questions like capitalism itself and anti‑imperialism.�� For those actors, Engler functions less as a plausible prime‑minister‑in‑waiting and more as a vehicle to shift the Overton window within the NDP and force debate on issues other candidates tend to soften or avoid.���Relationship To The NDP And Socialist ActionEngler was recruited and nominated by the NDP Socialist Caucus, which is closely associated with Socialist Action, a small Trotskyist group that openly states the NDP “cannot be transformed” and that its goal is building revolutionary communist consciousness, not social democracy.�� Critics argue this makes his leadership run at least partially a “party intervention” strategy: using NDP structures (including membership lists) to advance an external organization’s project, rather than strengthening the party as such.�That link raises two big internal‑party concerns:Membership‑list security and data use: party insiders warn that giving a full NDP membership list to a campaign backed by a group that explicitly disdains the NDP is risky and arguably in bad faith.�Basic rules of membership: the NDP constitution limits membership for those who belong to other parties, and Socialist Action’s role makes some question whether Engler and his backers satisfy that requirement.��Tactics, Controversies, And VettingEngler, and the campaign around him, characterize the NDP’s leadership vetting process as “undemocratic” and designed to keep radicals off the ballot and to force self‑censorship among progressives.�� The party’s leadership officials, in contrast, have publicly stated that his initial fundraising and claims of campaign status were misleading and out of line with rules that require proper approval and routing of donations through party structures.��Additional controversies complicate his bid:He has been labeled a “notorious antisemite” by a pro‑Israel advocacy group, which demanded cancellation of one of his events; he rejects the charge and frames it as punishment for his criticism of Israel and support for Palestinian rights.��He has been arrested and charged in connection with social‑media and activist actions; although some charges were dropped, ongoing legal cases over alleged harassment add risk from the perspective of a leadership committee worried about media blowback.��Some on the left accuse him of harassment of MPs and of deeply controversial positions (e.g., on the Rwandan genocide), seeing him as discrediting rather than strengthening socialist politics.��Strategic And Electoral CritiqueFrom a strategic perspective, Engler’s platform collides head‑on with key electoral and regional realities for the NDP. For example:A pledge to “immediately” shut down the tar sands is ideologically consistent with ecosocialist de‑growth but electorally suicidal in Alberta and parts of Saskatchewan, and would likely alienate many unionized workers in resource sectors the NDP traditionally courts.��Radically cutting military spending and dismantling intelligence powers may resonate with anti‑imperialist activists but runs against post‑Ukraine, post‑October‑7 perceptions of security threats in both mainstream media and large swathes of the electorate.��Even sympathetic observers concede that his path to actually winning the leadership is a “steep hill,” requiring tens of thousands of new memberships and a significant fraction of existing members embracing “bold change” that goes far beyond the NDP’s usual policy space.�� In practice, this looks more like a pressure campaign designed to pull the leadership race leftward than a realistic bid for forming government under Canada’s current political conditions.���Internal Democracy Versus Party ViabilityOn internal democracy, Engler’s criticisms are not frivolous: the NDP has a long record of tightly managing candidate rosters, excluding internal dissidents, and sidelining convention resolutions whose radicalism might endanger electoral viability, and this rightly worries many grassroots members.�� His campaign highlights that tension and may force useful debates about transparency, rule‑making, and member control, especially given long‑standing frustrations with top‑down leadership decisions.��However, a leadership race is not an academic seminar. The party must balance radical internal democracy with the need for message discipline, risk control, and a leader who can plausibly navigate hostile media and win seats, not just protests.�� Engler’s confrontational record, ties to small revolutionary groups, and maximalist policy package make that balance much harder to achieve, so party elites and some rank‑and‑file see him less as a necessary corrective and more as an existential threat to the NDP’s broader project.��

   1. I’m an NDP member who has been getting lots of lobbying emails from Yves Engler and small groups backing him….I’ve been curious about the inside story, but wary and not plunging into backing him by any means. I was certainly very interested in the analysis you’ve provided here!!!

      Concerning Israel-Palestine, I will point out that two of the accepted and leading NDP candidates, Avi Lewis and Heather McPherson, both have very positive and passionate positions in terms of supporting Palestinian human rights and opposing the Canadian government’s shameful “looking the other way”.

      1. OFIP approached both AVi Lewis and Heather McPherson about doing an interview. No answer as yet.

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