“Confession: I get shredded cheese,” said Avi Lewis, feigning sheepishness, to a Zoom audience of approximately 500 people on Wednesday. The event, titled “Emergency Austerity Budget Town Hall,” held in response to the Liberal government’s newly-released 2025 budget, was half NDP buzzword salad, half leadership campaign.

For Lewis, who is in the midst of a retro-style campaign to become the next leader of the New Democratic Party — “return the party to its roots… for the many, not the money” is his slogan — it was a Jagmeet-Singh-sack-of-potatoes-that-are-actually-apples moment.

Canadians won’t soon forget that the NDP’s former leader, Singh, wearer of Rolexes and designer suits, and driver of luxury SUVs, spent his political career role-playing as an everyman. An everyman who could hold

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