NDP leadership rivals at odds over 'purity test' framing

OTTAWA — A schism opened between two of the top contenders in the NDP leadership race on Wednesday night, as Avi Lewis jabbed rival Heather McPherson over her use of a term he says has right-wing roots.

Lewis said in a media scrum that he wasn’t a fan of McPherson’s repeated use of the term “purity test” to frame the party’s recent struggles in growing its appeal.

“I don’t believe in using language that the right uses to slam the left. I don’t believe in using that against each other on the left,” said Lewis.

Lewis was speaking to reporters after the first candidates’ forum of the NDP leadership campaign, hosted in Ottawa by the Canadian Labour Congress.

McPherson said on Wednesday evening that she wasn’t going to drop “purity test” from her campaign lexicon.

“There has been a problem where we’ve made politics small, we’ve excluded people from our party … and every single part of me wants to make that bigger party so that people see themselves there. And that means everybody,” said McPherson.

McPherson had previously said at her late September campaign launch that the party needed to be less exclusionary as it embarked on a rebuild.

“We need to stop shrinking into some sort of purity test, we need to stop pushing people away and we need to invite people in,” said McPherson.

But McPherson’s utterance of the words “purity test” quickly had a few listeners reading between the lines, including fellow NDP MP Leah Gazan.

Gazan would soon voice her discomfort with McPherson’s framing of the race on social media.

“When I hear a leadership candidate suggest that you have to pass a ‘purity test’ to fit into the NDP, I am appalled and deeply disappointed. That framing is frequently used to dismiss calls for justice from marginalized communities — especially Black, Indigenous, racialized, 2SLGBTQ+, disabled, and immigrant workers — who now make up a major part of the labour movement and the working class,” wrote Gazan in a post on X .

Gazan, who is of mixed Indigenous, Chinese and Jewish ancestry, said that McPherson’s use of the term was a not too subtle call to put “white, male and able-bodied workers” back at the forefront of the party.

Lewis and McPherson also face a challenge from Rob Ashton, a career longshoreman and union leader, from British Columbia. Ashton told National Post on Wednesday that he’d be open to lifting the federal moratorium on coastal tanker traffic, if he saw clear support for shipping heavy oil through British Columbia’s northern coast.

The first official NDP leadership debate will take place next month in Montreal.

National Post rmohamed@postmedia.com

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