Avi Lewis has made opposition to the Canadian energy industry the defining issue of his political career. He is the chief architect of the LEAP Manifesto, the 2015 document — co-authored with Naomi Klein — that demands Canada shut down its entire fossil-fuel sector and transition rapidly to a state-directed "clean energy" economy.
The LEAP Manifesto demands explicitly: "No federal approvals for new pipelines, offshore oil projects or liquified natural gas terminals. Instead, a large-scale federal investment to build a coast-to-coast-to-coast clean energy grid, promoting renewable energy exports between provinces and reducing our economic dependence on the US, and to propel the rapid decarbonization of our economy." Lewis's own leadership platform reproduces the same demands.
LEAP was so radical at the time that even Alberta's then-NDP premier Rachel Notley publicly denounced it. The federal NDP membership was split over whether to formally adopt it. But Avi Lewis never backed down. The party now leads with him on the same platform.
In subsequent years, Lewis sharpened the rhetoric. In an October 2025 interview with the CBC, he compared Canada's use of fossil fuels to drug addiction: "[Fossil fuel addiction] is as much an addiction to the revenues from fossil fuels from provincial and federal governments as it is an addiction to the substance itself."
In a March 2026 interview with The Globe and Mail, Lewis said: "We've been expanding oil and gas production in Canada relentlessly over past decades and many, many Canadians have believed for a long time that we don't need to keep expanding it. That's the specific call: To stop increasing production of oil and gas in this country."
The economic implications of Lewis's program are substantial. Canadian oil and gas exports generated more than $130 billion in 2023. The industry directly employs hundreds of thousands of Canadians, supports hundreds of thousands more in services and supply chains, and pays billions of dollars annually in royalties that fund hospitals, schools and roads in every province where production occurs. Lewis's plan is not a gradual energy transition. It is the deliberate winding down of a foundational sector of the Canadian economy.
References
The Leap and the LEAP Manifesto — leapmanifesto.org
Green New Deal — Lewis for Leader
Q&A with NDP leader Avi Lewis — The Globe and Mail (March 30, 2026)
Fairy Creek, the NDP and Indigenous Sovereignty — Spring Magazine (August 31, 2021)