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Nothing Avi Lewis is saying is remotely “extreme,” but the rightward shift of media over three decades would make it seem that way to many.

Counterpoint: If Avi Lewis had been elected on this platform three decades ago, in 1996, I think the NDP might have come in fifth in the 1997 election rather than fourth.

I really have no idea but I think if someone in federal politics could have competently articulated anti-neoliberalism in the 90s we might be a very different country today. But that’s about when the NDP let it go

I'm just not as convinced that the overton window has shifted as far to the right in Canada in the last 30 years as you implied because I think of Jean Chretien as WAAAAY to the right of Justin Trudeau and I think that on some (many?) files people would argue that he was also to the right of Carney.

I think there are many more factors at play in that shift than the individual political position of prime ministers. Most relevant among them to rightward shift: centralization of executive power, political impunity, surveillance capacity, economic inequality, erosion of social & health protections.

I guess the thing is that I view the Trudeau government (2015-2025) as the most left-wing gov't that's been elected in my lifetime, and possibly ever, so it's difficult for me to interpret anything that's happening today, even under Carney, as being to "the right" of what was happening in the 1990s.

We live in Canada. "Most left-leaning federal government in my lifetime" and, "that was table scraps" aren't necessarily mutually exclusive categories. I think the difference is that a lot of people judge it against the Canada in their imaginations whereas I judge it against the one on Earth.