Here are the five candidates competing to lead the federal NDP

New Democrats are currently voting in the ranked-ballot contest with candidates Rob Ashton, Tanille Johnston, Avi Lewis, Heather McPherson and Tony McQuail offering competing visions for the party’s future.

Here’s what you need to know about them.

Rob Ashton

A longtime dockworker, Ashton is the president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in Canada.

Ashton, 49, has never run for political office and had little national profile before entering the NDP leadership race with an emphasis on class politics and making inroads with blue-collar workers more likely to vote Conservative.

Known among New Democrats for his burly stature, thundering voice and white beard, the British Columbian has embraced comparisons to Santa Claus.

Key supporters include labour leaders like Canadian Labour Congress President Bea Bruske and large unions like the United Steelworkers and the United Food and Commercial Workers.

His campaign pitches include overhauling the temporary foreign workers program, a national jobs guarantee, and caps on CEO pay.

Tanille Johnston

At 38, Johnston is the youngest candidate in the leadership race. A social worker and city councillor in Campbell River, B.C., she is also a member of the We Wai Kai First Nation on the east coast of Vancouver Island.

Johnston ran for Parliament for the first time last year in her home riding of North Island—Powell River, which was previously held by the NDP. She narrowly lost to Conservative Aaron Gunn.

According to her campaign, she is the first ever Indigenous person to appear on the final leadership ballot of a major political party in Canada.

Her platform includes a guaranteed livable basic income, tuition-free post-secondary education and ending fossil fuel subsidies.

Although considered a long-shot candidate, she is widely seen as a potential rising star in the NDP.

Avi Lewis

One of the highest-profile figures in the race, Lewis is a former filmmaker, journalist and climate activist.

Politics run in Lewis’s family: His wife is influential left-wing author Naomi Klein and his parents are Stephen Lewis, the former diplomat and Ontario NDP leader, and journalist and author Michele Landsberg. His grandfather is David Lewis, a key architect of the NDP and its leader from 1971 to 1975.

Lewis, 58, has run unsuccessfully for Parliament in Liberal-held Vancouver ridings in the last two elections.

In this year’s leadership campaign, he has topped party fundraising records with more than $1.2 million raised, while pitching a return to the NDP’s democratic socialist roots. He snagged endorsements from Winnipeg MP Leah Gazan and environmental activist David Suzuki, among many others.

His populist campaign platform includes publicly-funded grocers and telecom providers, a Green New Deal and a wealth tax.

Lewis is a polarizing figure in the NDP. His most well-known political project is the “Leap Manifesto,” a decade-old roadmap for a clean energy transition that dominated party debate and drew criticism from Alberta’s NDP government at the time.

Heather McPherson 

McPherson is the only sitting MP in the race. She has represented her Edmonton Strathcona riding since 2019, making it one of the only relatively safe New Democrat ridings in the country.

Before politics, she worked in international development, and she gained a national profile in recent years as the NDP’s foreign affairs critic, fighting to push the Liberal government on Gaza.

McPherson, 53, has emphasized her electoral record and pitched herself as a prairie pragmatist calling for a bigger tent in the NDP. She has proposed a national housing emergency plan, work placements for youth and an east-west and north-south electricity grid.

Among her key supporters are Vancouver Island MP Gord Johns and former Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. Critics within the party have dubbed her the “establishment” candidate.

Tony McQuail

McQuail entered the NDP leadership with his signature straw hat.

The organic farmer from Huron County, Ont. has run for the NDP federally and provincially seven times in his rural riding, though he’s never held a seat in Parliament or the Ontario legislature.

McQuail, 74, was born in the U.S. and came to Canada as an 18-year-old war resister.

His grassroots-run “green progressive” campaign has centred on saving the planet and his key policy proposals are electoral reform, environmental regeneration and wealth redistribution.