Though much of the party’s focus will now necessarily shift towards the selection of a compelling leader, that leader will also need a more vibrant and shared raison d’etre with which to galvanize voters. As the NDP goes back to the proverbial drawing board it seems appropriate that they examine that second word in their own name: democratic.

Let’s be clear: while we might be able to make some improvements here and there through clever initiatives, we almost certainly cannot solve the housing crisis without dealing directly with the land question. The private extraction of land value doesn’t just produce a crisis for housing, but virtually everything across the political spectrum that can be useful.

Instead of another subsidy for a pasta factory, our Liberal-NDP supply and confidence government should announce its intention to support a wave of local democratization projects, including the expansion of food cooperatives, worker cooperatives, various employee-ownership schemes, community land trusts, and the development of sustainable procurement policies.

If the carbon tax is a dead corpse that keeps on dying, let’s make livelier offers. The transition to a sustainable energy system should have been rooted in class from the start. Let’s stop playing rhetorical tricks on ourselves, and fill the political void with actionable proposals. Along the way, we might even heal social wounds as well as environmental ones.

Practically every point in Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre’s story about housing affordability and debt—captured in two recent ‘mini-documentary’ films released across his social media channels—sounds compelling until one bothers to look up the claim. When one does, however, that same point turns into evidence Poilievre is proposing national economic suicide.

Even if producing a record supply of housing units could guarantee solving the affordability issue, actually building that much housing with viable density comes with a steep price tag. Even advocates of mass housing admit as much. If we don’t go after the land value itself, we are essentially trying to deflate a balloon by blowing on it.