The Leap Manifesto made a big splash when it crashed the NDP’s annual convention last April. CD wants to keep it in the news and open up space for the Canadian Left to debate how it might be used to reshape Canadian and Québec politics. We have chosen to do this by asking a number of colleagues to respond to a wide-ranging essay by George Martell titled “The Leap, the Left and the NDP,” published here for the first time. We intend to keep this discussion going and a number of friends — Linda McQuaig, Marjorie Cohen, Michal Rozworski, Murray Dobbin, Pam Palmater, among others — have agreed to contribute their responses in the winter issue of CD. We invite you, our readers, to join the conversation by submitting your thoughts and comments on Martell’s piece and/or the responses to it. Keep it under 1000 words and we’ll publish the most interesting ones online or in our Winter issue.

The mural displayed on our cover was created as part of the 2016 Wall-to-Wall Mural and Cultural Festival (Sept. 2 to Oct. 1) organized by Synonym Art Consultation, a local arts initiative based in Winnipeg. The mural was created by Alexa Hatanaka and Patrick Thompson of the Toronto-based PA System in collaboration with 17-year-old Nunavut resident Parr Josepee and is located at 782 Main St. in Winnipeg’s north end. It is intended to raise awareness of seismic testing in Nunavut that is threatening narwhale populations, other wildlife and the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of the area who depend on hunting and fishing.

In 2016, we converted CD to a quarterly publication. Beginning with our next issue, we will be expanding to 64 pages. This will enable us to offer new features and new authors — like Umair Muhammed, Monica Judd and Ahmad Moussa, who appear for the first time in this issue.