Thank you. Here's What's Next. 🇨🇦 🧡

Dear neighbours,

I respect every single decision made behind that tiny cardboard screen on election day.

Truly. It’s sacred. A stubborn refusal to accept things as they are. 

But I also know how many people made that choice with a heavy heart.

We heard from folks who were in tears as they voted. People who believed in everything we stood for, who knocked doors, donated, even convinced others to vote NDP... then felt forced to vote Liberal out of fear. Not out of hope. Fear.

And that fear was real. Is real. And it shaped this election nationwide.

🇨🇦 Thank You

To every volunteer who knocked doors, every donor who chipped in, everyone who gave their time, their voice, their energy:

THANK YOU FOR YOUR COURAGE.

• 💰 We raised almost a quarter of a million dollars
• 🚪 We knocked on tens of thousands of doors
• 💪 We ran the most ambitious NDP ground game ever here

We changed conversations. We empowered neighbours. We built something real.

And even if our organizing wasn’t enough to change the final outcome: it mattered.

📣 What Avi Said

Here’s what Avi said the day after the election. It’s been ringing in my ears ever since:

Last night, NDP voters saved Canada from the surging hard right, but had to sacrifice our own party in the process.

Today the battle begins for a system where we don't have to do that anymore.

We badly need a party that can save Canada from the oligarchs who brought us all to the brink.

Make no mistake: the authoritarian right may have lost the election, but it continued its rise.

The information ecology is poisoned, and every Liberal capitulation to elite power at the expense of working people will be cynically exploited.

Let's get off this nauseating ride.

⚠️ This Is a Reckoning

The threats we named in this campaign are not abstract. They are happening right now:

• 🚨 Far-right forces are on the move
• 💻 Big tech is allying with autocrats
• 🗳️ A broken voting system replaced NDP incumbents with hard-right Conservatives

We can’t look away.

And the everyday crises didn’t disappear either:

• 🏠 Rent cheques are still due
• 🏥 ERs are still overflowing
• 🪖 Crimes against humanity are still ongoing
• 🔥 The planet is still burning.

And we're still fighting.  

♻️ History Repeats — Unless We Act

This isn’t the first time the NDP has been pushed to the margins. Libby Davies reminded us of that during the campaign. She ran in 1997, right after the party was nearly wiped out. And what followed?

The Liberals, unchecked by an NDP opposition, moved sharply to the right: 

• 📉 They gutted funding for public housing
• ✂️ They slashed health care
• 💔 They shredded social supports

Not because they had to. Because no one was there to stop them.

Now here we are again: a likely Liberal minority, $28 billion in promised spending cuts, a massive tax break for the ultra-wealthy... and no NDP party status to push back.

✊ This Is Not Over

We can’t let that be the story. And we won’t.

Because the real issues we fought for haven’t gone anywhere.

And neither have we.

Congratulations to Dr. Hedy Fry. Sincerely. Her decades of public service are remarkable.

But for everyone who told us, “I wanted to vote for Avi, but I just couldn’t…”

Let’s make a deal.

🌱 This Is a Movement

This is your invitation. Not to a campaign, but to a movement. We’ll meet you:

• 🩺 In the fight to defend public services, as cuts loom again
• 🌍 At the rallies demanding real climate action, not corporate giveaways
• 🏦 Outside the offices where bankers are protected but tenants are not
• 🏛️ On the doorsteps of power, until they remember who they serve

Thanks for everything you did to get us this far.

Now let’s keep going, together.

In hope and solidarity,

Barrett
Team Avi

PS – Let’s make sure we keep in touch. Follow Avi on Bluesky and YouTube. Follow the Vancouver Centre NDP and join the federal party to help it rebuild. We've got work to do.