Marit Stiles, the Ontario NDP MPP for Davenport who is running to be the party's next leader, was a guest on the Queen's Park Briefing Podcast on Thursday. This article is based on comments she made on our podcast, which you can listen to in full here.

The first candidate to enter the Ontario NDP's leadership election, and the race's presumed front-runner, is determined to re-empower the party's grassroots organizers, she told the QP Briefing podcast on Thursday.

One of the issues that dogged the Ontario NDP leading up to the 2022 election — which cost the party a quarter of its seats and resulted in 13-year leader Andrea Horwath's resignation — was discontentment that spread behind the scenes among local organizers.

From early spring through election day, QP Briefing was in touch with New Democrat activists linked to several riding associations across Ontario who described a growing sense of disenfranchisement among grassroots New Democrat organizers. A central frustration among some was over strict vetting procedures and what they viewed as senior party leadership overstepping in local ridings' decisions of who would be their candidate, which the party's grassroots members and organizers are supposed to control.

READ MORE: How the NDP’s 2018 vetting failures still haunt the party

Marit Stiles thinks she has the remedy.

"We need more transparency (and) more accountability internally," Stiles said. "I think that's very important."

LISTEN: The QP Briefing Podcast: With Marit Stiles, who wants to lead the Ontario NDP

"I also think that we need to look at ways that party members can participate in the things that make them want to be members and activists in the party," she added.

Oftentimes people are attracted to the NDP because they want to make change in their communities, Stiles said, but they're also sometimes drawn to the party because they're passionate about a specific issue, such as climate change, or unionization or strong labour laws, or shared values in general, as she highlighted.

"We need to make sure that people have a chance to explore all those things. And that means that also providing more opportunities for people to have input and to have debate around important policy issues and framing," Stiles said. "It means making sure that we're ready to go and we're supporting people in ridings and their capacity, in ridings on the ground, to run campaigns. It's really, really important."

Stiles herself has a deep history working in the background in New Democratic Party politics. She worked in lone NDP premier Bob Rae's government as a staffer for Gilles Bisson, an NDP MPP from 1990 to 2022, and Bob Huget, while he was a minister. A few years after Rae's government was defeated, Stiles worked for the Ontario NDP's caucus and as an organizer until 2004. She continued organizing for local campaigns after that and eventually ascended to become president of the federal NDP from 2016 to 2018.

"I've knocked on many, many doors in every campaign since I came to this province, (including) in my own community (I'm) very involved with my local riding association... It's one of my experiences, so I feel very strongly about supporting local riding associations. ... I feel like that is the heart of our party," she said.

READ MORE: Marit Stiles casts herself as the Ontario NDP leader for everyone

Over the last few months, Stiles has spent time touring Ontario and meeting with NDP supporters and others in an effort to build up her bid to be leader. Something she's been hearing from people is that supporting and strengthening riding associations "matters."

"I know that some of my colleagues have floated some really good ideas about ways to incentivize organizing and in ridings, and in people to do the hard work, but definitely for me, it's a priority," Stiles said. "It's not the sexy stuff that the leader of the Opposition is always talking about, but it is absolutely critical to how we are going to hold Doug Ford and the (Progressive) Conservatives to account for the next few years and how we're going to win in 2026."

While talking about the importance of re-empowering the party's grassroots, Stiles referred to Ottawa West—Nepean as being a riding where this has paid off.

Chandra Pasma, who's backing Stiles for leader, won the Ottawa West—Nepean seat for the Ontario NDP in the June 2 election, flipping the provincial riding orange for the first time. It was previously held by Progressive Conservative Jeremy Roberts, who Pasma beat by 1,086 votes.

"Chandra Pasma's election is a really good example — (we) had a candidate in a riding where we don't have a strong history in Nepean, and (a candidate) who ran in 2018 and lost by very, very few votes and just kept going. And that riding association and that candidate just worked that riding for four years. Their reward was they won it. You don't always win in those cases and you have to keep trying," Stiles said.

Two days before this spring's election at a campaign stop that Horwath made in Ottawa West—Nepean, Pasma told QP Briefing that her work as a candidate in 2022 stretched back to the previous election, when she lost to Roberts by 175 votes. She also said she'd been doorknocking for a year before the election.

"Because I came so close in 2018, they know that I can win this time and that they're ready and excited to vote NDP and bring change here," Pasma said about people in the riding.

Some of the NDP activists who voiced their concerns about how riding associations have been treated by the party's central party are skeptical of Stiles, who — along with being the leadership front-runner, is also often described as the establishment choice. But, some of these same activists have also indicated a softening toward her in recent weeks, explaining that they've appreciated the wide outreach she's been doing to party members and others.

Ontario’s New Democrats will elect their new leader in early March 2023.

READ MORE: No other Ontario NDP leadership prospects blink after Stiles enters race

Re-empowering NDP’s grassroots a ‘priority,’ says leadership contestant Marit Stiles

Read this for free.