OTTAWA — Robert Fox, the New Democratic Party’s new national director, doesn’t gloss over the party’s challenges. A past executive director of Oxfam Canada who wasn’t even an NDP member until he took the job leading the party in September, Fox offers a refreshing change from the usual political spin.

NDP national director Robert Fox speaks to HuffPost Canada. (Photo: Althia Raj/HuffPost) He notes that no one surprising has shown an interest in the party’s leadership contest. Fundraising is in free fall — from an unusually high level of support a year ago of $9.2 million raised to a drastic decline of $973,007, according to the latest quarterly returns this past September. He even suggests that some New Democrats are happy with what they are seeing from the Liberals under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “We have a lot of our supporters who, their initial reaction is: Let’s give them a chance. That makes perfect sense,” he said. Over the past few weeks, however, Fox believes, the gap between what the Liberals promised during last year’s campaign and what they’ve actually done as a government — on pipelines or electoral reform, for example — has grown. ‘Sponge mode’ So he’s been on the phone calling the party’s major donors to gauge their temperature. Those who are paying attention, Fox said, are more concerned, but he leaves hanging the possibility that many donors, like many Canadians, really aren’t too bothered with what’s going on in Ottawa. Three months into the job, Fox told The Huffington Post Canada he is currently in “sponge mode.” Many New Democrats are still reeling from last year’s loss, he said. “Many of them are still quite battered and bruised, disappointed at the outcome.” Others are still processing what happened at the party’s convention in Edmonton in April, where delegates gave party leader Thomas Mulcair the boot, with 52 per cent saying they wanted a new leadership contest.

Thomas Mulcair makes a speech during the 2016 NDP Federal Convention in Edmonton Alta, on April 10, 2016. (Photo: Jason Franson/CP) “Part of my challenge is to stop re-losing the last election and start winning the next one,” Fox said from his office in the party’s Jack Layton building in downtown Ottawa. “The leadership race is an opportunity for people to stop second guessing the decisions that were made last year and talk about what is our vision of the future of our country.” Asked if he thinks the NDP can win the next election in 2019, Fox settled on: “Well, I think we can have a real impact in 2019.” A lot of New Democrats are having buyer’s remorse, he said, but admitted being unsure how widespread that feeling is. Fox described himself as “not a joiner by nature.” He’s worked on NDP campaigns, even managed one once. But he has in the past resisted the “tribalism and the discipline of a political party.” He thinks many in the social justice-human rights-environmentalist movement are just like him. "Part of my challenge is to stop re-losing the last election and start winning the next one." The election of Donald Trump in the United States and what’s happening with many far-right movements in Europe, for example, however, gave him pause. And he said those events are giving other activists pause, too. “It’s obvious to me that there are a lot of folk who are feeling very disenfranchised, disenchanted, and, right now, I’m seeing that too many of them are looking to the right as giving expression to that frustration, to that anger,” he said. “We are at an important moment where those of us [who] felt more comfortable working on causes … now see how absolutely important it is right now that there be electoral expression to our politics,” he said. “That who is the government does matter and that if we are going to affect the systemic change we need to … get involved in party politics and not just cause politics.” Because so many people feel they can’t exercise influence through politics or through activism, they are tuning out or being attracted to extremists and ever more radical tactics and organizations, Fox said. ‘Canadian Idol’ leadership race “Too often, people’s anger is being turned against your neighbour, your co-worker, the immigrant, the other, and they are not the ones who are creating the inequality that you are suffering, or the sense of powerlessness that you are seeing every day in your life. It is powerful elites, it is corporate interests, it is the concentration of wealth and power in the country and in the world.” The challenge for the NDP is to articulate a vision that is compelling and coherent, and which responds to the anger that people feel in their life, Fox said. “Because they have every reason, I think, to feel angry.” The party has big plans to try to make the leadership contest interesting. Imagine a version of “Canadian Idol” but involving politicians. In the fall, after the party’s leadership debates are over — four official ones are currently planned beginning in March — New Democrats will begin voting in rounds over the course of a maximum of five weeks. Every week, the party’s members (currently about 65,000) will be able to vote for whomever they think should be the leader. Losers will drop off the ballot every week — one or several depending on how many candidates enter the race. A maximum of five will go on to round two. Members can change their vote week after week. Story continues after slideshow: