Alberta NDP gets a redress

There's a number of things I don't understand about the Alberta NDP, but it's changing now, anyway.

One reason political parties like opposition is because they can live and breathe their principles, and fight the good fight with none of the pesky consequences of having to actually govern.

It’s a sweet gig, if you can hang onto it.

I’ll give Rachel Notley credit: she was principled enough to ask Albertans to lend their vote to the party she wanted to lead rather than lead a party they wanted to be part of.

According to the membership numbers before the leadership race started, Albertans didn’t want to be a part of it, which likely suited the loyalists fine — it wasn’t a big tent party after all, it was the NDP.

It worked well enough when the party was surrounded by a wall of blue and red in Edmonton, but once they formed government, people wanted to get involved. They wanted to start constituency associations in rural. They started asking for talking points they could use. They started asking the party to be bigger.

They also started asking the party to change.

Just after the 2023 election, some “faithful” members began a group called Alberta’s Progressive Future, asking the Alberta NDP to consider a rebrand. One of the reasons, they said, was to put some distance between themselves and the federal party.

Brian Malkinson, a former NDP MLA from Calgary, said the results of a poll that showed half of respondents believe the federal party had influence over the provincial party was the catalyst.

The poll also showed that 12 per cent of people were open to voting for the party, “but don’t support the party right now.”

The request was dismissed and forgotten but the fact that it was made at all showed the party was experiencing growing pains.

The leadership race

I have a lot of questions about what the NDP was thinking over the past five years but they pale to those I have about the leadership race.

For the past nine years, NDP loyalists didn’t want to open up the party to people who weren’t NDP enough — a majority of people in the province.

With that in mind, I renewed my membership back in December because I thought there might be a possibility that they would decide to close membership sales before they launched the race.

They could have done that.

I didn’t expect them to allow Naheed Nenshi to run. I fully expected the party to put an ironclad requirement on the length of time one had to be a member before becoming a candidate. Usually parties choose one year; the NDP chose six months.

They could have made it five years and let Gil McGowan, Kathleen Ganley, and Sarah Hoffman duke it out on their own.

They could have done that.

They could have chosen a delegated convention instead of one-member, one-vote. They could have allowed only X number of regular members and called up the longtime members with an invitation to cast a ballot.

They could have done that.

They could have maintained control if that’s what they wanted to do but they chose not to.

And it’s the longtime members I’m hearing the most complaints from. The ones who ostensibly could have had a say, or a hand, in making or at least influencing these decisions.

Notley stayed out the race until a Don Braid column appeared two days before the votes were tallied.

She’s unhappy with the idea that the provincial party membership might choose to sever membership ties with the federal party, claiming the party would lose its history, somehow, if members were able to choose whether they wanted to also be a member of the federal party; an argument that makes zero sense.

I’ve heard others claim they couldn’t ask NDP people in other jurisdictions for help if they weren’t all federal members; something else that makes no sense to me. Why would Brian Topp care if your membership isn’t also a member of the federal party? Can anyone honestly think he would say “I don’t want the job, your members aren’t all federal members”?

The arguments are silly, superficial, and short-sighted, in my opinion.

Change is here

Former Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi won the Alberta NDP leadership with 85 per cent of the vote, from more than 62,000 members.

Someone I spoke with said they expected him to win, but not by such a huge margin, and that seemed to be a generally-held opinion — unless you did the math.

The party had 8,000 active members and about as many lapsed at the start of the race, and everyone who started the race had been under an NDP banner for at least a year, but most of them for many more.

Nenshi entered the race, campaigned to lead the party “for Alberta”, and the party ended up with 85,000 members.

Some members are devastated. Some are jubilant.

In my brief time in politics, I’ve watched three parties go through this exact same scenario; the Progressive Conservatives, the Alberta Party, and now the Alberta NDP.

I don’t count the UCP’s last leadership race because even though the least palatable candidate won, it wasn’t a knockout.

Nenshi seems to have decided he will sell Albertans on a New Democratic Party that already looks different than the one that formed government back in 2015; he’s certainly not the only new face, nor is he the only one with radical ideas like severing membership ties.

Things change; for all of us.

In fact, the next big thing could be right around the corner.

Some UCP members have suggested they’re champing at the bit to go toe to toe with Nenshi. The same ones that tried unsuccessfully to unseat him as mayor, perhaps? Smith is vulnerable now and they know it.

Many of them promised Smith would be gone soon enough during the last election.

If they make good on that promise, Smith may not be Alberta’s premier after her leadership review in November.

And if that’s the next knockout Naheed Nenshi can take credit for, then this will have been worth it — for all of us.

Women of ABpoli is a reader-powered publication. Thanks to everyone who reads, shares, and becomes a free or paid subscriber. Your support is greatly appreciated!