It's not Nenshi, it's the NDP

They're no longer the little party that could, they're the party that did; and they need to fight or fade away.

Naheed Nenshi, from the leadership campaign. “For Alberta. For all of us.”

In the past couple of weeks, op-eds from Max Fawcett at the National Observer, David Climenhaga’s Alberta Politics, Dave Cournoyer’s Daveberta, as well as Postmedia’s Don Braid, on Naheed Nenshi’s job as the NDP’s opposition leader in Alberta were making their way around— at least in political circles. I’m not going to pretend I haven’t been equally critical of the same, but it’s rare that I actually find enough to write an entire article about. Mostly, my criticisms end up as a footnote-worthy also-mention because I don’t feel there’s anything more I can add.

My critique differs from those above for two reasons; I don’t believe the problems Naheed Nenshi is having are entirely his fault, and I believe that the chasm between the NDP and UCP has more to do with their ineffectiveness as opposition than anything. The Wildrose was effectively nipping at the heels of the Progressive Conservatives because Albertans could see themselves siding with their fiscal conservative values. That’s it. Not “notwithstanding”, nor, “well almost everything but…” Just agreeing with the fiscal conservative values.

By 2015, the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta was seen as rife with entitlement and cronyism, a governing party who misdirected public funds to serve their own interests of retaining power. I guess Danielle Smith’s last-ditch effort to be a part of it in 2014 makes more sense through that lens.

With that being said, part of the NDP’s inability to nip at the governing party’s heels is because the party hasn’t grown their support enough. I was gobsmacked at the “lend us your vote” campaign in 2023.

If, after being government from 2015-19, entirely wiping out the non-UCP competition in 2019, and being the only viable party to form government in 2023 still wasn’t enough to be have the former PC vote already onside, that is an NDP problem.

It is entirely, without question, there is no one else to blame, look in the mirror, wtaf, a party problem. And I am not prone to using absolutes frivolously.

Just why

I am neither progressive enough to be accepted as a progressive nor conservative enough to be accepted as a conservative and that’s fine by me because rigid ideological purity is like wearing blinders and refusing to turn your head while trying to make important decisions based on things that are happening all around you.

Take off the damned blinders.

Naheed Nenshi won the leadership of the NDP by speaking his own language. Yes, we’re all painfully aware of how out of step that was with the NDP. Sure, he also signed up tens of thousands of supporters— I’m sorry, but no one else did— but they still voted for him! I actually renewed my membership in December because I thought the party might tightly restrict membership sales and, over a year and a half later I wish to Zeus they would have because whatever re-engineering program they put Nenshi through to fit the damned party is why he’s no longer reaching past the effing base.

I was excited when he entered the race because before he showed up, the interest was just bouncing around between the people they already had on board. I’ve said it many times; prior to 2015, the most votes the NDP ever got in this province was a smidgeon over 200,000. Almost entirely in Edmonton. In the 1980’s.

The province didn’t turn NDP in 2015 but they were given a shot. Those voters stood with them in 2019 but they only managed to attract around 10,000 more. There were incredibly bright, flashing neon signs everywhere saying they needed to do more. And four years later they came up with “I know you’re still not really with us, and we don’t understand why, but those other guys are really, really, bad, so could you just lend us your vote until we figure out how to earn it?”

OH MY GOOD GAWD.

I didn’t even vote in 2023! ME. The “sign up for everything and have a say and please learn stuff and go vote” person. I refused to vote. ( I actually declined my ballot; walking into a polling station and asking to decline a ballot means that they verify your eligibility to vote, hand the ballot to you, you hand it back to them, and they put it in a special envelope that is sent back to Elections Alberta and counted as someone who showed up and still refused to put an X beside your party’s name. I also live in a rural riding so it was kind of performative, but I was still pretty shaken up about it.)

In case I just wasn’t being clear enough let me try again: it’s not Nenshi, it’s the NDP.

Losing my religion

After Danielle Smith’s public address announcing her anti-immigrant draft referenda questions, I got into a bit of a spat with some people in my mostly NDP-supporting group chat. I’ve been active in it for a couple of years and we disagree at times but there’s a lot of smart, insightful, politically-adjacent and aware people in it who I enjoy engaging with, even when we disagree.

I’m good at picking up when the UCP is setting a trap for the NDP and this is what set us off in grand disagreement that day because I ignored that and said “what do all these questions have in common? Money.”

Money. Pre-budget conversation piece. Simple, right?

But they took the bait and the r-word (the other one— “racist”) started flying.

The next day, I listened to my favourite podcast, which also addressed the r-word, and felt like I was suddenly too conservative for them— after being able to listen and learn from it for the better part of the last decade. Why were they spending so much time on the bait? Had I been radicalized by remaining on X, I wondered. Was I giving more credence to the conservative point of view popular in the other parts of my life? I felt like I was completely out of the loop.

To me, it was completely obvious that the UCP wanted a week’s worth of people calling them racist. It was Jim baiting Michael Scott with “that’s so hard,” and “you really think you can go all day” to get him to say “that’s what she said!”

Why? Because they knew some people wouldn’t be able to stop themselves. They set it up perfectly; all they had to do was wait for someone else to say the words.

Then, a week later, they introduced their budget with a deficit north of $9 billion and Danielle Smith goes on national TV to say that providing public services to 600,000 more people in the province, at $15,000 per person, just shocked the budget (the math is sound with their made-up numbers). Crazy, right?

And what we’re left with is Albertans balking at how the great fiscal managers of a conservative party just didn’t have a choice but to keep providing public services to all these people who moved to Alberta.

No ifs or buts. Just the costs. Nothing more. You know who made it racist? Spanky McAllister (who no one but the ridiculously engaged even knows exists) and everyone else.

Seriously.

It was Danielle Smith doing her best doe-eyed deer impression saying “good golly gee whiz, that’s a whole lot of money. It’s your money, you hard-working, generous Alberta folk, and it’s flying out the window faster than we can bring it in to pay for services you and your family need; but what could we do?”

The NDP got played.

The UCP knows the NDP (and every columnist outside Alberta who doesn’t work at Postmedia) thinks they’re the absolute worst. They took medically-approved care and consideration away from vulnerable youth in this province. They put young girls in the position of having to defend their sex if randos challenge it— in junior high school sports. They used the notwithstanding clause to ensure no court could stand up for their rights either. They took away the rights of teachers to strike well past their next collective agreement negotiations after they couldn’t bullshit Albertans into supporting their position. They’re awful, right?

Except Albertans often agreed with them because the UCP told a compelling story. If the government is awful, then voters wear that. Voters don’t want to wear that. If the NDP refuses to acknowledge the compelling story, they’re not going to learn how to oppose it effectively.

Government in waiting is more than opposition

The NDP has been in opposition in Alberta, save that one time, since the 1960’s. Opposition parties need to carve out a space for themselves in order to be relevant and they can most easily do that by choosing to talk about issues they don’t think the government is addressing. That’s what the Alberta NDP was built on and they have a long, and probably successful history of bringing a voice to the issues faced by people the government was overlooking.

The NDP can be lauded for saying the names of people who are harmed by the government’s policy. They are good at it. What they aren’t good at is making it undeniably clear that what is good for the most vulnerable in society is good for everyone else.

In 2015, I worked for Alberta Seniors in Calgary and I was asked to be part of a steering committee for the city’s Age Friendly initiative. The foundational principle of the initiative was that if they made decisions focused on making the lives of seniors better, it would also be better for everyone else. Sidewalks that were wide enough for two wheelchairs to pass one another was good for seniors, people with disabilities, strollers, and families on bikes. Age friendly. Installing both sound and light signals at crosswalks were good for seniors whose hearing or eye-sight may be less perfect than it once was; and also persons with disabilities, and families with small children. Social housing is good for seniors, and people with lower incomes, and people with disabilities, and families. Age friendly.

The NDP needs to get better at explaining how everyone else benefits.

Allow me to let you in on a little secret: Conservative voters are not a monolith and most do not see themselves as “evil” nor do they see themselves as “voting for evil things”, just as NDP voters are not a monolith and do not see themselves as proponents of “wrecking the economy”, or forcing everyone to rely on government for everything.

There’s more; the reason conservative voters are so concerned about the economy is because they expect a conservative government to also take care of the most vulnerable. They don’t have to hear a conservative party say that they will do it, or describe how they will, it’s simply expected.

I’m not kidding.

Supporters of the NDP have been used to hearing that they will take care of the most vulnerable, how they will do it, and it needs to be repeated over and over again because they were not just most vulnerable to falling through the cracks, they did fall under conservative governments. And conservative governments did cut programming and services that were an effing blip in a multi-billion dollar budget but truly helped those who needed them. And they did it because they knew it affected such a small number of people. Yes, they did all those things and not trusting them is a learned behaviour. I get it.

Under Jason Kenney, the AISH payment date was moved four days later so he could claim expenses went down after his first year in government. Nothing more. The payments went out April 1 instead of March 27th so as not to show up as an expense in the previous fiscal year. It was dirty, it was thoughtless, and people on AISH barely had enough to make it through a regular 30 day period let alone one that was extended by four more. And all so Jason Kenney could look like a good fiscal manager. It was despicable. Loathsome. Unforgivable.

Anyone who knows about that has every right to be utterly livid about it.

Most people don’t know, though, because no one was screaming about it on Page Six. When there was nothing to fill the void with, Page Six wasn’t bringing up that one time Jason Kenney screwed the most vulnerable in Alberta— there was a Trudeau in Ottawa and a woman banning bags and straws in the Mayor’s office; quite a full plate.

In fact, if Albertans heard anything over the past year, it’s that people on AISH receive more here than in any other province. Today, that number is a little more than $200 higher each month than it was back then, and it was re-indexed to inflation, almost two years after Kenney’s government halted the NDP’s implementation of it, which critics said at the time was better late than never, but it was late, because the NDP only brought it in after they’d been government for more than three years.

So, to a conservative voter, the UCP says “see? You knew we could be counted on to take care of the most vulnerable.”

And the voters nod sagely because of course they knew; it was always expected.

This is something the NDP needs to wrap their heads around; Albertans trust the conservatives on the economy, and they trust that under the excellent fiscal stewardship of a conservative government, vulnerable Albertans will be provided for.

They also need to realize that while the UCP is trusted on both of those things, they are only trusted on one of them— even though the NDP could argue just as strongly that they also made fiscally conservative decisions while they were in government if they weren’t so freaking allergic to the concept.

Why didn’t the NDP run on their record in 2019? I’m sure there’s other reasons but I’d argue that they were ashamed they didn’t do more NDP things. They were constrained by the same fiscal issues that Alberta’s governments have always been constrained by— we don’t bring in enough revenue to cover our expenses— and they were so afraid of alienating those few voters that had been with them for a generation that they couldn’t bring themselves to stand tall as good fiscal stewards.

I think they felt like they failed those they had promised to stand up for.

That’s not a problem the conservatives have because they know they’ll do the right thing, probably, when they can afford it and they know they’ll be forgiven if finances are tight and they can’t do it right now. The NDP didn’t feel that way. And maybe they still don’t but I cannot be more emphatic when I say that they need to get over it because the next election will not be like the last and they need to fight for it or fade away; for all our sakes.

Where do you see yourself in a year?

Ryan Jespersen invited Max Fawcett onto Real Talk Tuesday morning where they talked about the U.S./Israel attacks on Iran and oil prices, and in the latter half, they also talked about his article on Naheed Nenshi’s leadership. I hope I’ve managed to adequately detail why I disagree wholeheartedly that it’s entirely the NDP leader’s fault.

However.

Mr. Fawcett had some valid criticism and it’s worth repeating because I also heard it “pooh-poohed” by NDP stalwarts on a new podcast called “Balance of Power” (with former Environment Minister Shannon Phillips, former Chief of Staff to Rachel Notley Leah Ward, hosted by Annalise Klingbeil). I cringed hard when Ms. Ward said that seeing unflattering op-eds made her think that the authors weren’t getting enough one-on-one time attention from the party.

In fairness, I believe the question was something to the effect of “as a party, chief of staff, MLA; what do you do with this kind of criticism?” But basically saying that it was a cry for attention was not it. Not even close to being it. If that was a real answer, I implore Ms. Ward to lie next time.

The NDP was only slightly better than the coffee house-style Alberta Party before they formed government. In 2014, their leadership race had an entrance fee of $5,000 and a sliver more than 3,500 people voted. In 2024, the fee was $60,000, plus a good behaviour deposit, and more than 70,000 people voted.

It’s not the little party that could anymore, it’s a party that did. It’s a party that needs to find a way to wrap their values up inside an Alberta flag that’s nestled tightly inside of a Canadian flag and they need to work to reach the voters in this province. Not just the loyal NDPers, not just the PCs, but every Albertan. That’s legitimately their job.

For that, as Max Fawcett said, they need to put themselves out there with a real economic plan and they cannot wait until the election to start talking about it. Albertans want excellent public services and fiscal stewardship. They all do.

The NDP could hold town halls on the deficit and open up the dialogue on those hard conversations. And own your decisions. Yes, Mayor Nenshi raised taxes in Calgary because that’s a choice you have to make as a leader when your tax base gets hollowed out by corporate decision-makers.

Real leaders don’t schedule years of deficits with no plan to make up the difference.

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