Naheed Nenshi promises increased visibility of NDP in rural Alberta

Alberta's newest provincial party leader greets the locals in Ponoka during the town's stampede earlier this summer. Naheed Nenshi promises more visits like this one on the road to the 2027 election. (Photo courtesy Alberta NDP)

The NDP’s path to success in a general election that’s still three years away places a new emphasis on small-town Alberta, party leader Naheed Nenshi said.

“I think it's fair to say that in the past, Alberta's New Democrats have not been as visible as we should be outside of Calgary and Edmonton. So we have to show up in cities like Red Deer and Lethbridge and Medicine Hat and Grande Prairie and Fort McMurray more than we have,” Nenshi told The Macleod Gazette in a recent interview.

“We also need to show up in smaller communities and in truly rural areas, and really help folks see what our offer is.”

Nenshi said an 87-riding strategy is introducing him to well-prepared NDP volunteers who give him confidence in the party’s future. “We’ve got wonderful people who’ve been working for us and wonderful people who will run for us all over the province.”

The former three-term Calgary mayor said he’s warmly greeted at events like the Ponoka Stampede in central Alberta. An NDP resurgence is evident in constituencies like Highwood, immediately south of Calgary, which boasts a top-five NDP membership total, Nenshi said.

The 52-year-old won the party’s leadership in a first-ballot rout June 22 over three sitting members of the legislative assembly. The race to replace Rachel Notley — the first NDP leader in the province’s history to form the government — saw Nenshi take 86 per cent of the eligible vote in what the party said was a record turnout.

Despite the party’s two successive election losses under Notley, Nenshi said the former premier has laid important groundwork.

“I've always rejected left, right, centre. I figure those are terms that matter to journalists and political scientists, but less so to human beings who just want great public services, a thriving economy, good jobs and reasonable taxes. And fundamentally, I think that the Alberta NDP under Rachel Notley was already that party.”

Nenshi said that while deciding whether to run for the leadership he was “pleasantly surprised to discover that. . .the party already represented the values and ethics of your average Albertan.”

Still, he was nervous that broadening the NDP tent would face pushback from within. “But I’ve actually found very little resistance. I found a party full of everyday Albertans who are really excited about change.”

Nenshi’s predecessor led the NDP to power in 2015, capitalizing on discontent with the ruling Progressive Conservatives after Alison Redford’s unpopular premiership. Smaller communities played a significant role in Notley’s historic win, with 20 seats beyond Calgary and Edmonton landing in the NDP’s favour. The final tally had the NDP celebrating a 54-30 victory over the Jim Prentice PCs and the Wildrose Party combined.

But Notley’s policies weren’t always popular, especially in the rural areas that had made such a difference in the election. The right reorganized under one party banner, the United Conservative Party, to fight the NDP as a single front.

The result was a crumbling of her rural support in 2019, with just two seats beyond Edmonton and Calgary going the NDP’s way. Jason Kenney’s United Conservatives swooped into power, electing 63 members to the NDP’s 24.

The future party of Naheed Nenshi came back last year to form the largest opposition in provincial history, but still fell short of the 49 seats that went to Danielle Smith’s UCP. Victories in ridings beyond Calgary and Edmonton improved – but to just four – as the NDP rebounded to 38 seats.

Nenshi envisions an NDP victory in 2027. “And that’s not the end. That’s the beginning,” he said.

“Our goal is to form the government so that we can actually do good things for all Albertans. And the party's already there. Rachel Notley has done a ton of work. So I'm thrilled about that, and now we just have to express that to more and more of our neighbours.”

Listening is a big part of preparing for 2027, Nenshi said. “My overarching message is that I don’t have all the answers. But the good news is that three years gives us the opportunity to sit down at people’s kitchen tables across the province and ask folks to help us co-create our promise.”

Solutions often need to be tailored to individual communities, he said, and that’s part of the approach he, his caucus colleagues and his advisers will talk through in the coming months and years.

Nenshi is also telegraphing that his elected team is ready to pivot to the governing side of the legislature’s floor. He’s changed his caucus’s critic titles to “shadow cabinet minister,” employing a parliamentary tradition from the United Kingdom. “It was really important to send a signal to Albertans to say, we want to be the government-in-waiting.”

Nenshi is a newcomer to party politics, but his election as Calgary mayor in 2010 attracted wide attention. His unique strategy was renowned for its use of viral messaging, social media, coffee parties and slogans written in purple chalk on sidewalks.

Armed with a bachelor of commerce degree from the University of Calgary and a master’s in public policy from Harvard, Nenshi had already built a public profile as a consultant and pundit for his work and views on civic affairs, planning and development, and corporate citizenship.

Nenshi rose from third in pre-election polling in 2010 to a statistical tie with the earlier frontrunners for mayor. On election day he took about 40 per cent of the vote to become the first Muslim mayor of a major Canadian city. His re-election in 2013 saw him capture more than 73 per cent of the vote, and his final election in 2017 more than 50 per cent.

Nenshi had never sat as an elected MLA before running for the NDP leadership, and he still hasn’t. With the legislature scheduled to sit for five weeks this fall before breaking until the spring, Nenshi said the floor is in capable hands. Christina Gray, the member for Edmonton-Mill Woods, will sit as the NDP leader in the assembly and house leader.

Before finding a constituency to run in himself, Nenshi wants to keep the momentum going in Lethbridge-West. The government must call a byelection by Jan. 1 to fill the seat left open when the NDP’s Shannon Phillips stepped down.

The NDP’s new candidate in Lethbridge-West is Rob Miyashiro, a former Lethbridge city councillor whose career in human services spans four decades.

Nenshi noted that voter turnout for the Lethbridge-West nomination race topped 70 per cent of the riding’s NDP membership, the highest in Alberta NDP history. That demonstrates continuing excitement in the NDP movement in Alberta, he said.

When the right seat does become available in Calgary or even Edmonton, Nenshi will run for election. In the meantime, there’s plenty to do beyond the floor of the legislature, he said.

“I’ll run when there’s a byelection, certainly, but I am not in any huge rush,” Nenshi said. “It's not a big deal to me. I'll be there (at the legislature) anyway. I'll just be watching it from upstairs instead of from downstairs.