The NDP get-together in Edmonton yesterday was billed as a leadership debate, the last one before voting commences today. In the event, though, it seemed more like a candidates’ mutual admiration society.
The four contenders left in the contest to replace Rachel Notley as NDP leader all seemed to agree that amity is what the 1,000 or so party members who made it downtown to the Edmonton Convention Centre for the event demanded from them, and that’s what they delivered.
If anyone was looking for a keen-edged strategy from candidates Kathleen Ganley, Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse or Sarah Hoffman to knock frontrunner Naheed Nenshi into second place, there was none in evidence. It should be fairly obvious that all this goodwill and harmony wasn’t it.
For their part, audience members were polite too – by and large obeying their instructions not to cheer candidates’ points while they were trying to make them.
The theme of the debate was supposed to be the NDP’s core values – as befits a debate in Edmonton, where the Opposition party holds all the ridings within city limits and even in its leanest years could usually count on winning one or two seats.
But with Mr. Nenshi’s apparently commanding lead, no one seemed willing to aggressively address the elephant in the room: the fact the former Calgary mayor only became a party member recently and favours the aggressively centrist approach associated in NDP circles with Liberals and the Alberta Party.
But then, as has been said here before, Ms. Notley built the NDP into a big tent party with an increasingly centrist policy book and most of the Alberta NDP’s membership made the shift long before anyone from outside the traditional party’s core could be credibly accused of carpetbagging.
Queried individually by reporters after their agreeable discussions had ended, the candidates were hard pressed to explain the differences between their positions, such as they are.
At one point during the main event, Mr. Nenshi seemed to suggest that he might still be interested in a formal break with the federal NDP – or maybe not.
With the number of new members who have joined up since the leadership race started, he noted, the Alberta branch may now have more influence than it used to over the federal party, an interesting point.
“We have to be able to be attractive to folks who may not want to cast their ballot for the federal NDP,” he said, leading to the only moment in the entire affair than hinted at anything other than cordial consensus.
Ms. Hoffman responded firmly, if not sharply: “Nobody can make this decision on their own.” She added: “I’m proud of where the federal party stands on many, many issues.”
But if anyone was of a mind to exploit that difference further, or demand more clarity from Mr. Nenshi about what he has in mind, they chose not to.
To be realistic, with voting (electronic and postal) already underway by this morning, many and perhaps most members who are eligible to vote would have made up their minds already. So probably hammering Mr. Nenshi about that at such a late hour would have just sown discord.
What’s more, with only four candidates on the ranked ballot, unless there’s a covert well of support for one of the other candidates, the potential for surprises at this point are vanishingly thin. If you wanted to take bets on a more interesting question than who will win, it would be, Who will come second?
Whoever that is will wield considerable influence in the post-Notley NDP, and may be expected by many old-time Edmonton New Democrats who are determined to stick with the federal party to speak up for them in caucus and, perhaps eventually, in cabinet.
So maybe the smart move by all the candidates really was to keep it so cheerful, polite and agreeable it was hardly worth jotting down any anodyne quotes. After all, at this point, who in Alberta or perhaps all of Canada doesn’t want the Oilers to win the Stanley Cup, eh? (All candidates agreed on this point, naturally.)
The rising tide of orange and blue in the streets of Edmonton as the NDP meeting broke up, by the way, was not about politics – and at least the Oilers fans on their way to Rogers Place didn’t go home disappointed like anyone who’d been hoping to witness a devastating put down on the Convention Centre stage.
Beyond that, to borrow a riff from comedian Steve Patterson, host of the CBC’s The Debaters, who did the audience pick as the winner?
After their closing statements, applause for Mr. Nenshi was loud and sustained, as it was for Ms. Hoffman. It was polite but more restrained for Ms. Ganley and Ms. Calahoo Stonehouse.
Well, I listened carefully and it was almost too close to call. But I have to give it to Naheed Nenshi!
The winner will be revealed on June 22.
Regardless of who the NDP picks as their next leader, they have the ability to work together as a team, as opposed to the UCP, who are falling apart, and crumbling. Naheed Nenshi will easily topple Danielle Smith in a provincial election debate, if she even lasts that long as the premier of Alberta, which is very likely that she won’t. Whomever replaces Danielle Smith as the UCP leader, still will not be able to survive an election debate with Naheed Nenshi. Naheed Nenshi is bringing up the UCP’s very costly boondoogles, and their other major mistakes on a regular basis, because he knows it’s important to do that. I’ve even heard him mentioning something along the lines of holding the media to account because they aren’t taking Danielle Smith and the UCP to task for what they are doing wrong. Postmedia columnists will never hold the UCP to account for what they are doing wrong. These NDP leadership candidates have great policy initiatives, which is good to see, in comparison to those of the UCP and Danielle Smith, which are detrimental to the well being of the province, and this country. With the NDP, we will have something similar to the great governance of Peter Lougheed. Under the UCP, we have something similar to the abysmal leadership of Ralph Klein, where Albertans don’t see any benefits.
The NDP tried in 2023 to campaign on the UCP’s terrible track record, and it failed. It needs to show Alberta’s electorate what it would do for them besides not be evil.
However, sadly for the country, I think the Alberta NDP’s best chance to win in 2027 would be if Pierre Poilièvre wins in 2025. Only when the UCP no longer has Justin Trudeau to kick around anymore will it be possible to shine a light on their terrible policies.
jerrymacgp: The media didn’t take Danielle Smith and the UCP to task for their major mistakes, and very expensive boondoogles, and that’s why the NDP were defeated in 2023. Furthermore, Danielle Smith lied, as did columnists, such as those in Postmedia owned publications, and the electorate fell for it. Licia Corbella did just that, and she should have been punished for spreading misinformation to influence the outcome of the provincial election in Alberta. She is a card carrying member of the UCP.
https://albertapolitics.ca/2023/05/copy-editors-checking-facts-thats-thing-of-the-past-at-postmedia-apparently-as-election-column-illustrates/
Isn’t it remarkable that Canada is in a huff over “foreign interference” in our elections from China when the stench from south of the border is so thick and obvious in Alberta?
It isn’t the race I expected before Nenshi decided to run and upset the cart. But events and personalities do change the course of things.
Perhaps some were preoccupied with thoughts of the upcoming hockey game and the chances of finally winning. It probably helped make the oppositional mood more positive. It certainly would also be hard to get much media coverage of attacks in such a preoccupied moment, so perhaps it was best to be more collegial, which the NDP is good at anyways. This is not a hunger games race like the UCP had.
The NDP may need to broaden it support a bit, but unlike the UCP it does not have to as vigorously run against itself to win.
A lot of events will happen over the next few years and depending on the outcome of the Federal election, the relationship with the Federal NDP may not matter as much then and it is probably more for the membership to decide anyways. It could end up that it will instead be the UCP trying to distance itself from its Federal colleagues or vice versa.
I suppose the ranking of the candidates will offer some further insight into what the party is thinking and of course everyone remaining in the race wants to do as good as possible even if they don’t win. But at this point, perhaps much like hockey, its not just only about the current match, but the next important ones in the future.
Let’s face it, with the major parties embracing centrist big tent politics these days, it won’t long before we’ll have election debates leaders will be going out of their way to praise their opponents, trying to impress the electorate they are the “nicest” and most “polite” so therefore they deserve the chance to form the next government. A government of “nice guys”.
This will be a particular Canadian trait, unlike the United States where politics will always be a mud pit of sleaze and more sleaze with political sleazeballs trying to convince the electorate there’s vast existential differences between the two main parties when there is none.
Let’s face it, with ignorant TBA/UCP voters running this provincial asylum, the idea of “niceness” will never enters into the political equation. Greed and hate are what rule in this shithole province. It’s the (alt-right) players that make politics a “mud pit of sleaze”. It doesn’t have to be like that but simple voters can only relate to the fear and hate fed to them by their conservative political idols.
Nicely said.
I’ve been disappointed by the debates I’ve seen — the first two provincial debates in Lethbridge and Calgary, as well as the local Forum in Grande Prairie (not truly a debate, but it did allow all four candidates to speak on the issues) — because none of them elicited any genuine differentiation between them. They were all in “violent agreement” on virtually every question. Yes, Sarah Hoffman made a few pointed jabs at Neheed Nenshi, but that was it. I missed this past weekend’s debate, due to other commitments, but from what I read here, it sounds like it wasn’t much different from the others.
I’d hoped the debates would help me make my choice, but they have been of no help at all. On policy, I find myself in broad agreement with Sarah*, Ms Ganley, and Mr Nenshi — unfortunately I don’t think JCS is ready for prime time, and in Grande Prairie she came out in favour of small modular [nuclear] reactors as part of Alberta’s energy grid, which I think would be contentious for many longtime New Democrats. So for me, it’s between Nenshi, Ganley and Hoffman.
It’s going to be a tough decision for me, and I don’t have a good track record in these things: yes, in 2014 I voted for Rachel over her opponents, but in federal NDP leadership contests I’ve voted for losers over and over again — the late Bill Blaikie, Niki Ashton, and Charlie Angus come to mind.
*I use Sarah Hoffman’s first name because of the four candidates, she is the only one I’ve met with one-on-one on multiple occasions, including a formal meeting in her legislature office when she was Minister of Health and I was in a governance role with my professional regulatory body.
Update: I had an opportunity to watch the Edmonton debate on YouTube, and while there was still very little genuine differentiation between the four candidates in terms of policy, I have to admit that it finally showed me enough about them for me to make my decision.
I just voted online. We’ll see whether I once again voted for a loser lol.
I’m glad to see the candidates get away from the horse race part of contemporary politics. It show a great deal more maturity, responsibility, competence and wisdom than the vast, vast majority of political commenters and observers.
Who wins is a very distant consideration to what actually gets done. A point seemingly unfamiliar with almost the whole of the voting public.
Maybe let’s put, I don’t know, let’s say half the ink and angst into policy development and potential than what goes into who’s leading in the polls and who uttered some unmentionable bullshit about someone else.
It would serve us well. All of us.
Could not agree more. I am not sure what is so appealing in the current politics of lying, false promises, insults and conspiracy theories.
To me it is lack of competence and self confidence. It sounds like those that do not speak English and use swearing to fill in the sentences.
Just want someone to out the ‘incestuous relationship between the Alberta government, the industry, and the regulator’. https://energi.media/energi-notes/dave-yager-appointment-to-aer-board-symbol-of-status-quo-not-change/
Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse says the right words anyway. Speaking of appointments, Dave Yager seems to think the AER’s role should come directly under a Ministry. What’s that, a hermaphroditic relationship? Interesting that the MD of Ranchland is requesting an appeal to the exemption given by the heavy handed, thumbs in the pie Honourable Minister of Energy to Northback Holdings. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-energy-coal-mining-northback-holdings-1.7222590
In the meantime, from Mr. Martin Ignasiak, KC (not KFC, they’re cooking goose, yours, not chicken) for Bennett Jones LLP:
“None of the AWA, CPAWS, TWS, and CCS require full participation rights to
effectively make their arguments. For the following reasons, each of these NGOs can effectively advance their arguments with limited participation rights. First, the
Applications are limited to an exploration program and the AER has previously
confirmed that localized, temporary and short duration exploration programs “will not result in significant adverse effects on the environment.” The environmental impacts potentially resulting from the Applications do not warrant review by four NGOs that have been formed by different groups of citizens dedicated to raising environmental concerns in public forums… granting these NGOs full participation rights will unnecessarily extend the length and scope of the hearing, which is unwarranted considering the nature of the Applications. Fourth, each of these NGOs, on behalf of their legal counsel and experts who routinely
appear at AER hearings, will almost certainly seek costs from Northback at the
conclusion of this process. There is no reason Northback should be required to fund this many additional lawyers and expert consultants in connection with an exploration program. It goes without saying that within the resource development community, the potential of this type of expensive and inefficient review process for an exploration program acts as a significant disincentive for investment. This is contrary to Alberta’s best interests.
“Of course I’m going to take advice from CEOs,” she said. “Who else would I take advice from?”
I have no sympathy for the MD of Ranchlands. They’re in the provincial constituency of Livingstone-McLeod, a reliably conservative seat currently held by former LPN and former Mayor of Claresholm Chelsae Petrovic — who in the spring of 2023 distinguished herself by blaming cardiac patients for their heart disease (a statement I find particularly offensive on a professional level, having practised as a Registered Nurse in Cardiac Rehabilitation for 16 years, ending in October 2022).
Albertans have a long history of voting for conservatives over and over and over again, and hoping they can influence them to govern differently once they’re elected. What they need to learn is how to thrown the bums out, and vote for someone else, if they don’t get the government they want.
During the PC days, I often said that the voters were afraid of their PC MLAs, when in fact in any healthy democracy, the MLAs should be afraid of the voters. In rural Alberta, even now, the MLAs don’t yet fear the wrath of their constituents, and so the constituents don’t get to influence the government’s decision-making.
Maybe if they didn’t vote conservative so reliably, they might get more responsive government.
So what now? https://youtu.be/QCphS4_Rp3w
Say what you will about Nenshi, and I’ve definitely said what I think; he didn’t serve on the Edmonton police commission, and if JCS was more of a front runner I would hope more people would be talking about that rather than the crickets I’ve heard.
I’m guessing with the recent history Edmonton progressives are going to see that as a bit of a non starter now.
Considering I have always been a Boston Bruins fan. Panthers in four. Sweep.
I’m ambivalent about cats, my Peshat confession for today. So I want to assure cat lovers that the allegory I’m about to employ is honestly between Remez and, for homily’s sake, Derash. No real cats have been harmed and I do not counsel anyone to do such a thing. It’s just a little serving of political hermeneutics, that’s all.
But in politics, there’s always more than one way to skin a cat. Conservatives have theirs, just like Dippers, Liberals and Greens do. Sometimes, especially during psephological proselytization (typically conservatives would deride such language as an elite swamp-word, a mean condescension as per their current fashion of projection. For their information, it means ‘election campaigning’), each partisan proposition endeavours to distinguish itself from the others, sometimes in diametric opposition to others’ purely for distinction’s sake. Yet, even in such hyper-partisan times, it’s still most often the same cat that the majority of voters agrees needs skinning, the same policy that needs to get done.
Surveys show that nearly everybody agrees about nearly every policy that needs to be gotten done, and that it’s only a few exceptions that partisans do all the fighting about, these days with vigour verging on triggering—at very least on the right.
Now, it’s been said many times in many ways that Canadians are generally middle-of-the-road voters—a fact that Canadian-style Liberals, the “Natural Governing”, campaign-from-the-left, rule-from-the-right, geometrically centrist party takes full advantage of. (As Chretien’s finance minster, Paul Martin could be bottom-line business liberal, but not as PM after Chrétien retired. When, post-Martin, the left-right question —that should never have been asked—was assigned respective leadership candidates, Ray vs Ignatieff, support for the veteran party collapsed for the first time ever. It broke the rule by which the party had won power for so much of the country’s existence, and longtime Liberal voters simply stayed home because their expectation that the Liberals be THE centrist party was violated by factionalism.)
Tight and tightening races seen in recent years—even tighter in popular-vote and opinion-poll terms—has a curious feature that nearly-tied contending parties have both factions which reject centrist policies and politics, usually the loudest faction, pitted against a more moderate, usually more muted faction in the same party which, left or right, prefers preserving more centrist traditions—not just to be “nice Canadians” (which of course really is nice) but also to avail more opportunities to get polices for the public good done by way of compromise and cooperation between differing parties. We might conclude that upwards of half the electorate is comprised of moderate centrists, those of the centre-right and centre-left meeting halfway in the policy middle, and differing without controversy only about trivial political detail.
Why do party factions which prefer centrist positions apparently tolerate co-existing with factions which trend away from the centre towards the extremities of the left-right spectrum? And has the middle-of-the-road Canadian electorate somehow switched from its tried and true centrist tradition? Appearances can be deceiving and, eventually, fleeting: many moderates do not, in fact, tolerate extremism and, quickly or slowly, have orchestrated the main electoral upsets of the last decade; slight and subtle partisan movement in the secrecy of the ballot box (if not by lawn-sign) afforded JT his last two minorities because his party’s return to centrism allows centre-right moderates to comfortably meet him in the middle while abandoning their nominal “Conservative” party as it trends away from the middle.
BC’s John Horgan, a real ‘red-diaper baby’, campaigned from the left but, once he acquired the premiership, ruled somewhat further to the right—the centre, in fact, despite loud caterwauling from the left of his own party. Obviously he attracted previous supporters of the BC Liberal regime in 2020, becoming the first NDP premier to have governed for two consecutive terms. The math is plain: moderates abandoned the defeated BC Liberal party in earnest once the NDP proved it could govern from the centre and, now that the upstart BC Conservatives are marching lockstep away from the centre, the renamed BC Liberals (now BC United) have tanked, four MLAs having defected to the BCCons which now hold second-place in the approaching, October race. The NDP is predicted to win another majority in six months so, yeah, guess where than leaves the BCU: it leaves leader Kevin Falcon scrambling to “unite the right” while at the same time trying to out-centrist the current occupiers of that verdant partisan territory.
It’s one thing to spout hyperbole from the Opposition benches, but even Harper new he had to temper his rhetoric once his CPC won power (perhaps feeling vulnerable by the fact that it was only by default when the Liberals punched themselves out of the running for a decade): having appeased the religious right-wingers whilst in Opposition, and agreed for two minority terms to accommodate their retrogressive reproductive demands once he’d won a majority, he immediately double-crossed them when he did, announcing loudly that he would not be entertaining any changes to the accessible-abortion laws he knew centrist Canadian voters approve of. Maxine Bernier disgruntled former HaperCon cabinet minister, maintains only an extremist position so, while stealing about 6% of the pop-vote from the CPC, he has elected no MPs in the past two federal contests.
The NDP, which has won power fewer times than even the conservatives, wasn’t born in the middle like the two older parties, and still has something to learn about how to do centrist politics whilst harbouring more-lefty factions. Nenshi will probably win the Alberta NDP leadership and will have to learn to stop saying he’s “nonpartisan” else runner-up Sara Hoffman become a contrarian instead of a complimetarian. But the “centrist” issue really isn’t one. Outgoing leader, former Premier Rachel Notley, did pretty well in balancing the left with the centre —in fact achieving her notable successes by going to where the voters are. Her apparent hesitancy to risk offending her left faction might have cost the party the win last year: in retrospect, the very close result—as was correctly forecast— meant that’s where the voters wanted to be: meeting in the middle. Prospects are good for next time because Calgary was the critical battleground and Nenshi was the popular mayor of that city—while the TUBCRAP government worships a radicalized far-right.
It keeps reminding: trending towards the centre eventually wins, away for the centre eventually loses. The centre is where contending principles meet, where they get hammered out and workable.
Extremists on both ends of the spectrum will of course insist emergent catastrophes demand more extreme policies —or that, I guess, Canadians are becoming something other than middle-of-the-road voters because of the many crises extremists conspire to theorize.
So, Cassandra, what will it be for dinner?—a side of chicken or a full serving of Chicken Little?
I think I know the answer—or at least I hope I do.
You sir deserve a paddlin’! https://youtu.be/aFm8UJuFOiI