Happy May Day, the day of the worker just about everywhere in the world except North America.
Once upon a time, Canadians used to think of the New Democratic Party as the party of the workers. Not so much anymore, though, as the results of Monday’s election powerfully illustrate.
The Conservative Party of Canada has worked hard for months to persuade Canadian voters that they were the party of workers, and spent a lot of time cooking up three-word rhyming slogans to drive home the point. I’m not knocking that, by the way. It nearly worked.
Now, I don’t believe for a moment that the party of Pierre Poilievre would have done anything to alleviate the grave problems of the rising living costs, unaffordable housing, and good quality jobs in Canada. Under Poilievre the Conservatives have become MAGA Trumpers to the core. As in the United States, they would have made things worse.
But credit where credit is due, they talked about it. They acknowledged the actual problems that Canadians are worrying about around their kitchen tables and in their workplaces.
Granular crunching of the election results is yet to come, but it’s very hard to believe that the NDP collapse on Monday wasn’t driven by the fact the party had so little to say about these core issues for most of the eight years it was led by Jagmeet Singh.
As the CBC pointed out on E-Day Plus 2, it was Conservatives not Liberals who captured supposedly safe NDP seats in blue collar ridings like Windsor West in southern Ontario and Elmwood-Transcona in Winnipeg.
“The collapse of the NDP was also on full display in ridings where the Liberals held their seats,” the reporter also observed. “In Halifax, for example, the NDP have won or placed second in the riding since 2004, but trailed in third after Monday’s election.”
Hey! Maybe the NDP would have done better if they’d talked more about the very real issues that were driving working Canadians nuts instead of leaving that to the Cons! D’ya think?
Instead, Singh had other priorities – important issues as well, in many cases, but not the ones that could have saved the NDP’s bacon in 2025.
Well, what’s done is done. Singh is moving on. The NDP has a long road ahead of it to rebuild if it is ever again to become the political force it was for a spell in the early 21st century.
If it wants to reverse its slide to total irrelevance, it’s going to have to find a leader who connects with Canadians better than Singh ever did, and has better political judgment about skating to where the puck is going to be, not where he or she wishes it was.
In light of that, let’s have a frank talk about the Alberta NDP.
Alberta New Democrats, who came close to forming the provincial government under Rachel Notley for a second time in May 2023, will open their three-day convention at the Edmonton Convention Centre Friday morning.
Naheed Nenshi, the former Calgary mayor who was overwhelmingly chosen by NDP members in June 2024 with great hopes about the future, will address the convention at 11 a.m. on Saturday. He will face a leadership review vote immediately after his speech, at noon, which doesn’t sound like an approach intended to encourage a thoughtful response, but that’s what the agenda says.
Surely I can’t be the only NDP supporter with the feeling that, just like Singh, Nenshi is failing to connect with the Albertans whose votes are going to be needed to defeat the United Conservative Party (UCP) in 2027, or whenever Danielle Smith decides to call an election?
Nenshi has had many opportunities to take on Smith and his response has been weirdly passive. There are lots of social media videos, but I don’t get the feeling Nenshi’s professorial lectures have homed in on the issues that matter the most to the working Albertans whose votes the provincial NDP requires to push it over the top.
Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan made this point in his unsuccessful leadership campaign last year before dropping out. In light of Monday’s facts on the ground, though, New Democrats need to admit McGowan was onto something.
Notley was criticized after the 2023 election for attacking Smith too much and not setting out policies that would appeal to voters enough. That may or may not have been fair, but Nenshi seems to have gone too far in the other direction.
The theme of the convention? “Better is possible.” Sorry, but that’s just never going to be followed a cry of “to the barricades!”
I’m hearing that many of the Albertans who signed NDP memberships last year to vote for Nenshi, boosting membership to about 85,000, aren’t sticking around. When the party tries to get them to re-up, a lot aren’t interested. I’ve heard membership has fallen to about 17,000, maybe lower.
The UCP bragged it raised triple the donations that the NDP did in the first quarter. You don’t have to believe every word they say to be concerned that there is enough truth to this to make it dangerous. And a lot of that money is coming from engaged individual donors.
Moreover, the government introduced legislation to open the spigots of corporate cash.
Assailing Premier Smith for her increasingly open separatism is a step in the right direction by the NDP. It’s time not to be shy about pointing out who she really is. I’m not sure, though, that daring her to call a referendum right now is the right move. Be careful what you wish for.
Regardless, the NDP can’t win if it won’t take the bull by the horns and address the issues that Monday’s federal vote proved matter to working voters and their families.
It’s not too late to avoid a disaster like the one Singh’s federal NDP suffered Monday night, but just ignoring the fact that the NDP isn’t connecting with a lot of Alberta voters on key issues isn’t going to help.
We’ve just watched what happens when a party fails to face up to a problem in a timely fashion.
This deserves to be a topic of discussion this weekend.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
