Alberta NDP leadership candidates consider splitting from the federal NDP

NDP members should remember there is no easy fix. Just ask the Alberta Liberals.

“This action reflects the isolationist politics of Alberta, but more importantly it is the result of the deep, deep malaise at the top end of the federal party. There is the little Toronto power group which throws the ball back and fourth to each other - they feed off each other.”

That was a quote from an Alberta Liberal activist attending the party’s convention in Calgary where members of the seatless party voted two-to-one to break ties and declare provincial independence from the Liberal Party of Canada led by Prime Minister Trudeau.

That was in February 1977.

Fast forward to today and, although the circumstances are different, you might hear something similar come from the mouth of an Alberta NDP member when talking about the provincial party’s relationship with the federal NDP in Ottawa.

That sometimes rocky relationship took centre stage when Alberta NDP leadership candidate Rakhi Pancholi, the MLA for Edmonton-Whitemud, said she would like NDP members to have the choice of opting-out of automatically becoming members of the federal NDP.

NDP leadership Rakhi Pancholi (photo source: Rakhi Pancholi / Facebook)

“When I first bought a membership, I was surprised to learn that by doing so, I automatically became a member of a federal political party, the federal NDP,” Pancholi said in a statement.

“I had never held a membership in any federal political party before that time, and in 2018, there were already many issues on which I could see a real difference between the positions of the Alberta NDP and the federal NDP,” Pancholi said.

Like the NDP in other provinces, the Alberta NDP is autonomous from the federal NDP, with its own organization, staff and elected board of directors. But it does share links with the NDP’s national organization.

Probably more than any other mainstream political party in Canada, the NDP leans heavily a corps of campaign managers and organizers who travel across the country to work in provincial and federal elections.

Another link is that the parties memberships are shared. If you are a member of the provincial party you are also a member of the federal party.

But has that connection really been a problem?

“In my 4 years as ANDP ED only 5 people complained about the tie to the federal party,” wrote Brandon Stevens, who was executive director of the Alberta NDP from 2019 to 2023. “Yes there were more complaints from the Twitterati class. Rachel wisely knew not to have this debate brought forward because it would divide non-conservative voters and not unite them.”

Allowing an opt-out is a divisive issue for a lot of NDP members, some who have deeply held views that the party should be part of a national movement and others who embrace the idea of the Alberta party being completely independent from the federal party.

The links to the federal NDP and its sometimes very unhelpful positions are something the United Conservative Party has used to attack the provincial party for years, especially during Rachel Notley’s time the Premier’s Office.

While connections to the federal NDP are used as a bludgeon against NDP MLAs in Calgary, Lethbridge, and suburban Edmonton, where the federal Conservatives are strong, some NDP MLAs in the party’s large Edmonton caucus don’t face the same kind of political cross-pressures.

“In the ridings where we need to win - rural, the suburbs of Calgary, the doughnut around Edmonton - you talk to the candidates there and this is something that comes up on a regular basis,” said former NDP MLA Brian Malkinson when he launched an initiative to change the NDP’s name last year.

Notley successfully navigated the tensions between the two parties during her time as leader.

Even when the relationship between the two parties was frosty she remained a committed supporter of federal NDP candidates in Alberta, endorsing her local candidate, Heather McPherson, and campaigning alongside Edmonton Griesbach NDP candidate Blake Desjarlais in 2021.

Notley did this while building a broad voter coalition for the Alberta NDP that included Albertans who voted for Conservatives and Liberals in federal elections. And it is almost certainly the case that some of the rookie NDP MLAs elected in 2023 didn't vote for the NDP in last federal election.

Pancholi’s announcement focused on letting NDP members opt-out of joining the federal party but leadership candidate and Calgary-Mountain View MLA Kathleen Ganley appeared to go a step further by announcing she was open to talking about severing ties with the federal party altogether. She included this in her proposed Members’ Charter:

I have heard from many Alberta New Democrats who feel the relationship with the federal party is detrimental, does not reflect their values and they wish to sever ties. The concerns of these members are valid, they deserve to be heard and I will provide members with the full information they need to make this decision. I am committed to making sure the members have a choice on whether to sever ties.

Edmonton-Glenora MLA Sarah Hoffman, who launched her campaign on February 11, differentiated herself from her two opponents by leaning into her support for the NDP as a national movement.

Speaking at her campaign launch in Edmonton, Hoffman said she was proud of the achievements of the NDP at the national level, especially of its role establishing public medicare in Canada. Her campaign recently posted photos of her campaigning alongside Trisha Estabrooks, the former Edmonton public school board chair who is running for the federal NDP in Edmonton Centre.

It is not hard to understand why the candidates have taken the positions they have on this divisive issue.

As a second-term MLA and someone who does not have deep roots in the NDP, Pancholi will need to sign up a lot of new members to win this race, including many who don’t support the federal NDP. Something similar can probably be said about Ganley’s campaign, especially as she is currently the only Calgary candidate in the race. And Hoffman has the deepest NDP roots of the trio, going all the way back to her time as Director of Research for the feisty 2 MLA NDP Caucus in the late 2000s.

While it never hurts for the Alberta NDP to send strong signals to voters that they are independent from the federal NDP, the leadership candidates need to remember that the provincial party made big gains in the last election despite any negative associations to the national NDP. The leadership candidates also need to ask themselves whether they really want to spend their first few years as leader having this particular divisive internal debate.

As difficult as the debate is for committed longtime NDP members, this issue is not going to go away as along as NDP MPs from other parts of the country continue to be actively antagonistic to electorally viable New Democrats in the Alberta. And as the NDP moves closer to its June 22 leadership vote, the party’s membership lists are going to swell with new members who might never consider supporting the federal NDP but are enthusiastic about an alternative to Premier Danielle Smith’s UCP.

Whatever they decide, Alberta NDP members should remember that there is no easy fix. Just ask the Alberta Liberals.

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Nenshimania?!