Naheed Nenshi reflects on first six months as NDP leader in year-end interview

The Alberta NDP chose a new leader in 2024 for the first time in nearly a decade. 

Former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi won the race to succeed Rachel Notley in June by securing 86 per cent of the vote. 

Nenshi entered the spring leadership contest as an outsider. He admitted to not becoming a party member until shortly before he announced his leadership intentions. 

The CBC’s Michelle Bellefontaine spoke to Nenshi in mid-December, shortly after the end of the fall legislature sitting. 

Thanks for taking the time to talk with me in your first year-ender as Opposition leader.

Naheed Nenshi: Thanks for having me and we found a nice spot for it here at the Citadel [Theatre].

So, let’s have a look back at the last year. It’s been a big year for you. I think you went into last year not expecting to be where you are right now.

Oh, that is very true.

When you had the leadership vote,  you won a a large number of votes in the leadership contest, it was just an overwhelming majority.  But you’re succeeding a very popular Rachel Notley as leader as she grew the NDP substantially during her time, her decade, as leader. So, how do you follow her and make your own mark on the party?

That’s the question she herself is asking these days, because it’s great to have her still around as my senior adviser. And look, she’s a once-in-a-lifetime politician.  What she was able to do is extraordinary. 

But I also think that it’s important for us to understand that, well, we didn’t win that last election and as a result, we have a premier and a government now who are doing irreparable harm to Albertans. So, it’s time for us to really ask in dealing with real issues. 

WATCH | Nenshi discusses what lies ahead for Alberta NDP in 2025:

And look, I’m not going to pretend that I’m some Athenian in my robe, and it’s going to be high-minded democracy. You ever watch a city council meeting? You’ll know there’s a lot of back and forth. Sometimes there’s stuff that you’re not too proud to show Grade 6 kids. 

But ultimately you’re rowing in a direction to try and make the city better. And I’m just not seeing that from this government.

You know, we’ve talked to Albertans and there are five things we hear constantly that people are worried about: cost of living, jobs, health care, education, public safety. And the UCP really did nothing on any of those this session. 

They had 14 bills, none of which were focused on any of those things. 

The only health care and education things that they did were the anti-trans hate stuff, punching down on vulnerable children.

And I think to myself, you know, premier, you’ve wanted this job your whole life. You’ve got it now. The keys to the engine are in your hands. You have the power to make life better for people. 

And you’re just frittering it away on virtue-signalling, on things that you think will make you popular or get you on Fox News, instead of actually doing good work for Albertans. And I find that really disappointing. 

So, you know, this session, for those who are really nerdy ledge watchers, you will have seen that we have been acting in a different way. We don’t heckle anymore. We are focused on putting in amendments that really would make the legislation better. 

We’re not playing games anymore and we’re not dragging vulnerable Albertans through as targets or political pawns the way that others may have done. 

And that is a change. It’s certainly a change for the UCP. They don’t know how to deal with it. But it’s also a change for my colleagues on the NDP side who are trying to figure out how to deal with it.

But what I’m trying to do is show Albertans that it doesn’t have to be like this. Yes, we’re going to fight. Yes, we’re going to, you know, yell at each other across the way. That’s just kind of the system we’re inheriting. But there is a way for a government to operate where those Grade 6 kids can go. OK. This is why government is important.

I was interested to hear you say this morning about… the anti- trans bills, that you didn’t want to drag it out because it could potentially hurt the kids that would be affected by it. So tell me a little bit more about that. You told your caucus about that?

Yeah, we’ve been spending a lot of time in [the] community and this has been going on since January 31st. And look, kids and parents are really scared.

And what we really heard back from the community is this has been hard on people. It’s been very challenging to their mental health. It’s been very challenging to how they’re treated in the community, to threats and violence and insults that they’re getting in the community. 

And at some point, we got to get onto the legal battle, which is the next step of all this. We knew this was going to pass. We knew that government wasn’t interested in looking at any amendments. So, dragging things through and having people in the gallery at two in the morning to listen to government insult their identity, it just didn’t feel right to me and it didn’t feel right to people in the community.

When you when you were running for the leadership, you wanted an 87-seat strategy, you wanted to get out there and talk to people and maybe address the traditional weaknesses of the NDP in rural areas and smaller cities as well.  What have you been able to do or what are you planning to do in the next year?

What I’m hearing is that in smaller communities they’re facing the exact same problems as in large communities but even more acute.

So, while I might be sitting in Edmonton looking at a 12- or 13-hour wait to get into the emergency room, in smaller communities they’re looking at no emergency room as the emergency room being closed on holiday weekends because there’s no one to staff it. 

It’s become the norm in many communities in Alberta that women cannot deliver their babies in their home community.

And in addition to that, the pressure that we feel across the province around “what’s my kids job going to be, what’s my kids future, how do we keep them at home,” is so much bigger in small communities where they’re not seeing an economic future. 

They know that the oil industry is not going to be what it was in the future and they’re wondering what comes next. And the government just hasn’t been there for them. 

So this government has, to its peril, taken Albertans outside of Calgary and Edmonton for granted. They assume they’re always gonna vote for them and I’m just not sure that’s true.

Are you concerned at all about we know about the effect of a Trump administration will be on Alberta?

Look, we gotta take this very seriously. You know, the UCP caucus literally did a happy dance the day after the U.S. election in the legislature. How excited they were about Trump.

Those 25 per cent tariffs, if they apply to oil and gas, then our economy is done, we’re decimated. So, that’s a very big problem. 

But even if the tariffs don’t immediately apply to oil and gas, they apply to our agricultural products. They apply to billions of dollars of exports. 

It’s unspeakable how bad this will be for our economy.

And so instead of actually putting on her grown-up pants and working to negotiate this, we have a premier who basically is like the person who goes to the used car lot and says, “that’s my dream car. I’ll pay you anything for it.”

She goes on Fox News, her dream of life, and says “Trump is hilarious. I love that guy.”

Here’s the thing. What matters is the overall economic power of Canada in having this conversation.

And the premier freelancing and talking about how hilarious Trump is on Fox News, I would like to say, look, that’s going to hurt us. The point is, it’s irrelevance. It’s not going to make a huge difference. 

But if she were good at her job, she’d be trying to figure out how to help the Alberta economy going forward instead of just saying Trump is exactly right about everything and we love him.

Looking ahead to the next year, I mean, maybe I’ve already asked this question, but what do you see is the biggest challenge facing Alberta and what role can the Opposition play?

We hear the same thing from Albertans everywhere we go. There are five things people care about. They care about the cost of living, they care about jobs, they care about public health care and public education, and they care about public safety.

This government has done nothing on any of those things in this legislative session.

So, what we need to do is really say to people, here’s our offer on affordability. So this is what, this is what our economic development plan is, our plan to get decent, good jobs into communities across Alberta. 

You know, data centres? Great idea, no jobs.

And so we need sustainable, long-term jobs in these communities that keep young people there. 

But there are also three things on affordability that are directly in our control. It’s auto insurance, utilities and housing. So we got to get back to Albertans and give them an offer on what we can do to help them have good jobs, good lives and decent services.