Chris Selley: Alberta NDP's divorce from the federal party trainwreck is better for everyone

Calgary Herald

2 days ago

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Mark Carney cuts the ultimate Laurentian-elite figure, but he did grow up in Edmonton, which is a bit risqué from a Liberal standpoint. Before Carney, the party's leaders had grown up (in this order) in Montreal, Toronto, Quebec City, Ottawa, Shawinigan, Ottawa, Montreal, Hamilton … you get the picture.
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The federal NDP have been stuck in Central Canada mode for nearly as long: Jagmeet Singh is from Toronto; his predecessor Tom Mulcair is from Montreal, and for all his perspicacity never really made much sense as party leader; Layton before that cut his political teeth in Toronto, yet somehow his upbringing in the arch-anglophone Montreal suburb of Hudson played to his advantage in francophone Quebec. That's not something the party will ever be able to replicate. No one is quite sure how it happened the first time.
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It's an interesting fact that only one person, the little-remembered John Thompson, has ever served both as a provincial premier (Nova Scotia) and as prime minister (he was Canada's fourth, dying in office quite spectacularly of a heart attack at Windsor Castle in 1894). But there's no reason a premier couldn't or shouldn't become PM, and the NDP — more than any other nationwide party, probably — should want to break that streak.
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Say what you will about British Columbia NDP premier David Eby, or former Alberta NDP premier Rachel Notley or her successor Naheed Nenshi, or Saskatchewan opposition leader Carla Beck (whose NDP hold 27 seats to the Saskatchewan Party's 34), or Manitoba NDP Premier Wab Kinew, but they're all heavy hitters compared to the low-energy types that find themselves leading the Ontario and federal parties.
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There is clearly an expectation of winning in certain provincial capitals that does not exist among New Democrats at Queen's Park or on Parliament Hill — which is especially odd considering the provincial and federal parties so freely trade strategists and staffers. To pick just one prominent example: Montreal-born-and-bred Brian Topp, who ran for the party leadership against Mulcair after Layton's death, was Notley's chief of staff in Edmonton, and had previously been Saskatchewan NDP Premier Roy Romanow's deputy chief of staff in Regina.
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Lately he has been reduced to crowing about how great the federal NDP's supply-and-confidence deal was with the Trudeau Liberals. It's just weird. Maybe what the party needs is a proper, public civil war.
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In any event, if federal New Democrats want to be relevant again other than mathematically — never mind want to govern — they would do well to stop pretending they have anything much in common with their successful provincial comrades in Victoria, Edmonton, Regina and Winnipeg. And their comrades in those provincial capitals would do well to separate themselves from decades of wretched failure by the federal party — even if only symbolically. They're just not playing in the same league. In practice, they simply aren't the single party they claim to be.