Nenshi's strategy: embrace patriotism, keep Avi Lewis faaaar away

Social media once made him the darling of Calgary.

Purple Power, as it was called, elected Naheed Nenshi to the mayor’s office. And if it worked then, orange is the new colour Nenshi is now drumming up to persuade Albertans to stay in Confederation. As leader of the provincial New Democrats, he has launched “For Alberta, For Canada.” Splashed across the usual digital platforms, the campaign sidesteps the inconvenient reality of Avi Lewis, the newly elected leader of the federal NDP, and his unabashed attacks on the province’s hydrocarbon economy.

Paying no mind to that political cognitive dissonance, Nenshi spent this week urging Albertans to join a day of action on Saturday. “We’ll be out attending events, knocking on doors, talking to people about Canada,” he told me a few days back. The provincial NDP’s pro-Canada push will run until the October separation referendum.

Nenshi is quick to jab at the governing United Conservatives. “Because the legislation around referenda is very poorly written,” he says, “political parties have abilities that groups like Thomas Lukaszuk’s Forever Canadian don’t. So we’re calling this campaign ‘powered by the Alberta NDP.’ But signing up doesn’t make you an NDP member. It doesn’t mean you support the NDP — though I hope you will.”

Powered by the NDP, but not really NDP? The framing feels coy. Why not just own the obvious partisan machinery?

Nenshi isn’t shy about the scale of the undertaking. He’s consulted veterans of Brexit, the 1980 and 1995 Quebec referenda, and even his own Olympic plebiscite experience. The lesson from all of them: “You can’t sleepwalk into this. You can’t assume any outcome. You have to treat it like a real campaign — doors, lawn signs, the whole thing.”

“I’d rather not be doing this,” he confides. For a political party, it means running two campaigns in one year; Alberta’s next provincial vote is scheduled for October 2027.

Fair enough. But what opposition leader truly finds it inconvenient to be knocking on doors between elections, especially on an issue this consequential?

Nenshi’s tone grows more pointed: “We have to do it. A lot of people woke up the morning after Brexit and said, ‘Wow, I should have voted,’ or ‘I should have paid more attention.’ We cannot let that happen here.”

I’m solidly pro-Canada and have no objection to people knocking on my door to discuss Alberta’s future in Confederation. Yet I wonder about the optics. Progressives are mobilizing in force: the NDP, Lukaszuk’s Forever Canadian campaign, and even Alberta political strategist Stephen Carter, who is reportedly eyeing a rebranding of the provincial Liberals into a pro-Confederation vehicle. Is there a risk that too many pro-Canada voices will flood the zone and unintentionally energize the separatist side?

“Here’s the thing,” Nenshi replies. “We’re trying to coordinate as best we can, and Thomas has done an incredible job. But I absolutely reject the idea that this energizes the other side. That was exactly the mistake the Remain campaign made in Brexit — and Canada made in the 1995 Quebec referendum.”

I ask whether federal Liberals will be joining NDP canvassers at Alberta doors. Nenshi says he’s spoken with them about the NDP’s perspective on separation and adds dryly, “It will be interesting to see how they respond.” On that, at least, we agree.

He hasn’t spoken with Carter about the Liberal reboot. “This is, I believe, the fourth Alberta political party he has attempted to take over,” Nenshi notes, his sarcasm thinly veiled. (Carter, of course, helped engineer Nenshi’s own successful 2010 mayoral run with that memorable purple brand blending liberal red and conservative blue.)

But Carter isn’t the villain in Nenshi’s telling. That honour belongs to Premier Danielle Smith.

“Premier Smith is following the David Cameron playbook,” he asserts. “Pander to the separatists, empower them, make the referendum easier — then come out at the end, wrap herself in the Canadian flag and say, ‘Only I can save Canada.’”

Her party, he continues, has been captured by separatists. “She’s painted herself into a corner, just like Cameron. She won’t be able to lift a finger to help the Remain side when the hard work begins. She’ll throw it back to the rest of us. If we don’t do it, no one will.”

In this narrative, Nenshi casts himself as the reluctant but necessary martyr. I wonder: Doesn’t Avi Lewis’s leadership of the federal NDP make that cross heavier?

“To be clear: he’s not my federal party leader,” Nenshi shoots back sharply. “I don’t belong to that party, and many thousands of provincial New Democrats don’t either.”

He chides me for not paying attention. At last year’s provincial convention, delegates voted to make the Alberta NDP fully membership-independent. They were already financially and policy-independent, he says.

Nenshi hasn’t yet spoken with Lewis, but he has been in touch with Edmonton-Strathcona MP Heather McPherson, the runner-up to Lewis for leader. “She very politely asked if she’s allowed to come flip pancakes at my pancake breakfast,” he says, amused. “I told her, ‘Yeah, you’re my MP. Of course you are. Please come.’”

Then there’s the pipeline question — how does the provincial NDP square its ambitions with Lewis and the federal party’s Leap Manifesto stance?

“Donna, are you really asking me that?” he chides again. “We put out a whole policy on this. The difference between us and the conservatives — with all due respect to a former conservative cabinet minister (he means me) — is that conservatives love to talk about pipelines and have built zero miles to tidewater in 73 years. The Alberta New Democrats got a pipeline built.”

He presses the point: If Smith delivers on her latest memorandum of understanding, she’ll have taken seven years of UCP government only to land exactly where Rachel Notley left things — minus an actual pipeline in the ground. “They’ve wasted seven years fighting with the feds instead of moving projects forward.”

I bite my tongue and change the subject.

One final curiosity: The provincial NDP hired New York’s Fight Agency — the firm credited with helping elect Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Are they still producing videos for Nenshi’s team?

“We have a bunch of consultants — some of the most thoughtful, progressive people in the world,” he says. Most are Canadian-based. Fight has provided advice, and yes, they’re still involved — but not on the “For Alberta, For Canada” campaign.

The question that actually keeps me up at night is bigger: Even if October’s referendum delivers a “remain in Canada” victory, how do we stop separation sentiment from becoming mainstream in Alberta politics?

Nenshi agrees it’s the crucial long-term issue. Then he launches another broadside against the UCP, leaving the unmistakable impression that this debate will remain fiercely partisan for years to come.

National Post

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