Two paths for the NDP's future on display at Edmonton rally
Former premier Rachel Notley opened for federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, followed by a surprise appearance from Amazon Labour Union founder Chris Smalls.
I accidentally sent this full piece out to paid subscribers only, so here it is for everyone.
The star guest of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh’s Tuesday rally in the concourse of the Art Gallery of Alberta was supposed to be former premier Rachel Notley.
Notley did open for Singh, despite her rocky relationship with her federal counterpart when she served as Alberta’s first, and so far only, NDP premier.
But after Singh’s speech, he brought out a surprise guest—Amazon Labour Union founder Chris Smalls, who happened to be in town to deliver a keynote speech at the Alberta Federation of Labour conference this weekend.
Notley provided a potent reminder of the NDP’s recent past and how the party can win, even in the heartland of Canadian conservatism. Her brand of prairie pragmatism is focused on delivering electoral victories, working within the system as it is to advance certain social movement and organized labour priorities.
But Smalls points towards an alternative future for the NDP, in which the party has social movements and organized labour in the driver’s seat. It’s less focused on winning elections, and more in building a movement to advance long-term social change.
These poles exist on a spectrum. Throughout his tenure as leader, Jagmeet Singh has tried to strike a balance between these contrasting approaches, but has generally leaned to the Notley approach.
This is best exemplified by the supply-and-confidence agreement he entered with the Liberals in 2022, which made long-overdue progress for Canadian health care and labour rights.
But voters appear to be giving the Liberals far more credit than the NDP. Polling averages for next week’s federal vote suggest the NDP will suffer its worst defeat since the 1993 election.
If that’s the case, there’s going to be a leadership vote, which will no doubt have existential overtones. The NDP will have to choose between being the party envisioned by Rachel Notley or the party envisioned by Chris Smalls.
Halfway through Notley’s tenure as premier, Singh became federal NDP leader.
As soon as he was elected leader, NDP insiders were warning the Globe and Mail that the federal and provincial parties were on a “crash course” over Singh’s tepid opposition to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and Notley’s enthusiastic support for the project.
That’s essentially what happened.
“Alberta’s NDP Premier Rachel Notley has all but declared war with federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh,” then-Edmonton Journal columnist Graham Thomson wrote in 2018.
Notley called Singh “elitist” and accused him of throwing “working people … under the bus as collateral damage in pursuit of some other high level policy objective.”
As leader of opposition, Notley refused to campaign with Singh or the federal NDP in the 2019 election.
Notley apparently took a liking to Edmonton Strathcona MP Heather McPherson, who was elected in that election, singing her praises in the 2021 election for supporting workers in the “oil and gas economy” while emphasizing her agreement with the federal party on pharmacare and ending for-profit long-term care.
Since then, Trans Mountain has been built, so Singh and Notley’s disagreement are in the rearview mirror.
Notley was also a counter-intuitive pairing with Smalls. The labour leader was fired from the Staten Island Amazon warehouse he worked at in 2020 after organizing a walkout to protest for better Covid protections. He then organized the warehouse from outside to create the first Amazon union.
When Amazon announced plans to open a second headquarters, Notley struck a panel of businesspeople and academics to advise Calgary and Edmonton on how to provide incentives to win Amazon’s approval.
Arlington, Virginia, won that bidding war, but since then Amazon has opened distribution warehouses near Calgary and Edmonton.
In 2018, Notley praised Amazon for “helping to make life better for more Alberta workers and families.”
In fairness to Notley, she was out of power when the pandemic shined a light on working conditions at Amazon warehouses.
The former premier didn’t take questions from reporters after the event. I know I’m not the only one who wanted to ask her about her apparent change of heart for Singh.
But she did allude to past disagreements, exuding the folky charm that contributed to her past electoral success:
Over the last years, it is true that we have had full and different schedules, him leading the federal entity, me leading the Alberta entity. Two very different jobs, two very different people. I run in the river valley, listen to the CBC. He bikes in downtown Toronto and listens to Dead Prez. I don't even know what Dead Prez is.
She drinks low-fat lattes, Singh “brews kombucha,” which she used to prod the UCP.
“I'm told it might qualify as an alternative energy source, although if the UCP hears about it, they will ban it. So keep an eye out,” quipped Notley.
Acknowledging that she and Singh come from “very different timezones,” Notley emphasized the federal and provincial parties’ agreements on health care, labour rights and economic inequality.
Poilievre’s politics, she added, is “not about solving problems, it's about picking fights, cruelty for clicks, division dressed up as strength.”
“If you want to see how that story ends, just look at what Danielle Smith is doing right here in Alberta,” Notley said, adding reference to Smith “bending over backwards to appease her friends south of the border.”
“It’s dangerous, it’s ugly and it’s spreading,” she said.
Singh called the election in which he’s almost certain to get trounced "the most consequential election in a generation.”
He noted that Canada lost 33,000 jobs in March alone, which he attributed not only to U.S. president Donald Trump’s tariffs but “choices by corporate executives holding back investments to protect the bottom line.”
“That's why we exist, because right now everyday people are being asked to carry the weight, and we need a movement that refuses to let them carry it alone,” said Singh.
“This isn’t abstract. Real people are living it every single day.”
He took aim at Liberal leader Mark Carney, noting that while he was at the helm of Brookfield Asset Management in 2019, the company purchased a Australian private hospital chain Healthscope for $4.4 billion.
“It was a chain that cut corners, underpaid staff, failed patients while raking in billions for American investors. As chair of Brookfield, Mark Carney oversaw that deal. He profited while care declined,” said Singh.
Just weeks ago, the Australian state of New South Wales banned private hospitals in response to a 2-year-old dying of cardiac arrest at a Healthscope hospital.
The NDP platform pledges to ban U.S. firms “from buying Canadian health facilities,” but not Canadian firms like Brookfield.
Singh accused Carney of using “banker speak” to deflect from questions about whether he would enforce the Canada Health Act in the face of “American-style privatization.”
Asked at a Calgary news conference earlier this month what he would do to prevent violations of the act, Carney only said that he is a “believer in working with provinces [and] getting results for Canadians.”
Elsewhere, Carney has emphasized that “in America, health care is big business. In Canada, it’s a right.”
“He says the right things, like Liberals often do. He says that health care shouldn't be a business, but he was in the business of health care,” said Singh.
A couple minutes later, Singh boasted of his party’s cooperation with the Liberals to deliver the birth pangs of dental care and pharmacare coverage in Canada.
“Now we’re fighting for the next chapter,” Singh said, highlighting the NDP’s commitment to making the pharmacare program universal, forcing provinces to introduce rent control, incorporating mental health care into the public system and introducing a wealth tax.
Singh, of course, didn’t just go after Carney. He said Poilievre “wants to import Trump-style chaos into Canada,” but is also “not serious.”
“While pretending he has gotten the answers, he hands the housing crisis to the same corporate landlords who caused it,” said Singh. “He attacks trans kids to score points.”
With his party’s dismal polling numbers, he attempted to position a strong NDP as a bulwark against a Carney majority.
“If we give Mark Carney unchecked power, we won't be able to stop him,” said Singh.
This wasn’t Smalls’s first time meeting Singh. He recalled how Singh DM’d him when he was visiting New York, offering to visit his union’s members.
“A lot of people don't come to Staten Island. They call it the forgotten burb. And I can tell you now, some prominent politicians that claim to be standing with the working class never showed up, or they had been told not to show up,” said Smalls.
He said the answer to “how the hell we beat a $2-trillion company like Amazon” is “simple—the power of the working people when we come together.”
Smalls observed that from an American point of view, “you guys have good policies,” citing public health care, stronger longer protections and a “multi-party government,” referring either to the supply-and-confidence agreement or the presence of more than two parties in Parliament.
And while the 100-odd attendees were at the rally to support candidates for office, Smalls urged them to look beyond electoral politics.
“We have to fight for what we want. So not just vote. You have to organize, because this is a revolution,” said Smalls.
He told each attendee to look at the people around them and say, I’ve got your back, and closed by leading the crowd in a call-and-response, which most of the audience had to learn: If we don’t get it, shut it down.
While Smalls of course cannot run for the NDP leadership, don’t be surprised when the energy and ideas he displayed find expression in the next NDP leadership race with the party at a crucial crossroad.
One thing is for sure. We need a movement, and to that end, NDP voters, those of us who won't vote for a government that winks at genocide, or believes people buy the idea that an American owned resource from Alberta piped to the Atlantic will free us from American dominance.........those of us voting NDP tomorrow....need to stay engaged after the election.
Bad ideas won't solve our long over dependence on the fascistic state to the south of us.....its going to take all of us working together to chart a new way forward for our country.
So let's vote our vision tomorrow...and then get busy working together to make it happen.