‘Never should have come to this’: NDP leader on notwithstanding clause and start of fall sitting

Naheed Nenshi on Alberta Primetime Oct 30, 2025

NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi speaks to Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins about his first week in the legislature and the possibility of a general strike.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Michael Higgins: Labour leaders say they’re mobilizing in response to the government invoking the notwithstanding clause. What weight do you expect that to carry?

Naheed Nenshi: I think this is even bigger than that.

The Ontario government attempted to use the notwithstanding clause a few years ago, and they repealed it in four days because of enormous public pressure — not just from unions, and we’re seeing that.

The government rammed this through. They used the notwithstanding clause pre-emptively for the first time in Alberta history. They changed the rules of the house to ram it through in one day, which we think has never been done before in Alberta’s history. We finished up just after the baseball game ended at 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday. They clearly thought this was over. It is not over.

Today, students are walking out of class. Many schools have no extracurricular activities. Teachers are dispirited. Parents are super happy to have their kids back at school, but super angry at the way it was done. Workers in their unions see this as an unprecedented attack on their own Charter rights.

This government has signaled they are going to use the notwithstanding clause over and over again to override people’s rights. The next one will be vulnerable children, the one after that will be health-care workers. So it’s more important now than ever that Albertans make their voices heard and say, ‘No, this is not the government we thought we elected.’

MH: Would your party stand in solidarity with unions were they to coalesce around an actual general strike?

NN: There are many, many options that they are looking at right now, and we will always stand with workers and with their union. The critical thing here for me to say is this never should have come to this.

The government had so many options to fix this problem. They’ve known for three years that teachers are concerned about class size and complexity. The minister of education admitted that yesterday was the first day he looked into what other provinces are doing on class size. The government knew in the spring that the teachers weren’t going to accept their deal. They had all summer to sit down with the teachers and try and figure out what they could come up with, what deal they could make. Instead, they took a summer vacation.

In the fall, they came back to the teachers with the same deal they had already overwhelmingly rejected, with a free COVID shot thrown in — a shot that should be free for all Albertans, frankly. What did they think was going to happen? Of course, the teachers rejected it again.

I believe the government engineered the strike. I believe they wanted to diminish public support for the teachers, public support for education. What has happened is exactly the opposite. So it’s not just workers in their unions that are mad. It is everyone who believes in fundamental freedoms and everyone who believes in competent government. They will rue the day they did this, because that day, I could feel it in the house; the ground was shifting. That day, I think, was the beginning of the end of this government.

MH: As the Opposition, where does your party take the fight over the Back to School Act and use of the notwithstanding clause?

NN: Our job is really to help people understand precisely what this government has done. When we start talking Section 33, the notwithstanding clause, it gets really abstract, really fast, and people’s eyes start to water.

Here’s the thing: Peter Lougheed was the one who engineered that clause in the constitution. Ten years after it was put in, he gave a very big lecture at the University of Alberta in which he said that clause should only be used after the courts have deemed a law to be unconstitutional, and it can only be used if the law explains precisely why, [it requires] time limits, and it’s passed by a super majority of the legislature. None of those things happened this week.

Let’s put it this way: This is the first time in Alberta history that a government has knowingly passed a law that it knows is unconstitutional, that it knows overrides the Charter of Rights, and they passed it anyway and tried to protect themselves with the notwithstanding clause.

Whether you agree or disagree with this government, I think all Albertans stand united that we don’t want a tyrannical government that will pass unconstitutional laws when it’s convenient for them.

MH: Switching gears, members of your caucus travelled the province this summer for your Better Together town hall campaign. How does that exercise translate into impact in the fall sitting?

NH: We did travel across the province. We knocked on 200,000 doors. We went to every music festival, small town rodeo, community dog park, and then we had this series of 10 town halls. I prefer calling them community gatherings. We got nearly as many people as the Alberta government got for their Alberta Next panels without a million dollars of taxpayer funded advertising.

What people really said is, yes, they stand against separatism, which was the original goal. They told us what they were really interested in. The increasing cost of living. Good, sustainable jobs. The economy, health care, education and, of course, separatism. We’re using those as the themes for what we’re moving forward with.

This fall, for example, we’ll be talking a lot about how we can protect your paycheque. Today we introduced the first bill in that area. It’s called Protecting Workers’ Paycheques. It’s about increasing the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation, and protecting workers tips so that when you press that button on the machine to give a tip, you know that the person who gave you that service is getting the tip and it’s not being skimmed off. These are small things. They’re critical things the government is not doing to help people deal with the cost of living.

MH: Albertans have been waiting to see Naheed Nenshi take a seat in the legislature and face off with Danielle Smith. What should be expected in that regard in this fall sitting?

NN: I walked in on my first day in the house, which was the Throne Speech last week - very ceremonial, military uniforms and trumpets and things. It was really wonderful. I felt a deep sense of responsibility and gratitude to the people of Edmonton-Strathcona who put their trust in me. I realized fewer than 1,000 people have ever served as members of this Legislative Assembly in the history of Alberta, and that’s a big deal.

The first four days have been very, very adventurous. My very first day in house was the day that we went until two in the morning to pass this blatantly unconstitutional bill. The way you framed it was, I get to go toe to toe with the premier. Well, I haven’t yet, because the premier didn’t show up. The premier wasn’t in the house for the most important debate. The first premier in Alberta history to pre-emptively use the notwithstanding clause and she wasn’t even there. She couldn’t delay her junket to the Middle East by a few hours so she could at least defend her government’s position, and she hasn’t been there since. In fact, I understand that she’s going to miss fully half of the sitting days this fall because she’s off in the Middle East for who knows what reason.

I’m looking forward to going toe to toe with her. Meanwhile, I’m not so sure all those ministers who have been left twisting in the wind in her absence are really enjoying going toe to toe with me.