Former Edmonton Public School Board chair Trisha Estabrooks has launched a campaign to become the Alberta NDP’s candidate in the Edmonton-Strathcona riding while Naheed Nenshi looks to grow NDP presence in Calgary. He joined Alberta Primetime’s Michael Higgins to discuss his decision to move. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Michael Higgins: What makes this the right move where your party is concerned? Naheed Nenshi: I have been and continue to be very pleased to be the MLA for Edmonton-Strathcona. The people of Edmonton-Strathcona have been incredibly welcoming and it’s been a wonderful way to get to know Edmonton better, as well as to get to know the heartbeat of our party and our movement a little bit better. I do come from Calgary. I grew up here and have spent most of my professional life here and I really feel like I should be lucky enough in the next election to serve as the premier. I’d like to represent a Calgary riding. Politically there’s something here as well, which is obviously the Alberta New Democrats need to win more seats in Calgary, and I believe that the leader of a party should be someone who wins you seats and gets you more seats. The example of this I think of is when Justin Trudeau became the leader of the Liberals. He didn’t run in his dad’s riding, in a very safe Montreal seat. He ran in a block seat which has since become more of a Liberal-leaning seat. And I know that sounds very political and very calculating, but for me, I want to be able to represent the place that I know so well. I really want to make sure that the folks of Edmonton-Strathcona are well-represented as well, which is why I announced so early before an election so that they have the opportunity to nominate someone great there. MH: That means then you have a Calgary riding that you’re targeting? Or might it depend on whatever comes of the redrawing of provincial election boundaries? NN: Let’s not forget this terrible thing that the government has done: They threw out the results of the Independent Electoral Boundaries Commission, one of the only times in Canadian history that that’s ever happened. Then they put in this very illegitimate stacked system with a majority UCP committee that’s going to be setting up the new maps over the summer. It’s all a huge mess and there will undoubtedly be legal challenges to it. One of the things that they’ve signalled that they want to do is mess up the seats in Calgary. One of the gentlemen, who the UCP appointed to that committee, had made a submission to the previous panel in which he sliced and diced Calgary and put most of Calgary in with surrounding rural areas. It’s all very irregular. I believe it’s illegal and unconstitutional, so that’s a long way of saying that it’s not going to work. The gerrymandering will not work. There will undoubtedly be legal challenges to this, but that also means that we don’t have a map that we know we’ll be running the next election on. Elections Alberta had said they need 18 months with a new map in order to have an election. The UCP said we’re going to give you 12 months, but if there are legal challenges then it’s very likely we’ll end up running the election on the old map. This all feels like politics that normal people don’t care about, but I think it’s really relevant. You deserve to choose your own politicians, not have politicians choose their voters. All told, we’re going to fight it for fair, democratic elections. We’re not going to let the UCP rig the election, but it also has a personal impact on me because I don’t know where I’m going to run until we actually have a final and hopefully fair election. MH: Calgary-Shaw, the riding vacated by former UCP cabinet minister Rebecca Schulz, will have to go to a byelection no later than mid-November. From the NDP side of the aisle, is this a byelection best held after the Oct. 19 referendum? NN: We’re ready to go either way. The premier indicated last week, and she was pretty clear about it, that she doesn’t really want to have a byelection now because people are talking about other things meaning the separation referendum. She knows she’s going to lose that separation referendum very badly. To be fair, she says she’s in favour of remaining in Canada, but Albertans know better. They know why she wants to delay that byelection as long as possible. We’re ready to run that election. We have a terrific candidate, Kyle Campbell. Great guy. He came into politics because of a very terrible experience with the health-care system, he had cancer. He’s a coach, he’s in that community, he’s rooted in that community, he’s been knocking on doors like crazy and I think we’re going to make a huge breakthrough in Calgary. The other thing I should mention about this is legally she has to call the byelection by November. But remember that she had a Calgary elbow when she first became the leader of the party and she delayed that byelection by nearly 18 months, which I think was an illegal move. No one called her on it, but we’re going to make sure that that byelection is called as the law requires. MH: On the referendum front, the clock is ticking on the 21-day verification window for the petition submitted by separatists. What are you watching for if it’s deemed successful by Elections Alberta? NN: It’s kind of irrelevant because what we know is that the premier promised the separatists that they would have a referendum this fall. I met people during Stampede who had had meetings with the premier 18 months ago, in which she said, “Regardless of the results of the petition, we will have a referendum.” The courts have ruled the question that the separatists were petitioning on as unconstitutional twice. The verification process does not deal with the issue of whether the question can be asked at all. The premier and the UCP government didn’t care; they put in their own question anyway because this was the quid-pro-quo that they had promised the separatists. I have been all over the province with our For Alberta, For Canada campaign. I’m on my way to Medicine Hat now to talk to patriotic Albertans, Canadians in Medicine Hat and people are very angry that we’re in this place at all. They think the UCP government put us here. There was no need to pander to the separatists, and frankly, people are really concerned about losing their country. But the number one thing I hear is people who say, “Now I’m worked up about this because it’s never going to pass. The separatists are never going to win.” And what I say to that is, “The separatists may not be high in numbers, but they are very motivated. Every one of them is going to vote.” In our last municipal elections across this province, I’m not sure we had anywhere that cracked 30-per-cent voter turnout. So if the separatists are at 17-20 per cent, which is what the polls are showing, and every one of them vote, but there’s only a 30-per-cent voter turnout, we could get a very strange result. My goal for the rest of the 90 days or so before the referendum is to encourage everyone and their mom to vote. People can sign up at foralbertaforcanada.ca to get tips and if you want to get a slot, which is vote by mail, that’s available now with the elections. We just want to make sure that there’s a huge voter turnout and that this really reflects the views of Albertans, which are proud Canadians.
