Alberta’s Notley steps into the national spotlight
NDP’s strength has built since last year, the premier-designate says
Only a few weeks before the writ dropped on what would become one of the most stunning upsets in Canadian political history, NDP Leader Rachel Notley admitted she did not expect to sweep Calgary — the bastion of Canada’s oil and gas sector.
But that doesn’t mean she didn’t have her eye on it.
Her office, in the drafty green modern monstrosity where the opposition parties are warehoused beside Alberta’s legislature, contained only a few adornments; an NDP sign, a pint-sized model of a wind turbine, and a wall covered with detailed electoral maps of Alberta and its major cities.
“I’m definitely sensing that it’s very competitive in certain parts of the province,” she told the National Post just after then premier Jim Prentice’s fatally unpopular budget dropped in March. “We’re excited to be able to make a breakthrough in Calgary, but I’m not anticipating that we’re going to sweep it.”
The depth of the NDP victory was impossible to imagine, even for Notley herself, back then.
Six weeks later, she would be premier-elect. She crushed the 43-year-old Tory dynasty to become the leader of a healthy 53seat majority on Tuesday. And, yes, she swept Edmonton, most of Calgary, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat and even a hearty chunk of rural Alberta for good measure.
While the New Democrats were certainly the grateful recipients of Albertans’ protest votes, there can be no doubt that Notley’s fierce debate performance, natural onscreen presence and near-flawless campaign combined to make her the province’s go-to alternative to Progressive Conservative rule.
This, despite the fact that she’s a New Democrat, in a province that traditionally isn’t — or wasn’t.
The rout will have enormous implications for Notley on the national stage, as well. In a matter of weeks, she has been elevated from near obscurity, the newly appointed leader of a four-person rump party in Alberta, to one of the most important New Democratic Party politicians in Canada.
If her rise is stunning elsewhere in the country, it’s less so in Alberta, where Notley boasts generational political roots.
Her father, Grant Notley, was one of the founding members of the NDP in the province and its first NDP MLA. He became leader of the opposition in 1982 — then, the head of a two-person party.
Grant Notley’s life was cut short by a plane accident in 1984, when his daughter Rachel was 20.
Notley went on to study at the University of Alberta, and Osgoode Hall law school in Toronto; there she started an NDP club before returning to Edmonton. She worked for the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees; lived in B.C. and worked for Ujjal Dosanjh, who was attorney general at the time.
She later married Lou Arab, who works as a communications staffer with the Canadian Union of Public Employees. The pair have two children, Sophie and Ethan, who are 14 and 16, respectively. “Nineteen different dance classes — that’s what we do,” Notley said, referring to her daughter’s activity of choice.
She lives about half an hour from the legislature by foot and walks when the weather is good. The family owns a three-legged rescue dog named Tucker.
“Many people make fun of me because I’m a caricature of my hippie self,” she said. “Everybody is always joking around about our three-legged dog.”
Notley has long ties to the NDP; when she was nominated, acclaimed, for her seat in Strathcona, her personal hero, now-late federal leader Jack Layton was in attendance. She won leadership of her party in October, coming into power just as both the Wildrose and Liberal parties collapsed.
Still, while most Canadians saw a dramatic and sudden rise over the past month, Notley said the organizational strength of the party has been growing since last year. “I had more donors to my leadership campaign than Jim Prentice had to his,” she said in March. “Mine gave me $200; his gave him $15,000. But I actually had more people donating to my campaign.”
Still, the Alberta NDP is very much tempered by the political realities of the province. Its platform, while vague around the edges,
I had more donors to my leadership campaign than Jim Prentice had to his. Mine gave me $200; his gave him $15,000.
is comparatively moderate; while Notley said she would cease campaigning for Northern Gateway and Keystone XL — citing environmental and political reasons, respectively — she still backs Energy East and the twinning of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline through B.C.
Notley wants a royalty review but promises not to implement anything drastic before the industry recovers — and to respect the results of the review’s findings. She plans to raise corporate taxes to 12 per cent from 10.
These are the issues that have left the province’s oil and gas industry jumpy — although Notley has gone to some lengths, after her surprise win, to ease corporate fears.
But she is a true believer in the classic tenets in the commonweal.
“There are those on the economic right who have not actually embraced the idea that people coming together and pooling their resources can often mean that everyone’s lives can improve significantly.”
Inequality, health care and, especially, education are clearly her passions; she seems committed to restoring and even increasing funding to schools and post-secondary institutions. And Albertans should expect some tax hikes in the years to come.
But the party has also pledged reforms to a democracy badly stunted by 43 years of dynastic rule. Among them, she’s pledged to limit political donations from corporations and unions.
Speaking to reporters on the Wednesday, Notley tried to calm the oil and gas industry, promising to reach out to the province’s economic titans.
“I’m hopeful that over the course of the next two weeks, they’ll come to realize that things are going to be just A- OK over here in Alberta.”
As the election results started rolling in from Alberta and it appeared the unthinkable — an NDP majority government in Canada’s oil-soaked, heretofore Conservative-dominated province — was about to happen, Ottawa Progressive Conservative MPP Lisa MacLeod took to Twitter to vent her frustration.
“Oh Alberta, say it ain’t so ...” the confounded politician wrote. “Won’t someone please think of the economy??!!!?”
It was as though Alberta’s economy wasn’t already a shambles thanks to plummeting crude prices and poor foresight from PCs, who apparently assumed oil rigs would never stop drawing government revenue from the ground at such a torrid pace. It was as though those silly voters, after being told they should look in the mirror when assessing Alberta’s problems, should have swallowed a slew of proposed tax hikes while the province’s corporations continued their work relatively unmolested.
In fairness, it must have been hard for someone like MacLeod to watch, given her Ontario party should have already experienced the kind of success Alberta Premier-elect Rachel Notley’s NDP enjoyed Tuesday night. For all the arrogance Alberta’s PCs displayed — from Alison Redford’s sky palace to Jim Prentice’s early election call and Wildrose courting (ethics and good taste be damned) — they had nothing on Ontario’s Liberals. Instead of sky palaces, there were sky-high budget deficits. Instead of political scandals, there were myriad financial ones costing billions of dollars, from Ornge to eHealth to gas plants to MaRS.
That Notley could overcome such overwhelming
They expected voters to conform to their mould rather than evolving.
odds in such a spectacular fashion while Ontario’s PCs couldn’t sink a two-foot putt here ought to serve as a lesson to the latter as they elect a new leader this week and begin the process of rebuilding their brand (again). Yes, voters often want to stick it to the party in power — especially if said party abuses voters’ trust the way Alberta’s Conservatives and Ontario’s Liberals did — but there’s more to it than that. If there weren’t, Tim Hudak would be premier of Ontario and MacLeod would be in Cabinet.
While a government generally must respect voters’ trust if it wants to stay in power, a government-in-waiting must respect voters’ anger, as opposed to treating it as a blank cheque to pursue ideological goals. While the charismatic Notley presented a plan voters could swallow, Ontario’s PCs kicked off their last campaign with a promise to immediately torch 100,000 public service positions, startling a great number of centrist voters. They then presented a Million Jobs Plan underpinned by faulty math and research from an obscure, right-wing economist. They were, in short, not credible, not likable and, as a result, not electable. They expected voters to conform to their mould rather than evolving into a party a majority of voters could support.
The lead-up to the Ontario PC leadership vote has been similarly depressing. While there has been some thoughtful discussion from hopefuls Christine Elliott and Patrick Brown about the party’s direction, it has been overshadowed by the kind of social conservative, sideshow antics that have the potential to deliver yet another stretch in power to a long-running provincial government that doesn’t deserve it. If it isn’t absurdly over-the-top complaints about the sex ed curriculum, it’s Brown devotee Monte McNaughton ripping Elliott as a closet Liberal with comments some considered homophobic.
Dynasties fall, but they don’t topple themselves. If Ontario’s PCs ever want to experience Notley-style success, they have a lot of work to do.