Alberta New Democrats for Carney? It's more complicated than that

At the height of the debate about oil pipelines last decade, relations became so strained between the Alberta NDP and the federal wing that ex-premier Rachel Notley wouldn't even say she was definitely voting for Jagmeet Singh's party in 2019.

Tensions appear to have thawed. Notley, now in private life, has publicly endorsed the Edmonton Centre NDP candidate in the current campaign.

But as many Albertans can testify in early spring, sometimes strange things reveal themselves once the ice melts.

Some orange stalwarts are now seeing Liberal red. 

Stephanie McLean, a cabinet minister in Notley's 2015-19 Alberta government, is a Liberal candidate on Vancouver Island. Three-term MLA Rod Loyola quit the Alberta NDP caucus to run under Mark Carney's banner in Edmonton Gateway, although the party has since rejected him.

And Shannon Phillips, a top Notley lieutenant and former environment minister, publicly endorsed the Liberal candidate in Lethbridge, home of her former riding.

"I've never been much of a federal Liberal," the lifelong New Democrat posted on her social media page. She went on to stress her longtime friendship with candidate Chris Spearman, and that she's choosing "friendship over partisanship."

In an interview, Phillips said that many Lethbridge residents who'd supported her are also voting Liberal, but not because they're friends with Spearman. It's partly a strategic vote to stop the Poilievre Conservatives, partly a vote for Carney, she said.

"People just want to stop Poilievre and that's why you're seeing the progressive vote across the country collapse into the LPC (Liberal Party of Canada)," Phillips said.

Last time out, in 2021, Liberals secured the votes of only 15 per cent of Albertans, a distant third behind the perennially dominant Conservatives and the Singh NDP. But Liberal backing in the province has roughly doubled to 30 per cent, according to the polling averages calculated by CBC's Poll Tracker — while NDP is polling around nine per cent, or half what they got in the last federal contest.

At the organizational level, many provincial New Democrats are sticking with their federal affiliates. At least quietly.

In Edmonton, MLAs Janis Irwin and Sarah Hoffman have been out canvassing with NDP candidates Blake Desjarlais and Trisha Estabrooks (the one Notley, a former MLA, came out for). These two provincial politicians figure prominently in campaign photos the federal contenders have posted to social media.

But you won't see similar images on the Instagram accounts of Irwin and Hoffman. There's a reason for that.

Under new guidelines for New Democrat MLAs, they're permitted to campaign for federal candidates but are encouraged not to announce endorsements or post about it on social media, a provincial caucus spokesperson confirmed.

It's not apparent that any sitting NDP members are following Phillips's lead and endorsing Liberals.

Loyola, who had to quit his provincial seat to run federally under the Canada Elections Act, said in a text message that none of his former caucus mates lined up behind him when he announced as a Liberal.

He got tossed from the Liberal roster after a 2009 video resurfaced in which he appeared to praise terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. Loyola is now running in a different riding as an Independent, though still without backing from his former NDP colleagues.

There are political reasons for the Naheed Nenshi-led party wanting to steer clear of flying any federal colours. United Conservatives have variously pilloried the Alberta NDP as beholden to the federal Liberals and NDP — or both.

The UCP caucus has lately held off claiming Nenshi-Singh ties like they used to with Notley, but word of Phillips's endorsement in Lethbridge had Danielle Smith's team swinging hard about an orange-red alliance.

In an interview, UCP whip Shane Getson called it "odd" and suggested it's a "mutiny within their own party."

"I wish for Albertan's sake that they would just be honest and integral about what they actually mean and what they stand for," he said.

It could be that different New Democrat members and supporters stand for different things and different parties, as opposed to the more unified ranks of the UCP and federal Conservatives.

There are still formal ties between provincial and national NDP wings; membership for one is membership in both. This meant that when tens of thousands of Albertans became members to vote in the leadership contest that Nenshi won last year, the federal party's member rolls in Alberta swelled too.

To candidate Keira Gunn, hoping to turn the Calgary Confederation riding orange, the outsized membership list initially struck her as a potential boon to her campaign. It didn't turn out that way.

"When I started sending out emails, a lot of them would say, 'I vote provincial NDP and federally Liberal,'" she said.

But Gunn, who's active within the provincial party as well, said she's still received quiet support from some elected members, and Alberta NDP president Nancy Janovicek has been out door knocking with her. 

Nenshi himself has stayed neutral. He privately met with Singh on Zoom during the federal leader's campaign stop in Edmonton last week, and saw Carney in person when the prime minister visited the provincial capital before the writ drop.

Alberta's current opposition leader lacks the dyed-in-the-wool NDP roots of Notley, whose father once led the provincial party. Nenshi's leadership campaign manager was Jessie Chahal, a former aide in Justin Trudeau's prime minister's office, and cousin to Calgary Liberal incumbent George Chahal.

In other provinces where the NDP has become the default progressive choice in a two-party system, the lines between orange and red commonly blur.

The case of John Aldag is a fresh example of this: he quit as a Trudeau Liberal MP to run last fall for the governing B.C. NDP. Now, after losing his provincial bid, he's back to running for the Carney Liberals.

Despite her support for the Liberal candidate in her home riding, Phillips said she still believes strongly that Canada needs the NDP — and admits she recently donated to the party for the first time in a decade.

"It will be to our great disadvantage as a country to have the party significantly diminished in the House of Commons," Phillips said, in a nod to polls that predict exactly that outcome.

But in this election, some senior New Democrats and many more past voters are lending support to the Carney Liberals.

Whether that's a one-time or a long-term shift, it stands to have reverberations in Canadian politics, in Phillips's province and beyond.