Left vs Left: How the NDP might scuttle the NDP in Alberta

With "Just-Transition", Canada's federal socialist-ish leader might have painted his provincial siblings into a corner.

Rachel Notley, the leader of the Canadian province of Alberta's left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP), is hoping for a big win in this spring's provincial election. 

Recent polls suggest that this might be possible. However, these same polls indicate everything is riding on a critically important group of swing voters that might not trust Notley on a central political issue in Alberta - job security for energy sector workers. 

Unfortunately for Notley, enter Jagmeet Singh, the NDP's anti-oil-and-gas federal party leader. Singh recently decided now was the right time to tag team with federal Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to wade into a fight over the future of Alberta oil-and-gas workers.

Last week, after goading from Singh's federal NDP, Trudeau's government announced that they would be tabling a bill that purports to transition workers in the energy sector into other fields of work. Virtually no details of what this so-called “Just Transition” legislation would actually do were released. 

And while the NDP is traditionally an anti-oil-and-gas party, ironically, this “Just Transition” announcement presents several problems for the spring electoral prospects of Rachel Notley's NDP.

In many parts of Alberta, a desolate political wasteland for the Liberal party, the "Just Transition" announcement is being viewed as an assault on the hundreds of thousands of people employed in the province's energy sector. Most Albertans want to see governmental action to address climate change meaningfully. However, many Albertans are also directly employed by the oil and gas sector. This means they are more keenly attuned to the fact that in Canada, carbon energy is still price inelastic. Said a different way, they know there is a big Canadian demand for their product, and they know Canada's left-wing leaders are keen to end oil-and-gas jobs in Canada but comfortable with meeting Canada's energy needs by purchasing carbon energy from autocratic nations.

And now Singh has put Notley in an epic bind by forcing her to take a position on the issue of energy sector jobs right before a provincial election.

If Notley supports the legislation, and tacitly the federal Trudeau Liberal government, it may push away swing voters, particularly in the provincial election battleground city of Calgary. On the other hand, if she openly opposes the bill, she risks alienating the far-left wing of her party, many of whom she needs to fund and volunteer for her campaign. 

Yesterday, Notley attempted to thread the needle on the legislation by saying that it needed to include federal funding for technology that would reduce production emissions. The problem with this approach is that the federal NDP leader entered into a formal supply-and-confidence agreement with Trudeau's Liberals, on the condition that the federal government will phase out federal funding to the energy sector. Given his party's longstanding position on this issue, it is highly likely that Jagmeet Singh will openly support Notley on her posture. Notley's opponents, the governing United Conservative Party (UCP), will undoubtedly press this point to their advantage.

This is a big problem for Notley because unlike other political parties, the federal and provincial wings of the NDP are fully integrated. Being a member of the provincial NDP includes membership in the federal NDP. So Notley can't distance herself from Singh's push for Trudeau’s legislation. It allows the UCP, with a degree of truth, to claim that Notley's party endorses Jagmeet Singh in propping up Justin Trudeau's (highly unpopular in Alberta) Liberal government on the condition that they screw over oil and gas sector workers.

While this places Rachel Notley in a terrible position, it is a massive political boon for Justin Trudeau's Liberals. This is something Jagmeet Singh has hilariously failed to grasp.

By the NDP making the end of any funding to the oil and gas sector a condition of their agreement to prop the federal Liberal government up, Trudeau can kill two political birds with the same stone. He can blame this policy, which will likely piss off voters in the handful of seats that the Liberals hold in Western Canada, on the need to keep NDP support in the House of Commons. He can also continue to eat away nation-wide support from federal NDP voters by supporting NDP-driven policy, which prevents left-wing vote splitting in federal battleground ridings in seat-rich Ontario and Quebec.

Further, before the House of Commons rose in December, the topic of hushed conversations in backroom Ottawa was that the federal Liberals see the "Just Transition" debate resulting in a positive outcome for them, no matter what the spring provincial election outcome is in Alberta. Should the legislation give the UCP an issue to win with, Trudeau secures another right-wing foil as he seeks to shore up support with NDP/Liberal swing voters across Canada. Should the NDP win, he will have less vocal opposition from the Premier's office in Alberta to contend with on the national stage. 

Trudeau’s detail-free “Just Transition” announcement was also likely designed to provoke a zero-sum debate on the energy sector and climate change, thus preventing any real scrutiny of Trudeau's record on both climate action and the economy. In nearly eight years in office, his government has failed to deliver on crucial climate action initiatives like building ample public transit, strengthening Canada's electric grid, and making electric vehicles more available and affordable. Worse, Canadian greenhouse gas emissions have risen, the country is in the middle of a major cost of living crisis, and its economy is teetering on the brink of recession.

If Jagmeet Singh had any political sense whatsoever, he would see all these pitfalls and rethink his approach. 

Instead, he might just have re-elected Premier Danielle Smith and put his job as NDP party leader in question after the next federal election.