Dear Ms. Notley,
I was troubled to read the CBC Edmonton story on June 9th titled “Alberta NDP volunteers were ignored and demeaned, former workers say”. The story brings back to me bad memories of the dismal failure that was the last Alberta New Democrat election campaign in which parachuted non-Albertan “expert” managers seemed to completely misread the electorate of the province and stoked division rather than appealing to unity. It was a nasty, mean-spirited campaign that left a bad taste in many New Democrat supporting mouths. I feel worried about the coming campaign with the fact that the only Party spokesperson quoted in the CBC article is a transplant from Nova Scotia, together with the sordidly UCP-flavoured allegations from the New Democrat grass-roots.
Please don’t misunderstand me: I am myself a transplant (four and a half decades ago) from Ontario; I recognize that expertise of all sorts can be found in all corners of our great country and should be drawn on whenever possible and appropriate. But we don’t ask a P.E.I. potato farmer how to grow canola in Grand Prairie or Hydro Quebec engineer how to suck oil out of the Oil Sands. And after the debacle of the last non-Albertan guided campaign and following the tragic farce of the Premiership of the Honourable Member from Oakville I can’t help but think it is time for voices from Sangudo, Donalda, and Rosebud to be heard, for advisors, party secretaries, and volunteers from every corner of the Alberta – not from Toronto, Ottawa, or points East – to be front and centre in the prelude to and in the coming campaign. Please, Ms. Notley, listen to, and let speak, the people of Alberta, all of them.
Yes, the UCP has had a lamentable and damaging impact on our province. It has fed division, the type of toxic division that has become so common and so frightening around the world. Someone has to take a different path!
You may not remember, Rachel, but years ago, long before you became premier, you made a mug of hot chocolate in your kitchen for my daughter. You’ve probably done such things for countless little girls and boys. I know that you know how to bring people together in warmth and love, no matter our differences of ideas or abilities or of lives-being-lived. Please, please, don’t give in to advisors who ask you to take the path of attack, of division. We are already more divided than any people should be.
What I dream of seeing here in Alberta happened in Turkey a few years ago. In 2019 a new Mayor was elected in Istanbul. Ekram Imamoğlu ran in opposition to the candidate of the strongman President Erdoğan. Ekram Imamoğlu is the Mayor of Istanbul today. Of his campaign he has said “We had two simple rules: ignore Erdoğan and love those who love Erdoğan”.
Is it too much to ask? Is such a positive campaign possible in Alberta? Can we believe that we don’t have to hate those who disagree with us, and that those who disagree with us might not hate us? Can we accept that others are deeply concerned about things we don’t think about and that others don’t think much about our deep concerns? Can we talk about it and maybe come together in understanding and in love?
In the Alberta I came to as a child forty-five or so years ago, that was “just being neighbourly” (as an old-time Albertan I’ll never forget said to me one rainy night when I was about sixteen years old after he fixed a backed-up septic tank). Can the Alberta New Democrats run a campaign from Alberta’s true heart? Can we just be neighbourly?
Can you make a mug of hot chocolate for someone and not care whether they agree with you?
I saw you do it once.
How about making a campaign of it?
Behind the Hedge 