The federal NDP doesn't really understand Alberta'

Province’s new NDP leader is planning to sever his party’s ties with Ottawa

- RAISA PATEL ,ALEX BOYD

Newly elected Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi says he has trouble understanding how tethering his party to the federal New Democratic Party - an organization "we don't control and whose values we may not always share" - is helpful.

OTTAWA In some ways, the relationship between the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh and newly elected Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi is starting to feel a little one-sided.

Nenshi, the former Calgary mayor who on Saturday succeeded Rachel Notley to take the party’s helm, ran his campaign, in part, on his desire to divorce his party from its federal roots.

“You know me, I don’t wait on things,” Nenshi told reporters after his landslide victory, when asked how quickly he would put that question to the province’s party members.

“That’s what members are really talking about, and I hear it every day,” he said. “And the way I like to lead is, I don’t like things that are bubbling under the surface, so I’d like to surface that conversation with members as soon as possible.”

That membership in the provincial branches of the NDP also grants membership in the federal one, is, of all the major federal parties, a feature unique to the New Democrats.

It’s also an arrangement that has occasionally prompted frustration from provincial NDP members who don’t want to be tied to their federal counterparts. It’s a particularly prickly issue in Alberta, where there have been tensions over climate and energy policies and small-scale efforts to create distance from the federal party.