The Alberta NDP leadership race is going strong.
Kathleen Ganley, MLA for Calgary-Mountain View, made a campaign stop in the Highwood riding on April 5, during which she discussed her platform at the Royal Duke in Okotoks.
"The skyrocketing cost of living, the cost of housing, the crisis in health care, the fact that we now have the lowest per capita education funding, the threat to our mountains from coal mining. I could go on, but we're not building a world where [my daughter] will have the opportunities I had, and I don't like that, and so that is what I am looking to change," Ganley said.
Ganley, who had previously spoken with the Western Wheel about rural issues, shared her thoughts on increasing the Alberta NDP's presence in rural and small-town ridings.
"We are working on a rural strategy," she said. "We have to target rural ridings, and we have to be competitive. My proposal would be based on metrics that we have internally, but we could also talk to rural caucuses about picking [priorities]."
Ganley believes the key is building the party's credibility and presence in conservative-dominated ridings through relationship building, though it may be difficult.
"So I think it's a bunch of different things, but I would say to sum up, a bit of it is about party building, a bit of it is about ensuring that people get a little bit more of their NDP membership or feeling that they're part of a team, and a bit of it is about making that offer, particularly on the economy.
"So I believe that trust is built through partnership... I think that how we build to the future is through that hard work on relationship building."
Ganley is currently serving her third term as an MLA, after first having been elected in 2015 to represent Calgary-Buffalo. From 2015 to 2019, she served as minister of justice, solicitor general and had a 10-month stint as minister of aboriginal affairs.
She added that her experience as a candidate who ran and won in Calgary three times contributes to her view on successful campaigning in rural ridings.
"My experience is in Calgary, and I will tell you, with three people in 26 ridings, we didn't have enough people to build enough relationships to build trust. So a lot of the last election, and I can point to seats we lost on misinformation, on LGBTQ misinformation spread by the UCP.
"Lots of that's in rural Alberta, but you can't just push back on that with information. It's insufficient. You need information and you need trust, and trust is built through relationships, so now there's 14 of us in Calgary. We can build more relationships. More relationships mean that more people trust us, and it essentially goes in circles."
Ganley shared her thoughts on mistakes made in previous elections and how, as leader, she would rectify them in the upcoming election.
"What we didn't do such a good job of was presenting an offer on the economy," she said. "I think that the people whose top issue was health care or education voted for us. I think the people whose top issue was economy maybe didn't as much, right?
"The reason is that there is this narrative that we destroyed the economy. It wasn't correct. The international price of oil fell, but that narrative exists. I think that we play into that when we don't talk about it. It makes it seem like we don't care."
She said that she aims to focus much of the party's campaigning in the 2027 provincial election on facts and statistics about the Alberta economy, in a bid to counter misinformation.
Ganley, who served as energy critic before joining the leadership race, also reaffirmed her commitment to prioritizing environmental issues, including banning coal mining in the Rocky Mountains.
"Albertans care about nature," she said. "Even if like, people think 'oh, Calgary's urbanized,' but they care very much, very much about nature, and about agriculture, interestingly, Calgarians, I think, because most of us have rural roots, right?"
Ganley's appearance in Okotoks was part of the Highwood NDP constituency association's 'Meet the Candidates' series, following appearances by Sarah Hoffman and former candidate Rakhi Pancholi.
Ganley is up against MLAs Hoffman and Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse, Alberta Federation of Labour leader Gil McGowan and former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi. The results of the leadership race will be announced in Calgary on June 22.
The next Highwood NDP constituency association event will be with Nenshi at the Crystal Shores Beach House in Okotoks on Wednesday, April 17 at 7 p.m.
All five leadership candidates will also be present at a "Rural Issues & Priorities" forum in Claresholm on Saturday, April 13 from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.
