Nenshi brings message of optimism to city

By Justin Seward - Lethbridge Herald on April 16, 2024.

Herald photo by Justin Seward Alberta NDP leadership candidate Naheed Nenshi speaks with supporters during a campaign stop over the weekend in Lethbridge.

Alberta NDP leadership candidate Naheed Nenshi was in the city on Saturday to speak to supporters in front of a packed house in Essie’s Ballroom at the Lethbridge Sandman Signature Lodge.

“As I’m talking to people across the province, they’ve been telling me all the same thing, that they’re not really excited because they’re happy to see my handsome face on TV again,” said Nenshi.

“What they’re excited about, is that for the first time in a long time, for the first time in this land of divisive and angry politics, people are feeling something better. They’re allowing themselves to feel, they’re giving themselves permission to feel that Alberta can be better, to feel a sense of optimism, to feel a sense of hope and for so many of us it’s a feeling that we have forgotten. And now it is time to be the conduit of that feeling going forward.”

Nenshi gave an example of going up into the mountains and timing it right where there is a loud crack of ice breaking and the start of flowing spring water.

“So now after a long, cold UCP winter, we’re now getting a sense of that spring,” said Nenshi.

“So our job, friends, over the next three years is to be the conduit for that spring, to help our friends and neighbours feel that sense of optimism.”

Nenshi’s slogan is ‘For Alberta For All of Us.’

“An emphasis on ‘Alberta’ and an emphasis on the word ‘All’ and understanding that we have a government now that is not acting in the best interest of the province or for all of us,” said Nenshi.

Nenshi believes that a good health care system has be derived from respect.

“We have to come back to that level of respect,” said Nenshi.

“We also have to understand that the system as it stands right now is designed to profit from the labour of the people that work in it and not just doctors and nurses that we talk about, but an extremely large number of frontline workers who are massively underpaid. Most of whom are women, most of whom are racialized women who are newcomers to this country who are working far below their levels of skills and abilities and the entire system rests on their backs.

“That wasn’t by accident, that was by design. The system is designed to only work by exploiting the frontline workers. And so, as people who believe in workers, we have to understand that the system has to be built on a basis of respect for everyone and on a basis of respect for good work.”

“We need fair and balanced,” said one attendee.

“I think that’s where he’s going to be looking at everyone who may want to come forward and talk to him, and he’ll be receptive to that and look at the bigger picture.”

Young attendee, Tristan de Gruchy, is more hopeful for Nenshi as a candidate than he is for other candidates.

“I think it would be great just to have someone who actually looks at people my age or at my generation,” he said.

“It feels like especially with the current government, they just do not care and I feel like Nenshi cares and that’s what I like about him.”

“I thought he was down to earth, he was humorous,” said George Evelyn.

“Yet he was able to quantify and qualify things that are going wrong in this province, and has a broad view that’s going to include, hopefully, all Albertans and not just whether you’re an orange person, or a red person or a purple person.”