Literally, since her laptop camera was set to track her head movements, but also because I was meeting her while she was in her element. I’ve watched at least half a dozen clips from other interviews with McPherson, and regardless of the topic, she has been cool and collected.
Why shouldn’t she be confident? The riding of Edmonton-Strathcona, despite being nestled in the most conservative province in the country, has been the “little orange dot” — a rare stronghold for the New Democratic Party. McPherson’s work — first to help flip the riding for Linda Duncan, and then to build the local infrastructure – has contributed a great deal towards that success.
It’s a strange phenomenon of this decade that we now have a clear and consistent view into at least one slice of public figures’ lives: through their preferred teleconferencing workstation. McPherson’s is in her family home in the Old Strathcona neighbourhood of Edmonton. Nearby is Old Scona Academic High School, which is often ranked among the top-performing high schools in Canada, and has educated four consecutive generations of McPherson’s family.
“I have a brilliant family, we’re all really tight, really close,” McPherson said, but growing up as the middle child between two brothers meant that she toughened up quickly. “One of the things I learned as a child was, you fight for what you want. You get in there, and you don’t let anyone tell you you’re not supposed to be there, and you don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not supposed to get the things that you deserve.”
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Fairness was the thing that came up the most in our conversation. Still discussing her childhood, McPherson said “I think of it as this serious Scottish personality trait of stubbornness, this real desire for things to be fair. You grow up as a kid and everyone tells you that life’s not fair. Well, yeah, but it should be, and we should be making it fair.”
As McPherson left the University of Alberta to teach in sub-Saharan Africa, this sense of fairness led her towards a political awakening. “I taught in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Uganda, and that idea that these kids that were exactly the same as the kids that lived in my community had such a harder go at being able to thrive, simply because of the lottery of where they were born, and how unfair that was and how unjust that was, that was a big part of it for me.”
McPherson also spent some of her youth as a competitive athlete, competing for Canada’s national swim team. When I asked her about the differing perspectives on fairness between the two main prongs of Canada’s sports strategy — ParticipACTION, which focuses on increasing physical activity across all citizens, and Own the Podium, which targets resources to elite performers — she first reflected on the impacts that sports have had on her family.
“One of the things I’m very proud of with both my children is that they were involved in sport all throughout, but as adults they continue to be involved in sport. Both my children were highly competitive in the sports that they participated in, but they also do sport for enjoyment… as somebody who was an elite athlete when I was younger, the idea that I’ve learned skills from that like time management and how to get through hardships and what the value of hard work is and the value of a team, those are all things that you learn as an athlete.”
I pressed McPherson again on the fairness aspect of resource allocation between the two programs, and expanded the idea to economic and industrial policy. Should we favour the strongest performers in our country with added resources to make them world-beaters, or should we always prioritize broad-based support for everyone?
“It is one of those things where it does extend beyond the metaphor, the idea that you can pit these different bits against each other and say that it’s this or that. Meanwhile, on the other side of the equation, there’s a 5% defence spend, or there’s billions of dollars for the oil and gas sector, so we can’t afford to both put kids in sport and provide the support that elite athletes need.”
After naming some other examples from healthcare to international development, McPherson said, “There’s a lot of times where folks are being told it’s one thing or the other, and really it’s a distraction from governments who have failed to meet the needs of their citizens.”
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Speaking of Alberta, Heather McPherson had plenty to say about the performance of Premier Danielle Smith and the United Conservative Party. When asked what she imagined a future Canada looking like, she couldn’t help but start with a pressing threat provincially. “Right now in Alberta, Danielle Smith is taking a swing at health care, and I’m not sure Canadians across this country realize how serious that swing is.”
Regarding the nine referendum questions that Danielle Smith has proposed, McPherson begrudgingly admits that there was one she agreed with. “The abolishment of the Senate, yeah, I really wish I hadn’t agreed with that, it drove me nuts that there was one where I said sure.”
“But let’s be fair. Those questions are delusional. Many of them are deeply racist, they are extraordinarily problematic, she has made it so that it is very difficult for any campaign to communicate effectively with constituents about what these questions mean. There can be no “No” or “Yes” campaign… because some of them are yes and no and some of them aren’t. It is complicating the process unnecessarily.”
McPherson continued, “[Smith] has a failed government that has a massive deficit while revenues are up, the worst healthcare and education outcomes in the country, no attempt to deal with the climate we’re facing in this world, and then she brings these questions forward so that we’re all ‘Look over here!’”
Notably, none of the nine referendum questions directly tackled the question of separation. I wanted to get McPherson’s perspective on the nascent separatist movement in the province, and the actions that Premier Danielle Smith was taking to stoke those sentiments.
“She refuses to talk about the foreign interference that is very clearly entering Alberta through the United States to try and influence the decision on some of these referendum questions, particularly around separation. She refuses to address the idea that many of these things are constitutionally wildly unavailable to her as the premier of a province, and refuses to acknowledge that the blaming of newcomers to Canada puts a target on the back of so many Canadian citizens.”
Trying to compare the Albertan separatists with Quebec, I asked if there was any sense of uniqueness in Alberta that McPherson resonated with. “I think that every part of this country has its differences. Every region is different and unique. It’s what makes our country so fantastic. It’s what makes us stronger. I believe that my Canada involves Quebec, I can say wholeheartedly that the Canada that I love includes Quebec, as it includes Alberta… [Quebec does] have a different language, they do have a different history, and we do have to acknowledge that, but it is our diversity, and our differences that make us a stronger country.”
One recent attempt to acknowledge those differences was the MOU signed between Danielle Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney – did that help? “One of the biggest disappointments about that MOU is that Mark Carney seems to be flitting around Canada handing out goodies to each province, and the goodies he handed to my province will not help any Albertan, and will not get a job for any Albertan. So it’s great that Danielle Smith can crow about some success that she thinks she’s gotten, but there’s not going to be a job for a Canadian or an Albertan there, and that’s disappointing.”
I asked specifically about one of the items that wasn’t in the MOU – any mention of the province’s suspension of all new renewable energy projects. “The failure to invest in renewables is just such an indication that [Danielle Smith] is not serious about building up Alberta’s economy and ensuring there are jobs for workers… The biggest investors in renewable energy in the United States are in Texas. We should be massive on the renewable scale, we have the exact right climate for this, we’ve got a ton of wind, we’ve got a ton of sunlight, we’ve got this highly skilled workforce to do this work and to shut it down is just a nod to the petrostate. It’s getting in bed with the oil and gas guys, and it’s not a future economy for our province. It’s not helping us as we try to build an economy in this province where people can thrive and they can raise their families.”
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After spending a good portion of our time focused on the Alberta landscape, I wanted to pivot back to Parliament.
Heather McPherson is the only elected member of parliament in the leadership race, and she has held a number of key roles within the party since she was first elected in 2019. She has been the deputy house leader, setting the day-to-day agenda of Parliamentary sessions. She has also been the foreign affairs critic, where she pushed the party’s stance firmly towards supporting Palestinian solidarity.
The last partisan position that McPherson held was as the party whip, the person responsible for enforcing discipline on key votes and messaging, who ensures that everyone is singing from the same songbook. But once a party loses official party status, as the NDP did in the 2025 election, none of those roles are necessary anymore.
On the day we spoke, Nunavut MP Lori Idlout crossed the floor to the Liberals, leaving the NDP with a half a dozen MPs. Rumours are also swirling around the only Quebec NDP MP, Alexandre Boulerice, and his possible departure for the provincial party Quebec solidaire. That just leaves Leah Gazan, Gord Johns, Jenny Kwan and Don Davies joining with Heather McPherson as NDP-affiliated but ostensibly independent members of Parliament.
Which all begs the question, what is the point of an unofficial party? After all, many MPs state in exit interviews that the party structure limits their independence and their ability to serve their constituents.
McPherson, as you might expect from a candidate for party leader, disagrees. “I think we have a little bit of a different reality in the New Democratic Party. The whip’s position is more about helping folks with their schedules, it’s much less authoritarian than I think that it might be with other parties. I would also say that I honestly believe that people become New Democratic members of Parliament because they hold certain values, and it makes it much easier for us to align on votes in the house.”
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We ended up coming back around to discussing local organizing and the need to build grassroots engagement. “I think there’s a hunger for it,” McPherson said, “I think people are looking for it.”
“I’ve always felt like campaigns are the perfect place to bring people together. I remember in my first campaign, our team believed you eat together before you go out on the doors, you build a community. The little old ladies who are in the back corner making phone calls, the university kids that are going door knocking, the organizers who are frantically trying to figure out their plans, everybody sits down and eats a potluck dinner together, and it builds this community. My mom was saying to me at the end of the 2019 campaign, how will all these kids eat?”
McPherson’s local organizing since then has set the standard for the NDP. “We decided early on that we were going to use some of our riding association funds to bring on a year-round organizer that would work with all of the other riding associations, that would be that liaison between the federal party in Ottawa and the riding associations… I think there’s some real things that we have learned about organizing in Edmonton, in Alberta, that I think can be replicated across the country, and that can connect the riding associations with the party.”
“We have to recognize that we are a movement. People that have been involved in this movement for a very long time are New Democrats who want this party to be rebuilt. When you talk about building a bigger table, when you talk about welcoming people in, that’s also part of it. Making sure that there is a space for every single person at the table is important. People who have been doing this work for a really long time, people that are new to this movement, people that maybe were part of this movement and left because they didn’t see themselves here. They’re welcome back to this party.”
Editor’s Note: This article appears in a series of interviews with NDP candidates by The Leveller.
