When Manitoba NDP Premier Wab Kinew addressed the federal leadership convention Friday in Winnipeg, he spoke one line three times during his speech: “To have a strong Canada, we need a strong federal NDP.”

For the battered federal party at an all time low in Ottawa, it was an important message of support from the popular provincial leader.

“What is the future of the federal NDP? It’s victory,” Kinew said to cheers. “It’s important to be the progressive voice on the national political scene … but here in Manitoba we are showing you why winning matters.”

Despite Kinew’s words of affirmation to New Democrats gathered from across Canada, the last Canadian election and the leadership race have highlighted significant rifts between the federal and provincial wings of the party.

Sources say over the last number of years, Kinew has purposefully distanced himself from the federal New Democrats, including last spring, when Jagmeet Singh led the party to its worst election night in history.

The four sources, which include former candidates and campaign staff in Manitoba, called the relationship between the federal and Manitoba NDP tenuous and often at odds. CBC News is not naming them because they fear their comments would damage relationships within the party.

The sources say that last year, NDP candidates running in the federal election struggled to get endorsements from provincial New Democrat members of the legislative assembly (MLAs). There were also challenges in getting the provincial party to share its voter data and allow federal candidates to use Kinew’s image in campaign materials, the sources said. 

Provincial NDP members were also discouraged from posting pictures with Singh, the sources said, in part because the federal NDP was so unpopular in Ottawa and there were concerns it could harm the Manitoba New Democrats’ political fortunes.

At the convention, Kinew posed for photos, including with Singh (who was there to be honoured for his past leadership), but he would not take questions from the media. A request for comment was also not answered.

Kinew notably did not publicly endorse Singh during the campaign, though fellow New Democrat and British Columbia Premier David Eby did. 

Historical tensions between provincial, federal NDP

The historical tensions between the provincial and federal wings of the NDP are playing out in the leadership race. Candidate Heather McPherson, an Edmonton MP, has pitched herself as the person who understands the realities of the NDP on the Prairies.

Candidate Avi Lewis has said he has positive relationships with provincial NDP leaders. But he has also called for the end of fossil fuel expansion, which flies in the face of policies like those of Alberta’s NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi, who yesterday unveiled his pro-pipeline vision, which includes expanding oil and gas production.

Nenshi previously told CBC News he had personally contacted the federal leadership frontrunners, asking them not to let internal ideological battles get in the way of his bid to win next year’s provincial election. 

“It’s not so much that I called them up to be adversarial,” Nenshi said in an interview with CBC’s The House airing on Saturday. “It’s more that I called them up to say, ‘Look, here’s the reality in Alberta.’ Alberta is actually a very large portion of the federal party membership.”

Nenshi says his provincial wing sees itself as a “government in waiting.” 

“So we’re not interested in having conversations that don’t really talk to people about the real issues.”

Nenshi is not attending the NDP’s convention in Winnipeg, because he is no longer a member of the federal party.

At the first provincial convention after he was named the leader, Nenshi gave Alberta NDP members the ability to disaffiliate from the federal wing of the New Democrats.

“I hope whoever the new leader is, they understand that our provincial parties need to show that we can govern and they can help in that,” he told The House.

A ‘complex relationship’

Unlike the federal Liberal and Conservative parties, which operate distinctly from provincial counterparts, a person who joins the NDP is automatically a member of both the federal and provincial wings of the party, except in Quebec. Alberta’s changes mean provincial members there can opt out of federal membership.

The NDP’s membership structure has led to inherent challenges when it comes to New Democrats finding national unity on certain issues, according to David McGrane, a political scientist at the University of Saskatchewan, NDP member and author of The New NDP: Moderation, Modernization and Political Marketing.

“It’s a very complex relationship. It’s unique in Canadian politics,” McGrane said. “Provincial NDP parties have almost never been at this height of popularity, and the federal NDP has not been this unpopular.”

While the federal NDP has never governed in Ottawa, its provincial wings have successfully formed government and official opposition.

“That means they’re a lot more cautious when it comes to ideology, they’re a lot more cautious when it comes to social democracy and they’re trying to do things that aren’t going to scare voters away,” McGrane said.

So, it’s not totally surprising the Manitoba premier would want to keep his distance from the federal party, according to Christopher Adams, an adjunct professor in political science at the University of Manitoba.

“You have to ask yourself, what’s in it for Wab Kinew if he suddenly hitched his wagon to supporting a federal party that isn’t hugely popular?”

Kinew’s decision to stay out of the federal picture in the last election likely helped him in working with Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney on big projects like the Port of Churchill expansion in northern Manitoba, Adams said.

“Kinew also has to be a diplomat, which doesn’t help if he’s gung-ho for the federal NDP and the Liberals get elected.”