Working class, helping vulnerable are key issues for NDP candidate

By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman - Lethbridge Herald on April 2, 2025.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDapulido@lethbridgeherald.com

With the federal election only a few weeks away, New Democratic Party candidate Nathan Svoboda says his “boots on the ground” approach to life in Lethbridge sets him apart from his fellow candidates.
“When it comes to my volunteering with Streets Alive, the Soup Kitchen, the Sage Clan, I have always been a community advocate,” says Svoboda. “Especially in the past five years working as a paramedic with Recovery Alberta.”
He says has he’s seen first-hand the impact that legislation can have on the success of families and individuals, especially those in recovery.
“This has been a natural progression of that advocacy, to be able to support my community,” he says.
Svoboda believes one of the highlights of his candidacy is how deeply rooted he is in the Lethbridge community, having gone to school here, living in Lethbridge for almost a decade and raising his family here.
“I love Lethbridge, and I think ultimately, when people feel so unheard from Ottawa here on the West, that they want someone who goes to Ottawa that still connected and deep-rooted in the community.”
If elected, Svoboda says he has three goals he would like to address in Ottawa. First and foremost is affordability, where the NDP is looking out for the working class.
“For example, I am committed to reducing income tax on the first $20,000 that people make to zero,” he says. “I am committed to eliminating GST on essentials like home heating and groceries, tax cuts that will benefit the working folk, not just billionaires.”
Secondly, he wants to focus on housing, addiction and homelessness as he believes they are interconnected, and he believes it has been a systemic issue in Lethbridge that needs to be properly addressed.
“The provincial government is totally sweeping it under the carpet, and it needs to be addressed properly. I’ve always had the firm stand that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, as much of the opposite of addiction is connection.”
He says that when working families are supported, and essentials such as health care, dental care, and child benefits that the conservatives say they want to cut, are protected, the opioid crisis can be handled.
“Through support and connection is how we help people succeed in their recovery, not by criminalization. That is what perpetuates the cycle, where connection and support break the cycle.”
Thirdly, Svoboda says he’s passionate about protecting agriculture, especially when it comes to proposed coal mine development in the Crowsnest Pass and how it could affect the water supply. He says that’s trading one industry for another.
“As much as there is the appeal to that relative quick revenue that we might get from coal mining, to compromise that sustainable and reliable industry that Lethbridge has been built around is an extremely foolish choice,” he says.
When asked about a fellow NDP member’s endorsement of a candidate from another party, Svoboda says he doesn’t take it as a personal attack, as the endorsement was based on friendship and not partisan lines.
More information on Svoboda is available online at nathansvoboda.ndp.ca.

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