What is the state of the Sask. NDP?

Idiosyncratic? Kook? Odd? Boring and awkward? A misfit like me?

NDPs are like Leafs fans. "We did something in the 1960s!"

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You just want me to say they're "too sensitive" so you can work in your smug, dismissive "you're all being silly" thing again.  Sorry, not gonna play.

I would totally settle for you finding that term for that guy (that won't offend anyone).

Regina is also the epicentre of a multi billion dollar fiasco and questionable land flipping by the Sask Party.

I would have been surprised if they lost.

This little stunt was anything but smart:

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The Saskatchewan NDP accused the provincial government of trying to quietly privatize long-term care facilities in Regina and Grenfell, even though the party’s leader admits there is little evidence to support such a claim.

“We don’t see any evidence to the contrary, I suppose, is what we’re concerned about,” Ryan Meili told reporters at a Thursday morning news conference in Saskatoon with Opposition Seniors Critic Danielle Chartier.

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Meili subsequently acknowledged that “due diligence on available options is appropriate,” but suggested issuing the requests signalled that the government had already settled on a private model for long-term care in both communities.

Health Minister Jim Reiter was unavailable for an interview Thursday.

In a statement, Reiter said the request for expressions of interest is an “information-gathering exercise,” and not a tender. It was issued to see “whether any existing service providers might be interested in exploring options for meeting long-term care needs,” he said.

“Long-term care services are publicly funded in Saskatchewan and that will not change,” Reiter’s statement read, adding that the request for expressions of interest is one of multiple options being considered.

The Saskatchewan Party government has proven willing to contemplate privatizing public assets — notably SaskTel, an idea it quickly abandoned — but the NDP’s long-standing fears of a major sell-off have never been realized.

Newsflash to the Saskatchewan NDP: You guys have been accusing the Saskatchewan Party of having a nefarious plan to privatize everything since the mid-2000s, and your support has declined in every election since then. The NDP is always accusing its opponents of wanting to privatize everything that isn't nailed down. That accusation typically doesn't result in any attention for the NDP when it does, other than for the public to simply roll their eyes at them. If you're going to accuse your opponents of wanting to privatize something, make sure you have the evidence to back up your claims. Otherwise, keep quite and move on to something else.

Dr. Meili, I think you were the right choice to lead the Saskatchewan NDP. There was a reason that in a crowded field, you emerged basically out of nowhere and ended up on the final ballot against someone propped up by the Establishment on your first run. There's a reason you were elected NDP leader over the desires of Caucus. Your party wanted innovation, bold ideas, new thinking. But you really need to step up your game. Tap into that energy, innovation, enthusiasm, and desire for new thinking. Resist the tired, worn out thinking of your deadwood Caucus who are so in the bubble and out of touch with reality that they ended up handing historic majorities to a right-wing party. Stop hurting the party with crap like this and actually lead like you were elected to do.

They shut down many of our provincial liquor stores and replaced them with private liquor stores and mandated that all new liquor stores will be private only. Do you call that privatization? I guess not, and it is perfectly ok.

Sask Power wind mills are private only. Sask Power had the money and resources to set up crown wind energy but according to Brad Wall,  Sask Power was banned from expanding. Those profits are for private interests only and not for the good of the province.

Sask Tel can no longer expand or develop by using its own revenues. The revenues go directly to the government to use. Sask Tel can only venture finance future projects. 

Brad Wall shut down our Saskatchewan Transportation Company rural bus service leaving poor people to hitch hike in -30  degree weather and risk their lives walking on the highways. This is a disastrous blow to rural Saskatchewan and the far north.

Brad Wall shut down SCN television network which promoted made in Saskatchewan documentaries and films. They sold the network to a company in Ontario with no background in telecommunications. Brad Sall sold all the assets for ten cents on the dollar.

According to you though, the real  problem is that the NDP are just too whiny about our crowns corporations.

Misfit wrote:

They shut down many of our provincial liquor stores and replaced them with private liquor stores and mandated that all new liquor stores will be private only. Do you call that privatization? I guess not, and it is perfectly ok.

Sask Power wind mills are private only. Sask Power had the money and resources to set up crown wind energy but according to Brad Wall,  Sask Power was banned from expanding. Those profits are for private interests only and not for the good of the province.

Sask Tel can no longer expand or develop by using its own revenues. The revenues go directly to the government to use. Sask Tel can only venture finance future projects. 

Brad Wall shut down our Saskatchewan Transportation Company rural bus service leaving poor people to hitch hike in -30  degree weather and risk their lives walking on the highways. This is a disastrous blow to rural Saskatchewan and the far north.

Brad Wall shut down SCN television network which promoted made in Saskatchewan documentaries and films. They sold the network to a company in Ontario with no background in telecommunications. Brad Sall sold all the assets for ten cents on the dollar.

According to you though, the real  problem is that the NDP are just too whiny about our crowns corporations.

If all of this has happened, of course the NDP is right to go after this and call them out. Have they actually done so? That's an entirely different thing than going after the government for something that they "might" do.

Misfit wrote:

your attack on NDP privatization fears is seriously misguided and inappropriate for our history in Saskatchewan. The Sask Party is running our crowns into the ground and chipping away at them little by little so that they slowly implode. And I guess you support that.

If that was true, then I would have said, "I support the privatization of the Crowns." Can you find anything in my post to this thread or in my posting history on babble that would support that position?

I've been a part of this community since the NDP was last in power in Saskatchewan. The NDP started to talk about privatizations then, however it has had no appreciable impact on support for the Saskatchewan Party. The fact that we don't like the Saskatchewan Party doesn't matter. There's always people who don't like any particular party. What I'm concerned about is what the NDP does to call out Saskatchewan Party failures, propose alternatives, and actually win. It's great that the by-elections in the last 2 years have gone the NDP's way. That will only bring them back to 2007 support levels, when they first lost.

On a tangent, you've expressed reservations about Meili before. I'd be curious to know more about that, especially since his victory has the optics of the grassroots defeating the establishment. What is it about Meili that makes him an ineffective leader? What, if anything, do you think he can do to turn that around? Is there someone else you feel who can be more effective? Nicole Saurer seemed to be quite effective as an interim leader, but I guess she wasn't interested.

Smith, I am not sure about Miele as an effective leader. I hope he is but I have my doubts.

the Sask Party has set up private MRI clinics in Regina and is planning more for Saskatoon. With this background it makes me wonder if the building in Grenfell had to be put up for tender or if the government could have built the facility automatically. If the government could have built the facility automatically then the NDP has reason to ask why this was not done. 

The Sask PRty has already embarked on a process of health care privatization. And we need to be concerned about further privatization efforts.

Miele is correct in expressing these concerns, but he did not handle himself well in the press. He is novice in the political spectrum and he has to learn how to. communicate with the media better.

Now *This* Is More Like It:

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Meili says that even with the increase, Saskatchewan's minimum wage is still not enough for workers to live on.

"People working in low wage jobs are having to access food banks, they're having to access various social programs, they're still living in poverty despite having a full-time job," Meili said.

So it's clear to me that Meili wants to help the working poor in Saskatchewan, while the current government does not. I know who to vote for on that basis.

No it does not mean that at all. Not even close.

Michael Ignatieff was a brilliant man and a Harvard professor. He was very articulate but despite all this, the mainstream media could dance circles around him and portray him the very opposite of what he wanted to convey.

Ryan Miele is very intelligent and articulate as well. Unfortunately he is also not media savvy just like Ignatieff.

if Miele doesn't get media coaching, the media is going to destroy Ryan and the NDP in the next election about one year from now.

Maybe when it comes to John Gormley that is true (and he does have a lot of people who listen to him); not so with CBC or the two major dailies. I don't agree with every approach they take to political coverage, but I certainly wouldn't call them the enemy.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

Not to imply that that the Sask NDP are actually doing everything they should be, but by your reckoning if they shut the fuck up and turn into the Sask Party and get elected it's all good?

That is not what I said at all. My point is that if you're going to say something, say something meaningful.

One of the basic lessons of communication that people often forget (especially in politics) is that people have their own perception filters, and that when you say something to them, what they hear isn't always what you intended to say. People already expect the NDP to criticize privatization. They also expect politicians on the right to scream about burdensome taxation. In the absence of clear evidence to back up either claim (clear evidence which Misfit provided upthread) people are just going to roll their eyes and get back to whatever it was they were doing before.

I usually wouldn't comment on NDP internal politics, not being a member and all. But since I'm originally from Saskatchewan and lived there during the Grant Devine debacle, I will share a story. A trade union friend took me to hear Roy Romanow speak at a fundraising dinner in Saskatoon  in January 1991, almost a year before he became premier. Romanow told the crowd of mostly solid NDP supporters that if elected, he would change very little, because Devine was leaving the cupboard bare. Romanow was true to his word, not much changed, to the bitter disappointment of my friend and many others. From what I hear these days, the NDP is sticking pretty much to the same strategy. That and 6 bucks will get you a decent cappucino here in Vancouver, where I have been in "exile" for 25 years, lol. Not really a joke, I guess, since the hard-working people of Saskatchewan deserve much better.

From what I've seen, it seems as though Meili is the candidate who had the support of the left wing of the party. He came from nowhere to end up with Dwain Lingenfelter on the final ballot the first time he ran, so I think that gave him some street cred. Is Meili not doing it for the Saskatchewan NDP? Well, I haven't heard any other names mentioned in NDP politics in Saskatchewan who generate the level of enthusiastic support that Meili does.

Having said that, "if not the current guy, who else?" is not a viable defense of a leader. It may be the case that the Saskatchewan NDP can't win under Meili, either because for all his qualities he still comes up short, or the party apparatus isn't conducive to him succeeding. Either way, I think that if the Saskatchewan NDP cannot make headway under Meili, then the only viable course of action would be to give up on the Saskatchewan NDP entirely and create something new from scratch.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

The lefts problem is that they cannot change brands names. When a party of the business establishment goes off the rails like the Socred's or Sask Conservatives the same backroom operators found a new party or take over an existing one that is small. The Sask Party and the BC Liberals have done it very successfully. The Chamber of Commerce's or other business groups use their contacts to ensure that the primary donor base of the establishment party moves en masse to the new party so it was an almost seamless transition.

In the cases of Saskatchewan and BC, the right-wing parties flamed out so badly that the brand was irreversibly tarnished. The NDP has had problems, but I have yet to see a single instance of there being a bad NDP government following which the NDP did not recover at some point. The NDP is the Official Opposition in Ontario 23 years after Bob Rae. The NDP is a majority partner in a defacto coalition in BC about 15 years after the RCMP were filmed on camera raiding the home of a BC NDP Premier. I've always believed that to mean that as angry as people can get with NDP governments, the NDP has never messed up as badly as the right-wingers have, and that people know this deep down.

In regards to pushing the NDP aside, we've seen that happen in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. When the provinces went to the polls in 2014 and 2015 respectively, the Greens, despite being marginal, out-performed the NDP in both elections. Fast forward, and in New Brunswick the Greens are the clear choice of anti-establishment voters who want a third party (at least for those voters who respect francophone minority rights) and Prince Edward Island could easily elect North America's first ever Green government later this year. The NDP is an afterthought in both provinces. It's not directly comparable to Saskatchewan where the NDP once governed while in Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick they were just as marginal as the Greens. If the NDP continues to falter and some other political formation can enter in the cracks in the system, who knows what is possible?

Duelling arrest battles: Better to stand on your convictions than be convicted for being unable to stand:

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Meili asked Premier Scott Moe for his position on the migration pact. The Minister of Energy Bronwyn Eyre turned the debate towards Meili's history as a protester himself.

"That day back in 2001, he [Meili] joined forces with the Sierra Club, the International Socialists Union. None other than Cuban dictator Fidel Castro sent a special note of support to the protesters," Eyre said.

"You can be sure that if Facebook existed back then there would be some pretty far out posts."

Eyre said Meili presents everyone who has attended a pro-oil rally "as a racist."

Meili countered by raising the drinking and driving arrests of government MLAs, including the premier. Moe was convicted of drunk driving in 1992.

"I will happily stand up for having been arrested for standing up for my convictions rather than having been convicted for not being able to stand and trying to drive."

Timebandit wrote:

Moe is such a fucking hoser.

Apparently people don't see it that way:

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Scott Moe is the most popular premier in the country, according to a new poll.

The quarterly poll by Dart Insight and Communications ranks premiers on their approval ratings. This quarter Moe received a 59 per cent approval, the highest of the premiers listed.

This just boggles the mind. Wall's popularity I understood. But putting aside political biases, you would think that after a while, the weight of government would start to hold back a party.  You would expect a successor's popularity to drop off, and this government is well beyond its honeymoon period.

What is going on? It seems to defy nature that someone taking over for a government that is over a decade old still remains that popular.

And with the decimation of the rural NDP Caucus in Manitoba, we are travelling down the same road as our neighbours to the west. We are just a decade behind, but will surely end up in the same place.

Sask government shuts down alternative school for disadvantaged teens. Claims the kids aren’t integrating into regular schools.  Shame! Shame! Shame!

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55% support for the Saskatchewan Party, Meili with a slight net disapproval rating

My jaw is on the floor. What is going on in Saskatchewan? I saw that the government reversed its decision to close the school, and some people think that is a sign that the  government is prepared to listen and learn from its mistakes, but seriously?

People of Saskatchewan, your MLA is *not* a nice person. That's just a facade on their part in order to win over your vote. Politicians by definition are not nice people. Look at the public policy impact of the decisions the make or advocate making, whether they have the credibility to act on that, and vote on that basis. And if you're that concerned about farmers, then look at the National Farmers Union, whose public policy programme would protect small farmers and repopulate rural regions, and support the candidates they endorse.