Meili win will leave Saskatchewan voters with dramatically different options in next election

Eenie, Meenie, Meili, Moe …? Hardly.

After Saturday’s NDP leadership vote, Saskatchewan politics is anything but a game of pick ’em.

Arguably, the choice voters now have between the Saskatchewan Party’s Premier Scott

Moe and NDP’s new Opposition Leader Ryan Meili has never been quite so different.

By picking Meili (the 42-yearold urban family physician and progressive social advocate) over Trent Wotherspoon (the 38-year-old former teacher with a bit of an every-man image), the NDP have made a rather bold directional statement that they do intend to head down the progressive left path.

It will either pay off big for the NDP in 2020 or leave the party in its current state, which has seen its last two leaders not make it to the next campaign.

Meili’s 55.1 per cent, 1,113-vote win over Wotherspoon — 5,973 to 4,860 votes that represented 81 per cent of the NDP’s current 10,833 membership — affords him a clear mandate to push his party in what would be a further left direction.

His platform has called for: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent of 2005 levels and transitioning out of coal-fired electrical generation by 2030; a universal pharmacare program in this province that would provide, “free-ofcost, all forms of contraception, including IUDs and emergency contraception”; an extensive rural reconnection strategy that would reinstate a “provincial bus service” that connects urban and rural passengers and “restore efficient freight service”; and expanded home care and assisted living options “with more caregivers in existing buildings, and greater respite and other supports for families caring for seniors.”

On top of all this, Meili is an unabashed supporter for “some form of carbon pricing.”

“I think carbon pricing is a model that works,” Meili told reporters Saturday after his win.

That already has Moe and the Sask. Party labelling Meili and the NDP as the candidate and party of the carbon tax.

Admittedly, the newly minted NDP leader did offer hints he might be scaling back on some policies.

He was vehement his carbon pricing would be a made-inSaskatchewan solution distanced from Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax.

He sung the praises of his often-more-pragmatic rival Wotherspoon, who had the majority of caucus support.

His first order of business will be sitting down with the caucus to emerge with a collective strategy as the NDP Opposition prepares for the next session. That would help pave the way toward the NDP’s 2020 platform that Meili assured would be true to a clear vision but may not be able to afford everything.

He stressed the Saskatchewan NDP are “in it to win it” in 2020 and downplayed the old “leftright stuff ” as “pretty superficial.”

Certainly, there was a greater air of practicality in this leadership run than Meili’s showed in the 2009 and 2013 runs, when he finished runner-up to Dwain Lingenfelter and Cam Broten respectively.

Obviously, that past experience and past year as the sitting MLA for Saskatoon Meeawsin has served him well. It’s also afforded him a greater command of the political podium.

Meili’s speech on Saturday was, by far, the more rousing one. He hammered on “New Democratic values” being “Saskatchewan values” and urged the party and the province to move away from the “tired old story that we can’t do better.”

“Moments like today we can challenge that story,” he said.

What that now means is the big question, for however much homage Meili felt he needed to pay to traditional Saskatchewan NDP sensibilities, there are massive expectations within his own party and support base that his leadership means a move to the left.

Surely, the guy who campaigned on the notion that his party cannot be afraid of trying something new cannot now be afraid of trying something new.

That leaves Saskatchewan voters with a clear choice between the Sask. Party/Scott Moe brand of rural conservatism and Meili’s vision-driven, socially progressive policies.

Saskatchewan’s deeply divided politics may have been just gotten deeper and more divided.

Certainly, it will not be a game of child’s play.