Provincial party names new interim leader
As the first woman to lead Saskatchewan’s NDP, Nicole Sarauer said she has no plans to run for the permanent job next year.
“It’s not something that I would rule out forever,” said Sarauer, who on Tuesday evening was named interim party leader. “But it’s something that I am definitively ruling out for May of 2018.”
The first-term MLA for Regina Douglas Park takes over from previous interim leader Trent Wotherspoon, who stepped down last week.
The party has been without a permanent leader since Saskatoon ex-MLA Cam Broten lost his seat in the April 4, 2016, provincial election.
The leadership race is on, with a vote scheduled for May 6 next year.
“My job is to ensure that a space is created for all leadership candidates … to be able to reach out to the community, to share ideas and to push the party forward,” said Sarauer.
Ryan Meili, who won the March Saskatoon Meewasin byelection, is officially the lone leadership hopeful so far.
As the first woman leader of the party, Sarauer hopes she won’t be the last. “I think I’m one in a line of hopefully many other women who will follow in my footsteps. If one young woman sees me in this space and in this role, and sees it then as a potential career opportunity for her, I think that’s a very good thing,” said Sarauer.
At 31 years old, she is also the youngest leader in Saskatchewan NDP history. Broten was 34 when he became leader in 2013.
Sarauer said her decision to sit out the leadership race is not due to her age. “If it was an age thing for me, I wouldn’t have considered this interim role,” she said.
Rather, “personal reasons” have led to her decision, but she did not wish to elaborate.
Sarauer said she is “not concerned at all” to face Premier Brad Wall as leader of the official Opposition this fall in the legislature.
“I’m looking forward to having that opportunity to ask him the important questions that we’re hearing across the province that people are wanting answered,” she said.
Speaking in Saskatoon on Wednesday, Wall accused Sarauer of being a “sympathizer on the Leap Manifesto side of the party,” referencing a 2015 document that denounces fossil fuels.
“I think it’s important for her to state unequivocally that as the new leader, interim leader of the NDP, she supports … the things that make our economy tick,” said Wall, “because my understanding was that perhaps she’s come from a different perspective in the past.”
Sarauer questioned Wall’s source. “That document is not an option for Saskatchewan,” she said.
She added the provincial NDP has been clear in its support of pipelines as the safest way to transport oil, but “we need to ensure that they’re properly regulated” to avoid oil spills.
Sarauer, who previously worked as a pro-bono lawyer and served as a Regina Catholic School Board trustee, has several MLA critic duties, including justice, corrections and policing, immigration, and executive council and office of the premier.
Some of those duties may be shuffled, said Sarauer.