Saskatchewan’s New Democratic Party will choose a new leader at their annual convention in Regina on June 6. All the political pundits are predicting that Dwain Lingenfelter will win on the first ballot. Polling done for the Saskatchewan Party suggests that he has the support of around 64% of NDP members.
Link is well known to the people of Saskatchewan, as he was first elected an MLA in 1978, served in the government of Allan Blakeney, and was very prominent in Roy Romanow’s government as a cabinet minister and Deputy Leader. With the recent endorsement of Sandra Morin, he now has the open support of the majority of the NDP caucus in the legislature.
Saskatchewan’s labour movement is strongly behind Lingenfelter. He has the endorsement of the Steelworkers, the United Food and Commercial Workers, as well as Tom Graham, president of CUPE Saskatchewan. The building trades unions have made significant financial contributions to his campaign. None of the other three contenders have official trade union support.
A new direction for the NDP?
After sixteen years in government, the NDP is back in the opposition, and many are calling for a new political direction and a new generation of leaders. Lingenfelter is seen as a representative of the old guard in the NDP, those who have long supported Roy Romanow and Lorne Calvert. Deb Higgins also falls into this category. The other two candidates, Yens Pedersen and Ryan Meili, represent a new generation of young NDP activists. .
The other major division is ideological. Roy Romanow and his government were part of the move to the right by social democratic parties beginning in the 1980s. Romanow was a strong supporter of the new policy direction of the Labour government in New Zealand (1984-90). This government virtually repealed the Keynesian welfare state as it moved to embrace the policies of the free market, free trade, deregulation and privatization. The Labour governments in Australia headed by Bob Hawke and Paul Keating (1983-96) carried out similar “reforms.”
As Roy Romanow remarked when he stepped down as Premier, his government was “Blairite” before Tony Blair took over the leadership of the British Labour Party and was elected Prime Minister. Tony Blair and his minister of finance, Gordon Brown, with their “New Democrat” allies in U.S. President Bill Clinton and German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder, embraced the neoliberal agenda of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, including the deregulation of the financial industry. They also strongly supported the use of NATO in major U.S. military adventures.
Dwain Lingenfelter was very much a supporter of the neoliberal orientation of the Romanow government. Deb Higgins followed suit as a member of the caucus and cabinet under Lorne Calvert. In contrast, Yens Pederson and Ryan Meili are both calling for a return to the social democratic tradition of social justice which characterized the NDP government of Allan Blakeney (1971-82).
The environmental crisis
There is another key division. The NDP governments of Romanow and Calvert were hostile to green issues, particularly global warming and climate change. They formed an alliance with the Conservative governments in Alberta to protect and support the fossil fuel industries. During their tenure in office no actions were taken on the Kyoto Protocol, and Saskatchewan’s greenhouse gas emissions increased dramatically. Lingenfelter, long connected to the oil industry, would likely continue this policy direction. Deb Higgins promises changes but is handicapped by her record in the Calvert government. In contrast, Meili and Pederson are very strong on green issues.
The campaign for the leadership has certainly been well hidden. Only the controversy over Lingenfelter’s 1100 new memberships from Meadow Lake made the news. The provincial NDP did everything they could to protect the party and its top candidate.
Over their recent sixteen years in government we have seen the vote for the NDP fall from a high of 276,000 in 1991 to 169,000 in 2007. The voter turnout out, the percentage of those eligible to vote, dropped from a norm of around 80% to less than 60%. The number of voters enumerated in long time NDP ridings has dropped significantly. Membership in the NDP fell from 46,000 in 1991 to less than 10,000 in 2008 and it is now up to only 14,000. In the two latest public opinion polls Brad Wall and the Sask Party government had an approval rating of 70% and 75%. Has the NDP under Roy Romanow and Lorne Calvert done anything wrong?
In the meantime, Larissa Shasko and the new, young Saskatchewan Greens are waiting eagerly to see the outcome of the leadership vote. Their key policies put them to the left of the Romanow-Calvert governments. You can see their election platform, approved at their annual convention, at http://www.saskgreen.ca/Policy.
John W. Warnock is a Regina political economist and political activist. He is author of Saskatchewan: The Roots of Discontent and Protest. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2004.
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