NDP leadership candidates speak at forum ahead of vote

Saskatchewan’s two NDP leadership candidates squared off at their first forum in Moose Jaw on Thursday night.

The party will choose a successor to outgoing leader Ryan Meili on June 26. The candidates offered their ideas on what it could take to win the next election.

“I think the fact that I grew up on a farm and I have those rural roots that I have maintained are critically important for our party to be able to make inroads into rural Saskatchewan,” current NDP MLA and leadership candidate Carla Beck said.

Beck’s opponent is Saskatoon lawyer Kaitlyn Harvey, who plans to run in Ryan Meili’s soon to be vacated Saskatoon seat, regardless of whether she wins the leadership race.

“I’m not skirting around the fact that we need to drop our greenhouse gas emissions as fast as possible,” she said. “I’m not trying to say that there is a way to continue developing and expanding oil and gas resources. No, I’m saying those need to start to be wound down.”

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The NDP have been out of power since 2007 after being a dominant force in Saskatchewan politics for decades. There were several faces in the Moose Jaw crowd that offered a reminder of the party’s past strength, including former Moose Jaw cabinet ministers Glen Hagel and Deb Higgins, along with the last NDP premier, Lorne Calvert.

“With work, with creative policy, with a good sensitivity to the needs and the wants and desires for a great future of the people of Saskatchewan, we have every opportunity to have seen tonight the next premier of Saskatchewan and who will be the first woman to hold that office,” said Calvert.

The Moose Jaw forum was one of only two planned ahead off the June 26 leadership vote. The other will be held in Regina later this month. The party suggests that the race is too short to plan more.