Convention shows NDP has ways to go
Complaining about a tired, old government is what oppositions do in their second term. Certainly, we heard a lot about a tired, old “entitled” and “dismissive” government in the late 1990s. And the criticism was valid. So willing were New Democrats to take rural Saskatchewan for granted in 1999, they called an election in the middle of harvest ... and almost lost government to the upstart Sask. Party, then a mere two years old.
The perception of growing tired and old is an inevitability — one in which all voters eventually come to believe. (See: Alberta election.)
The best a government can do is try not to feed that notion, as Premier Brad Wall may have done in last week’s cabinet shuffle.
But if politics were simply about getting younger people or just ensuring your demographics perfectly reflect society, it would easy. It’s far more complicated than that.
After all, if it’s Wall’s government that is supposedly now tired and old, it is the Sask. Party that can now contend that it is Cam Broten’s NDP that lacks the experience and wisdom of age to run the province.
Admittedly, it still was good news for Broten that he received a 98-percent vote of confidence at the party’s weekend convention. Just two years ago, he won the NDP leadership by a mere 44 votes.
But even better for Broten is many of the 475 NDP delegates delivering that confidence vote were less than 40 years old. Broten’s greatest success to date may be delivering a lot of women candidates (half of current NDP nominations are women) and men under 40 years. Such NDP revitalization is long overdue.
Roy Romanow’s biggest failure before his 2001 retirement was his failure to revitalize the party.
Then younger party stalwarts — Federated Co-op’s Scott Banda and Cameco’s Tim Gitzel are two that come to mind — simply left the party for lack of opportunity.
The NDP simply lost an entire generation and are a doughnut — a party with a base of aging seniors, a growing number of supporters under forty, but precious few in the 50-year-old set thought to be the prime age for political office.
By contrast, today’s Sask. Party government is clearly dominated by 50-year-olds like Wall (he turns 50 this year), new Finance Minister Kevin Doherty and former minister Kevin Cheveldayoff, etc.
However, this weekend’s annual NDP convention revealed the demographic may not be the only ingredient the NDP is lacking for success.
One such key is momentum best reflected in polling and numbers attracted to events like party conventions.
Thirty percentage points behind Wall in the opinion polls speaks for itself. But so does the 475 in attendance — half of past NDP annual conventions and a quarter of what Wall might attract to his annual “premier’s” dinner fundraiser in Regina Thursday, where organizers anticipate 2,100 to 2,200 attendees.
Of course, the NDP will rightly argue that this particular event is not exclusively partisan supporters, but at $250 a plate it surely is an indicator of a party’s ability to fundraise.
By contrast, one NDP resolution this weekend posed the idea of renting out the much-beloved Tommy Douglas House on Saskatchewan Drive in Regina to raise money. That resolution died in a closed panel session and the party financial statements suggests it has a built-up fund going into an election for the first time since 2003. But the resolution shows NDP money concerns are never far away.
Speaking of resolutions, there weren’t very many damning ones — one possible exception being, a call to stop selling uranium to India until it signs the non-proliferation treaty. It emerged from panel, but wasn’t debated on the convention floor.
The real problem with the resolutions is that they were familiar: less classroom overcrowding; opposition to P3 schools; a cap on ambulance fees before phasing them out; a seniors’ advocate; minimum care standards and safe staffing levels for seniors; an anti-poverty strategy; legislated targets for greenhouse gas emissions; a sovereign-wealth futures fund; more government financial transparency, including in the hiring of consultants, and; a second bridge in Prince Albert.
New ideas from the grassroots? No. More like a recap of question period for the past two sessions.
And the same thing could be said for most everything in Broten’s main 35-minute address Saturday — stories of Santa Maria resident Margaret Warholm, the ambulance bills incurred by Sara Buccis-Gunn, John Black and Associate lean costs, etc. Where was the vision?
One gets that Broten was preaching to the choir. But this is an election year and it’s high time for Broten to start making a case why his NDP would be an effective government — not why it has been an effective opposition.
To win government, you need to say something more than the other guys are old and tired.