The newly elected leader of the NDP was in the Battlefords on Tuesday as part of an extensive summer tour.
“I sort of feel like the Saskatchewanderer this summer,” said Meili, who was joined on this Battlefords visit by Vicki Mowat, MLA for Saskatoon Fairview.
This is the first summer tour for Meili since becoming NDP leader in early March. His day in the Battlefords was filled with meetings with local constituents and leaders.
Meili and Mowat had met with Mayor Ryan Bater and with members of the Battlefords Chamber of Commerce in the morning. There were more meetings with community organizations in the afternoon, and a barbecue was planned with local New Democrats in the evening.
Familiar local concerns and issues came up during the meetings Meili and Mowat had in the city.
“Certainly from the Chamber of Commerce we heard a lot about the issues with crime in the city,” said Meili. “That’s clearly been an ongoing challenge for a couple of decades, those high rates.”
The Chamber recently launched Action Battlefords to combat the high crime rates. Among their efforts are plans to create more programming aimed at teens.
Meili welcomed the “really interesting ideas out at the Chamber of Commerce about getting more involved with creating opportunities for people, helping to address some of the underlying issues such as poverty that really lead to those high incidence rates.”
Relations between municipal and provincial levels of government were a key topic in the meeting with Mayor Bater.
Meili said there was discussion of the challenges the City faced in “the way in which the provincial government has been trying to download costs onto municipalities — the grants in lieu cut last year — and the way that those funds really haven’t returned to North Battleford, and the challenges that presents in terms of maintenance of infrastructure.”
Meili expressed the view there was “a need for the province to be more involved in life in the Battlefords area — North Battleford and Battlefords area and the surrounding area — to deal with these underlying challenges.”
Mowat said she has spent time in the Battlefords dealing with problems in the area. She noted Bater made the point that his city serves a larger population area of people in the surrounding area, and had cited the importance of the region as a whole.
“There is a great opportunity for working together and collaboration in many different projects at the regional level,” said Mowat.
Meili acknowledged the issues raised in their meetings in the Battlefords weren’t confined to the community. There is “absolutely commonality across the province about some of the challenges that are being faced,” he said.
“The cuts to the municipal sector, cuts in health and education, those are things that are really on the top of people’s minds everywhere we go. But then each community has its own character, has its own specific opportunities and challenges that we’re trying to make sure we learn more about and have a chance to do what we need to do, which is, right now, in opposition, challenge the current government’s approach and also start to prepare our own set of ideas of how we can tackle these challenges most effectively, develop a platform and really show that New Democrats are ready to govern and steer the province in a better direction.”
A number of other issues were addressed by both Meili and Mowat in their meeting with the Regional OptimistTuesday.
Meili said he was pleased to see a meeting happen Monday between the province and members of the Justice for Our Stolen Children group, who had set up on the grounds outside the legislature over the past several months.
“We’ve been urging the government to meet with folks for months now,” said Meili. “There was lots of opportunity for the government to engage with the group. They delayed and delayed and delayed and that further escalated things.”
Overall, he said the camp has been positive and “managed to bring attention to some key issues in the province,” such as the high incarceration rate of Indigenous youth and similar overrepresentation in the welfare system and in foster care.
“We need to be looking at how do we help kids to have situations in which they can grow up and thrive, where we can keep families together and keep young people, and all people, out of crime and corrections,” said Meili. “This government has been inactive on those issues.”
On the carbon tax, Meili noted the conversation he had with the Battlefords Chamber on the issue was an interesting one.
They thought it was “largely a distraction from the real issues that we’re facing in this province. That’s the way we see the provincial government using this.”
Meili expressed his belief the Scott Moe government was “picking a fight with Ottawa” to distract from the cuts to health care and education in the province.
But he also felt it was leading the province down the “dangerous” road of being in non-compliance with federal regulations.
“As a result, in January, we’re going to have a carbon price imposed on Saskatchewan, designed in Ottawa,” said Meili.
“That’s not the smart way to do things. If we’re going to have a pricing system in Saskatchewan, it should be designed by us, and done in such a way that it is, one, going to actually work, reduce emissions, and two, have the least possible impact on the economy and the most positive potential impact to the economy.”
On trade, both Meili and Mowat expressed concern about the escalating trade war between the Trump administration and Canada, and the potential negative impact on Saskatchewan, particularly steel.
“It’s a disturbing moment when you’ve got the president of the United States wanting to sit down with the leaders of North Korea and Russia and picking a fight with Canada,” said Meili.
He noted Canada is dependent on access to the U.S. markets. He also noted Evraz Steel is “looking at potential layoffs in the coming weeks if they can’t get their product across the border.”
“The outcomes of the NAFTA negotiations will be imperative for us,” said Mowat, who is responsible for the trade portfolio in her critic role in the legislature.
“We have to acknowledge we have an export-driven economy in Saskatchewan, and we have to know that any imposition of tariffs is going to make a difference on how that ends up going.”
Meili expressed concern about the rhetoric coming from the White House lately.
“What Trump is doing is going to hurt Saskatchewan workers. It’s going to hurt workers in the States as well. This is something that damages both of our economies.”
