Meili: pitching a radical prescription

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By Murray Mandryk
The Leader Post
June 3, 2009 10:38 AM

This is the third in a series of profiles on candidates for the NDP leadership.

Does a young, soft-spoken social-activist doctor have a chance to lead a party that prefers its leaders to be older, fiery seasoned pros who've paid their dues in the party's trenches?

The answer would have likely been a resounding "no" when the now-34-year-old Ryan Meili started his leadership bid in February as a virtual political unknown who had taken out his first NDP membership eight years earlier. But a simmering desire for change among younger New Democrats in particular has heated to near boiling point over the Dwain Lingenfelter-camp-created membership controversy.

For many New Democrats, it's been a clarion call to change the old way of doing politics in this party and province . . . or at least, return to the purist values that inspired the CCF's creation 76 years ago.

For others, though, the insistence by the Meili and Yens Pedersen camps on airing another candidate's dirty linen has been nothing short of an attack on the party itself.

- The positives: His political profile reads like it's too good to be true -- a handsome, young articulate doctor who has dedicated his brief working life to social good that's included working with a Catholic mission in Brazil, delivering prosthetic limbs to landmine victims in Nicaragua and creating a health determinant program for the indigent poor based in both Mozambique and at Ile-a-la-Crosse.

At 34 years old, Meili already makes 43-year-old Brad Wall seem positively archaic. And in an age where youthful indiscretions become a politician's instant worst nightmare displayed for the whole world to see on Youtube, Facebook and television, about the worst thing we've heard about Meili is his arrest for protesting during the 2003 Quebec City world leader's summit. (Given the nature of this arrest, many in the NDP would view this as a badge of honour.)

His platform has created significant buzz with its "SaskPharm" program that would see the Saskatchewan government get into the competitive generic prescription drug business. Meili also appears to have won the war on the Internet -- not just among the anonymous wannabe opinion makers, but also when it comes to harnessing its political opportunities. Initiatives like the Internet "money bomb" appeal indicate an ability to organize and fund raise.

But it might just be the endorsements from older NDP warriors (Roy Atkinson, Nettie Wiebe and Don Mitchell) that has turned Meili's leadership bid into a serious one -- perhaps the alternative to Lingenfelter.

- The negatives: If Deb Higgins represents the Lorne Calvert status quo and Dwain Lingenfelter represents a return to the perceived past glory, Ryan Meili represents a journey to an uncertain future with an extended pit stop out of power.

Undoubtedly Meili would veer the NDP sharply to the left at time when the electorate seems quite comfortable driving in the right-hand lane. This might be too bumpy a ride for prudent, staunch New Democrats.

NDP supporters have always demanded their leaders to be already battle-tested for the rigors of Saskatchewan election campaigns. Paying one's dues means something in NDP ranks -- something far more meaningful than "a social democrat living a social democrat lifestyle" that Meilites have adopted as their unofficial campaign slogan. In fact, youthful smugness and ambition is frowned upon in NDP leadership campaigns. (Some of the roughly 13,000 eligible NDP voters might very well be the same ones who rejected Roy Romanow in 1970, or Scott Banda in 2001 for that very reason.)

Still others charge that the attacks on Lingenfelter by Meili supporters are just the same old, dirty politics anyway, albeit in a new medium.

Also, a lack of an NDP pedigree (unfriendly NDP bloggers have been quick to note that Meili comes from a Conservative Thunder Creek family) will also be a drawback.

- What he needs to win: New Democrats must accept the young doctor's unpleasant diagnosis that this party has a long-term illness and that only he has the prescription of new/old ideals that can heal them.

Mandryk is the political columnist for the Leader-Post.