Saskatchewan NDP Convention - Saturday Morning Notes

Some semi-liveblogging for those who can't get enough Saskatchewan politics on the weekend...

9:15

Saturday started with a report from Cam Broten as chair of the policy review process, followed by a presentation on demographic trends based on Doug Elliott's work. Of particular interest was the discussion of the province's population fluctuations: in particular, the Devine-era population boom was based on internal birthrates even as out-migration increased, while the future population trends are expected to be based mostly on interprovincial migration which (like most indicators) has been on the upswing since roughly the start of the NDP's 2003 term in government.

9:40

Mark Frison takes the podium to discuss his 10 Ideas for 2010, revolving around the idea of increasing participation rates in post-secondary education, particularly trades. While it's tough to disagree with most of the principles, I'd wonder if there's some need to tie the discussion into ways of retaining the newly-trained labour force as well: by way of example, the trend at the U of S' faculty of law (at least last I'd heard) was for roughly half the graduates to move out of province on graduation, and that hadn't changed even as the general migration trends improved.

9:50

Frison somewhat addresses the question of out-migrating graduates by noting that unlike in the past, there's no risk of an oversupply of labour to meet demand in the province. That's certainly one important factor to consider, but I'm not sure that oversupply has been much of an issue even as the outmigration has taken place in recent decades.

10:25

Another rousing speech from Lawrence Joseph on First Nations engagement, this time with a provincial focus. But probably the strongest message comes in his rightful observation that the convention's "Building Saskatchewan For All People" theme should instead end in "With All People". I'd like to think the party operates generally on the latter principle, with the policy review process as a prime example - but the distinction is worth keeping in mind.

12:10

One last entry on this post to discuss Dwain Lingenfelter's leader's address, which featured plenty of recognition for the accomplishments of Allan Blakeney, Roy Romanow and Lorne Calvert along with a strong theme that the party's direction should be based on its historic approach.

From my standpoint, the most interesting content I hadn't yet heard was Lingenfelter's goal for party membership - to reach 16,000 by the end of the year, and 20,000 by election day. But to assuage any worries that that might be difficult, Lingenfelter noted that we shouldn't be why about bringing in people currently involved in other parties - aptly mentioning Tommy Douglas' line that "when I started, everybody was a Liberal or a Conservative".

Now, those hoping for Lingenfelter to present an "aw shucks" message may have been disappointed. But the conventiongoers seem to have responded well - which is presumably the audience the NDP needed to reach.

(Edit: fixed typo.)