On job descriptions

One final note from #policy11, as it's worth pointing out a shift in tone from Dwain Lingenfelter which looks to nicely fit the message the Saskatchewan NDP will need to develop in the lead up to this fall's election.

Since 2009, the NDP's message about Lingenfelter's role has focused mostly on the goal of leading the party's fight against Brad Wall. That can be explained in part by the fact that the policy review process hadn't yet been completed, meaning that there wasn't a lot of current party-approved policy to talk about in the interim. But it still left an open question as to what Lingenfelter would see as his relationship to the party's ideas once they had been developed.

In effect, Lingenfelter faced a choice as to whether to cast himself as the single Strong Leader, the lone decider who would determine which ideas deserve to be discussed and implemented - or as a public servant in the fullest sense of the term whose primary function is to act as a conduit for the values and ideas put forward by his party. And this weekend, he went out of his way to emphasize the latter as being his proper role, noting that it would be his responsibility to ensure that the party's ideas find their way into provincial policy, and that he'd expect to be able to check off the party's platform commitments during the course of a term in office.

So what does that choice mean? As best I can tell, it figures to produce a couple of positive results in the lead up to this fall's election campaign.

First, it serves to reassure NDP members who may have wondered what impact the policy development would have. Of course, there's still one vital step to go as the policy review document gets converted into a platform - but as long as that gets done without any surprises, Lingenfelter has offered a clear signal that he expects to be held accountable for his success in bringing about the change called for by party members.

And as a bonus, the choice also serves to differentiate Lingenfelter from Brad Wall on what looks to be one of the Sask Party's main weaknesses. After all, Wall has gone out of his way to shut down any member-driven policy discussion within his own party, implying a desperate desire to maintain top-down control while engaging with members of the public only through the filter of his MLAs.

It may have been tempting for Lingenfelter to try to assume a similar level of micromanagement in the interest of trying to control the NDP's message going into a campaign. (And of course it's worth keeping an eye on how the rhetoric translates in reality.)

But having chosen to emphasize genuine grassroots input over the all-too-common top-down alternative, he'll now be able to point out Wall's failure to listen without facing any credible counteraccusations of similarly shutting out citizens' voices. And particularly with the campaign looking to come down to a fundamental choice as to who should benefit from a resource boom, it looks to be a huge plus to be on the side that's taken meaningful steps to allow people a voice in their own province.