In a short period, an MLA left and the party distanced itself from the new federal leader
Over the course of the provincial legislature’s 10-week spring sitting, the Saskatchewan NDP has distanced itself from new federal NDP Leader Avi Lewis and an MLA quit its caucus.
The sitting culminated with a petition calling for the ousting of provincial Leader Carla Beck.
It’s quite the quandary for a party that still bears the name and operates in the birthplace of the NDP and its predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF).
Experts say the historic roots of the NDP are an important legacy and the ongoing tension highlights the friction between the party’s past and the direction it’s taken now.
“A lot of members of the NDP I think are committed to a social justice vision of the party,” said University of Saskatchewan political science professor Charles Smith.
That contrasts with the provincial party’s push to gain ground “by sort of crowding the centre of the political spectrum,” he said.
A success?
Since 2007, when the Saskatchewan Party first formed government, the NDP have remained the official Opposition.
After the 2007 election, the NDP had 20 seats. The party’s fortunes would continue to fade over the years, dropping to just nine seats in 2011.
That’s why there’s little doubt its pivot to the centre under Beck has been successful. The NDP now has 26 seats, more than it has had since 2007.
With the increasing tension emerging in the past few months raises the question of whether that success came at a cost.
Nippi-Albright’s departure
Just minutes after the government passed its involuntary addictions treatment legislation, Bill 48, MLA Betty Nippi-Albright posted on social media that she was leaving the Saskatchewan NDP to sit as an independent.
Nippi-Albright had been serving as the party’s critic for mental health and addictions, and leading the NDP’s opposition to Bill 48.
The former addictions counselor said she could no longer support the direction of Beck’s leadership.
“Over time, I have not felt the support or respect required to carry out this work in a good way,” she wrote on social media.
In the days since her departure, Nippi-Albright has continued to take shots at the party, while providing a steady drip of information.
A report she commissioned to assess the effects of Bill 48 convinced her the concept of involuntary treatment was not the right path forward for Saskatchewan, she says.
That’s a different position from the party, which rejected Bill 48 as overly broad but voiced support for involuntary treatment in the most extreme of circumstances.
Despite previously advocating for that same position, it’s a stance Nippi-Albright now rejects.
“As legislators, it is our responsibility to act in the public interest, not to avoid work because it is politically inconvenient,” she said.
Describing opposition to involuntary treatment as politically inconvenient would appear to hint that the NDP, or at least one of its former members, is aware that moving to the centre has meant giving up more of its ideals.
Jim Farney, director of the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, said there could be at least one other interpretation of Nippi-Albright’s departure.
“To have a report commissioned is, I think, pretty unusual. And so that to me would be a sign that [Nippi-Albright] was already thinking outside the normal kind of team rules of a political party,” said Farney.
“Probably because she saw this issue was so important and was unhappy with the party’s direction.”
Inter-NDP dispute
Only a few minutes after the federal NDP leadership convention, Beck and Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi launched separate campaigns to distance themselves from the new leader.
Both cited Lewis’s opposition to any new fossil fuel development.
In many ways, this is a familiar dispute, Farney said.
“The national [NDP] is less moderate and cares more about, I think, standing up for principle rather than finding that ‘moderate compromise,’ would be the way to put it,” he said.
“The tensions on resource development and the environment go back between the Saskatchewan NDP and the feds well into the early 1970s.”
Lewis sought to downplay the division when he visited Saskatchewan last week.
“I have a really strong mandate for the policies that I ran on,” he said.
“I know that in the west, where fossil fuel jobs are really important in communities and where fossil fuel revenues are very important to provincial governments, that there are some differences. I think the differences are smaller than they’ve been represented.”
Beck appeared to stick to her opposition to Lewis.
Despite the legislature’s sitting ending on Thursday, Beck said she didn’t have “a lot of room” in her schedule to meet with him.
As for why she rejected him? The Saskatchewan electorate may have forced her hand, according to Farney.
“She probably had no choice, and it’s in keeping with the position that the parties taken on [rejecting] the consumer carbon tax, for example,” he said.
Smith noted there remains a large constituency of NDP supporters in Saskatchewan who supported Lewis. That’s clear in the donation numbers to his leadership campaign.
“The problem is, in distancing themselves from Lewis, it appeared [the Saskatchewan NDP] were distancing themselves from a lot of members who supported Lewis, and I think that’s part of the rift we’re seeing right now,” Smith said.
Both disputes appear to have driven people to speak out, with a petition circulating calling for Beck’s removal as the leader.
For her part. Beck has dismissed the petition and shrugged off any questions about the criticism.
Premier Scott Moe has delighted in every chance he’s gotten to bring up the petition, but it’s not just the governing party calling attention to it.
Jennifer Bowes, a former Saskatchewan NDP MLA, circulated it on social media.
Experts say that despite the overlapping issues, the Saskatchewan NDP and its supporters have no reason to panic.
“This is something that happens in parties,” said Farney. “It becomes a crisis when you start to see more than one person choose to sit as an independent, when you hear important outside voices — unions, in the case of the NDP — line up.”
That hasn’t happened yet, but with a provincial election a little more than two years away, it’s worth watching.