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Convention Speech

By Dwain Lingenfelter

Good morning!  Thank you to each of the New Democrats who nominated me.  I’m honoured by your trust and support. I announced that I was running for the leadership October 30th; nearly eight months ago. It has been an incredible journey, and an amazing opportunity to visit with and listen to people.

We’ve talked about surface rights issues with farmers in Stoughton; discussed the problems of the cattle industry with people in Tompkins, and the issue of resource revenue-sharing with northerners in Ile a la Crosse and La Ronge.We’ve talked forestry issues in Prince Albert; affordable housing issues in downtown Saskatoon; and renewable energy opportunities in Kindersley.

Everywhere I’ve travelled, people have welcomed me into their homes or community halls and they’ve shared their hopes and dreams. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for sharing those dreams, and for offering me your trust and support. Each day of this campaign, I have told people that I want to rebuild and rejuvenate the New Democratic Party in every corner of our province, not just in our great cities, and the Far North, but in the towns and villages of Rural Saskatchewan as well.

My campaign is all about giving every constituency the opportunity to win in 2011!

That’s why my campaign has been province-wide. I’ve visited each of the 58 provincial constituencies, encouraging new members to join, and former members to return to our party.  Everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve talked about the need to encourage more young women and men to stand for nomination in the next election, and to serve in various leadership roles within the party, as well as in a newly-elected NDP government.

From the beginning, I have worked closely with the youth of our party. I’ve listened, and learned from a whole new generation of activists. I’ve talked about the need for our candidate team to better reflect the diversity of the Saskatchewan population by involving more women, more First Nations and Métis people, more visible minorities, more trade unionists and more farmers.

I’m excited by the number of new people coming forward, offering to help rebuild and to serve the Party. Working together, we will build a strong, determined Party, which will offer an exciting candidate team for the next election: November 7, 2011. Remember that date. Today is E Minus 884 days! It may seem like a long way off, but we have a lot of work to do in a relatively short period of time if we want to win that election.

Every day of this campaign, I have told people that I’m running for Leader, because I want to win the next election. And usually there’s somebody in the audience who asks: “Why is winning so important?” Today, let’s talk about why winning matters.

The next election will most certainly be important for the future of public ownership in Saskatchewan. The right-wing Wall government has already begun to undermine our Crown Corporations, by preventing them from expanding, and by hiving off pieces of their existing businesses for the government’s private sector friends. They want to make our public utilities less efficient, more expensive for you as customers and, they hope, less popular over time.

Remember our lowest-cost utility bundle? That’s history under Wall and company. I forecast we’ll soon be suffering some of the highest utility rates in Canada as a direct result of the Wall government’s right-wing ideology. It’s privatization on the instalment plan! Give Wall a second term and like his mentor, Grant Devine, he’ll try to finish the job!

New Democrats believe that public corporations, with Head Office jobs created here, and profits staying here at home, have served Saskatchewan families well for decades. Equally important, our public utilities represent a huge competitive advantage for the future of Saskatchewan’s economy. That’s why I’ve proposed to grow these public utilities.

I’ve said that our natural gas utility, SaskEnergy, should once again be allowed to buy and develop its own natural gas reserves, to better protect Saskatchewan families from the volatile world market price of natural gas. SaskEnergy has not owned its own natural gas supplies since the Devine government’s privatization in the 1980’s.

Why should we, the people of Saskatchewan, who own the resource in the first place, be reduced to buying our own resources back from private corporations who have sold and resold that resource many times between the wellhead and our homes? When the people of Saskatchewan own the natural resource, the people of Saskatchewan should benefit from that ownership with lower prices!

I’ve also proposed an expansion of public ownership in an area critical to our collective futures, and that is water. Affordable access to safe water is both a quality of life and economic issue in Saskatchewan. I propose the expansion of the mandate of SaskWater to become a province-wide public utility responsible for providing every Saskatchewan citizen with affordable access to safe water supplies. Affordable access to safe water should be a right of citizenship, not a source of private profit for corporations!

In 2011, the choice will be clear; the choice will be between privatization of our public utilities, and the growth of our public utilities. That’s why winning matters!

What about our energy future, and the future of our environment? The Wall government recently broke its campaign promise to reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 32 per cent by 2020. Governments and citizens around the world understand the pressing need to deal with Climate Change in a meaningful way. This concern is shared by everyone except Brad Wall. His word on the environment is meaningless.It’s the same with respect to our future energy options. The Wall government has stumbled, and bumbled into a flawed process that clearly favours a single new energy source — nuclear power — and a single, private sector player — Bruce Power — while freezing out the people of Saskatchewan, and abandoning Saskatchewan control.

Where is the comprehensive, even-handed, public review of all the energy options available to our province? The energy options we choose for the next twenty years will impact everything from our provincial finances, to our economic growth; from peoples’ health, to our quality of life. These decisions cannot be made without full, public input and understanding. The energy choices we make as a society should follow broad dialogue, respectful debate and inclusive decision-making. It must not be a top down approach, where the decision is a foregone conclusion. Brad Wall doesn’t understand this.

We will be proposing a return to the Greenhouse Gas Emission targets, which the NDP proposed in 2007 and the Sask Party promised to adopt in the last election campaign. A promise they made — a promise they broke. We will be proposing to make our province a green economy leader, with 50% of our electrical generation needs by 2025 coming from conservation, and renewable energy sources like wind, solar and geo-thermal.

In 2011, the choice will be clear between sharply competing visions for our energy future and the environment: that’s why winning matters!

What about working people and the next election? The Wall government brags about going to war with working people. Its right-wing, regressive labour legislation has been designed to reduce Saskatchewan’s unionized workforce. Wall’s amendments to the Trade Union Act and his unworkable Essential Services legislation need to be fundamentally revised or repealed. We will sit down with working people and their unions to decide how to do this in a fair and reasonable way.

The Wall government’s proposals to drive the building trades out of the Saskatchewan construction industry will be opposed, and opposed hard, by your NDP caucus in the coming months. We have a fundamental difference of opinion here. Wall believes in going to war with working people, shutting them out of all decision-making, and doing everything possible to destroy the unions who represent them.

I believe that to achieve long-term prosperity our economy needs:

• Strong governments, ready to defend people’s interests
• Strong business, private, public and co-operative enterprise, to grow the economy; and
•  Strong unions, ready to defend the rights of working people

When these interests are in balance, our society grows and prospers, and more people can enjoy real progress. In 2011, the choice will be clear between competing visions about the future role of working people in the economy: that’s why winning matters!

What about the future of Rural Saskatchewan? For too many elections, rural people have felt ignored by our Party. Rural people didn’t so much leave the NDP as the NDP left them. We’re going to change that, and come 2011 we will take on Wall and company across Rural Saskatchewan. When I travel Rural Saskatchewan today, the message I get is that people feel betrayed by a government that was elected to act on rural concerns.

Brad Wall brags about all the new money that’s going into highways. Rural people want to know where all the money’s gone, because their highways aren’t any better! In Opposition, Wall and company spent five years demanding a return of spot loss hail coverage under the Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Program. This year, they refused to reintroduce spot loss hail coverage, even though a government-appointed committee recommended it! A promise they made; a promise they broke.

Rural families have also been less than impressed with the Wall government’s failure to take on the big fertilizer and chemical companies over their unfair pricing policies. Saskatchewan farmers buy more than half of all the fertilizer sold in Western Canada, but did Brad Wall call in these companies this spring, and demand to know why their prices remained unreasonably high, in the face of falling energy prices? Of course not. He could have made these companies publicly accountable, and if they had refused to act, he could have pushed for a federal investigation of their pricing practices. Instead, he did and said nothing.

In 2011, the choice will be clear between a Wall government that stands with the big corporations and an NDP government that stands with rural families. Competing visions for the future of Rural Saskatchewan: that’s why winning matters!

These are just a few examples of the sharp differences we will have with Brad Wall in 2011. Differing visions on public ownership, on energy and the environment; competing visions on the role of working people, on how to best represent rural families. There will be many more examples, including competing visions on the future of affordable housing…the future of public health care…the need for a universal child care program that is affordable and accessible for all…the need for affordable and accessible post-secondary education and training…and the need to fight poverty.

My friends, if we are true New Democrats, and if we truly believe in our vision, we should want to do more than simply talk about change from the opposition benches; we should want to create positive change from the government benches!

And that is why winning matters! It can be done. Let no one try to convince you otherwise.

We simply take the talent, energy and excitement here in this room, and out there, in the homes of tens of thousands of NDP members, and we focus it on the challenge ahead. In this room and beyond, we have trade unionists, small business owners, First Nations and Métis leaders, new Canadians, party elders and young activists, ready to meet that challenge. Each of you needs to know that your ideas are valued; your hard work and commitment are appreciated; and your continued dedication is needed now, more than ever. From today forward, what might have seemed to divide us these past few months, will become so much less important than what brings us together, for the common good.

I want to commend Ryan, Yens and Deb for their campaigns, and all their volunteers for their exceptional commitment. I know each of you shares my passion for our party and our province. I look forward to working with you all in the years ahead.

Members of the New Democratic Party — those here in the hall and those listening or watching across this great province — I am asking for your support. I am asking for your vote. If you place your trust in me, I give you this commitment: I will work as hard as any Leader in the history of our party to rebuild in every constituency, to propose an exciting new vision for the future, and to create an exceptional new team of candidates.

Working together, we can rebuild and reenergize our party. Working together, we can defeat Brad Wall and his right-wing government in 2011.

Thank you very much!

This speech is taken from Dwain Lingenfelter's website, June 7, 2009