A pandemic and an election: NDP’s Meili looks back on busy 2020

Like many others in 2020, Ryan Meili is ready to leave the year in the rear-view mirror.

“It has been a pretty hard year for folks across the province and around the world. I’m hoping we learn something and that coming out of this, there’s some lessons for how we can be better prepared — better prepared as a province in health care and education and our economy and how to support each other in difficult times,” said Meili, the leader of the Saskatchewan NDP.

For many governments across the world, COVID-19 became the No. 1 political issue of the year. That was equally true in Saskatchewan.

“I’m asking myself, ‘Are there points I could have banged the drum louder and made sure that we acted sooner?’ ” Meili said. “Looking back into April and May, I think we did good work as a province and I’m proud of the work we did as opposition to push for the measures that got things under control. What, as a province, I think we’re going to look back and ask is, ‘Why did we ease off? Why in the summer did we not do the work to make sure we had the health-care staff in place, testing and tracing, protecting long-term care? Why did we not act sooner when the second wave was coming?’ ”

The pandemic prompted Meili to help out in the province in a way he didn’t originally plan – he dusted off his stethoscope and returned to the front lines as a doctor.

“I didn’t like the reason to have to do it but I enjoyed being in touch with patients again. I love sitting down with patients and being able to help them out. I spent some time at the COVID testing site as well as The Lighthouse,” Meili said of the Saskatoon facility.

“I’m doing my training with internal medicine if we get to the point — and knock wood that we don’t — but if we get to the point where we need field hospitals, I’ll be on the wards helping out.”

The Moose Jaw-born doctor said he planned on returning to The Lighthouse in December to continue to help out.

Along with helping patients during the pandemic, Meili still had to lead the NDP through a provincial election – his first since being named leader in 2018.

“It was a super weird election. That meant for some fun, creative things. It meant less large gathering events but more time on the doorstep talking to individual voters, which I really like. It also meant we did things like have a giant car rally in Regina and Saskatoon with live bands and people honking their horns. You probably won’t see that again and it was a pretty neat twist,” Meili said.

But the party didn’t see the gains it was hoping for from the election, leaving with 13 seats – the same number it went in with.

“We were seeing that in our internal polling and the public polling, it really looked like people were looking for a change. What happened when it came to who made it to the polls and who didn’t? The fact the you’re talking about change at the same time that life has been pretty disrupted with the pandemic, maybe that was a harder thing for people to be ready to do,” Meili said.

But despite not gaining any more seats in the Saskatchewan Legislature, Meili said there were some positives to take away from the election, including the fact he was able to hold onto his seat in Saskatoon-Meewasin.

“One of the great things is that for the first time in several elections, we kept the leader’s seat and we don’t have to go through a leadership race,” Meili said. “We can focus on learning what we needed to learn from that election, what we could have done better and spending four years doing the work – reaching people, sharing our message, reaching out to people who are ready for a change but maybe don’t know that much about what the NDP is able to do.”

“While you always hope for a little more than you get, I was very proud of the campaign we ran and really pleased by the MLAs that joined us. The majority of our caucus are women, we’ve got a bunch of new MLAs – bright, shiny folks with some new ideas so I look forward to working with them.”

Now, Meili’s attention turns to 2021, and there appears to be some good news heading into the new year – the vaccine for COVID-19 is being distributed in the province.

“Let’s not think this is over yet and make sure that we’re doing everything we can to protect people because the vaccine will save lives but it won’t bring people back. Let’s make sure that we’re protecting people until that vaccine is widely available,” Meili said.