Those in the Northwest had a chance to see what the four contenders for the Saskatchewan NDP leadership had to offer Thursday.
The four leadership candidates - Ryan Meili, Trent Wotherspoon, Erin Weir and Cam Broten - were in North Battleford for the latest NDP all-candidates forum at the Western Development Museum.
It was one of 14 official party-sanctioned forums being held in advance of the March 9 leadership vote.
As has been the case at other events around the province, the forum produced a good turnout of local New Democrats to size up the candidates as they enter the stretch of the leadership race.
The audience included former Battlefords-Lloydminster federal NDP candidate Glenn Tait, as well as former MP and MLA Len Taylor, who was seen wearing a button supporting Cam Broten. Also in attendance were former MLAs David Miner and Walter Jess.
The forum delved into familiar topics on the campaign trail. Written questions were submitted by members of the audience and posed to the candidates on the Idle No More movement, economic development in smaller and rural communities, medicare, natural resource revenues, public-private partnerships, democratic renewal, and other issues.
The candidates also had their best one-liners ready in response to some of the "zingers" posed in questions from audience members. One of the more interesting questions started with the line "Stephen Harper has only made one worthwhile contribution to Canada."
Weir thought that question might be "a real stumper," he said. "I thought we were going to have to identify what the one thing was."
After the chuckles died down, Weir gave his answer to the question posed - one that focused on how to address the democratic deficit - by outlining his own proposal to ban corporate and union donations to provincial political parties.
In a bit of a format twist, two of the segments allowed each candidate to pose questions directly to another candidate. Those produced some of the liveliest exchanges of the night.
One of the more entertaining exchanges took place between Meili and Weir. When Meili asked Weir what he saw as his foremost weakness as a candidate - a question that raised some eyebrows from members of the crowd - Weir retorted that "one of the things that's a weakness of mine, and maybe a weakness of yours, too, is not being elected to the legislature." It was an answer that drew some laughs from the audience.
Later, in the second segment, candidates took turns putting Meili on the hot seat, with some lively exchanges occurring between Meili and Broten in particular.
In one exchange Broten was critical of Meili's idea that the seating in the legislature be rearranged into alphabetical order, instead of having the two parties face each other on opposite sides of the aisle.
Meili's response was that it was simply an idea to "float out and think about" in response to the issue of the partisan tenor and name-calling in the legislature.
Later, it was Meili's turn to put Broten on the hot seat by claiming several of his own supporters had received negative phone calls from the Broten campaign, outlining "character reasons - personality reasons" not to vote for Meili. "Is that a rogue volunteer," asked Meili, or "is that the script?"
Broten responded his campaign has focused on the positive and that the script his campaign uses talks about the plan for the party and his experience. "Personal attacks are not a smart approach, and not a good approach - not one that we emulate," said Broten.
That response seemed to satisfy Meili, who added "we've certainly seen overzealous volunteers in NDP leadership campaigns before."
About the only question that seemed to stump some candidates was one posed near the end of the debate, where the candidates were asked their position on genetically-modified foods. Candidates later told reporters it was the first time a question on that issue had been posed at any of the forums.
Despite some tough questions, the tone of the forum remained congenial throughout, as the four candidates shared common ground on many of the policies of the party.
The forum was the last one before a Jan. 25 membership cutoff for the provincial NDP, as all party members voting in the leadership contest needed to be signed up and paid up by then.
The candidates expect to continue campaigning as well as participating in a few more leadership forums planned in the weeks leading up to the party's convention in Saskatoon in March, where the new leader will be elected.
