URGENT VOTING MESSAGE!

June 3rd, 2009 by Yens in NDP

Don’t take the chance that you might miss the vote on Saturday - please vote now.

It is important that you vote for at least three candidates, in order of preference. Don’t mark Yens as your only choice. We expect that it will take 2 or 3 rounds of voting on Saturday to determine who the next leader is, so your 2nd and 3rd choice may become very important. To make sure that your vote counts in each round of balloting, you need a 2nd and 3rd choice. Don’t worry - as long as you mark Yens as your 1st choice and Yens is still on the ballot - your vote will count toward Yens.

It’s too late to vote by mail - your ballot won’t arrive in time. You can still vote by phone, on the internet or in person at the convention.

Internet voting is open until 8:00 pm. on Friday, June 5 by clicking on www.sndp.isivote.com. You can also vote by phone at 1 (877) 446-5150. You will need the PIN that was mailed to you in the voting package a few weeks ago.

If you have misplaced your PIN, you can call 1.888.281.8683 to get a new one - your old PIN will immediately be cancelled.

You can watch the convention online at http://www.saskndp.ca/convention/index.php?Watch_Convention_Live

Negative Campaigning

May 20th, 2009 by Yens in NDP

One of the other leadership campaigns has been using negative attack language about me in the leadership race. One of their attacks goes something like: ‘Yens ran on a platform of renewal when he ran for president but by the time he stepped down as president, the party was in worse shape than ever.’ The problem with this attack is that it simply isn’t true.

For starters, here’s the hard evidence: the renewal that I campaigned on and the discussions that we had leading up to convention, resulted in a renewed provincial executive. I did a rough estimate one day that the average age of our provincial executive was about 40. In the seven months that I was president, the party’s memberships increased by around 1,000. Finances did not improve but they did remain stable and we were able to pay off some old debts. The provincial executive came up with a plan for policy renewal which would encompass province-wide discussions - not just of policies, but also our fundamental principles and vision. I understand that process will begin in the fall of 2009. The executive also approved plans for changes to the Commonwealth.

Then there’s the anecdotal evidence: many council members reported to me that the first council meeting I chaired in June was one of the best council meetings they had been to in a long time and that they had hope that renewal was taking place. I travelled to 26 constituencies and put on 11,000 kilometres. Many of those constituencies couldn’t remember the last time they had been visited by the party president. On most of those visits, we ended up having a good discussion about the renewal of the party and people were hopeful that renewal was taking place.

Then there was the Cumberland by-election: several members of the provincial executive (including me) and some MLAs travelled to Cumberland to work the election day. We put in a long day of pulling vote - when we counted at the end of the day the number of people we convinced to go vote or actually helped get to the polls, we easily counted more people than the margin of victory. With the dedication of the provincial executive and a few MLAs, we managed to hold a seat that has been NDP for decades.

One of the other attacks this campaign has used against me was that I lost an NDP ’safe-seat’ in the 2007 election. Was there any NDP safe seat in the 2007 election? If it was so safe, why weren’t people lining up for the nomination? The Sask Party were the ones who considered it was safe - for them.

Another piece of misinformation that I have heard is that I am supposedly in favour of nuclear power.

I’m happy that they have to invent things to attack me on. To be honest, I’m also happy that they think they of me as a threat and that they need to attack me. It is perhaps the best evidence that they don’t have a first ballot win sewed up.

Too little, too late

May 12th, 2009 by Yens in Saskatchewan

The Saskatchewan Party’s brand new legislation, The Management and Reduction of Greenhouse Gases Act (introduced Tuesday) pays only lip service to addressing climate change. The legislation is a baby-step in the right direction but doesn’t even come close to righting the wrong of watering down their greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets or stripping the $320 million Green Futures Fund left by the NDP.

The government has broken its promise to keep the same targets as the last government and instead adopted the weaker federal targets. We should be shooting for a 40% reduction by 2020 which is double what the government has identified. However, targets are but a signal of how seriously the government takes the problem (which apparently, is not very seriously) — the real issue is not the target but the action, of which there is precious little. The evidence is clear that we should be looking at conservation and renewable energy but the government is paying lip service to low-carbon technology and conservation. Instead the government is focusing on carbon sequestration and nuclear power.

I am skeptical that SaskPower’s ‘clean coal’ project will ever make sense. Quite simply, there’s too much energy invested for too little return. Coal isn’t clean and trying to make it so uses a lot of energy – you’re looking at 40% more energy just to run the plant. The CO2 that is being injected right now is already leaking out. It’s not much of a GHG reduction strategy if you burn 40% more coal and natural gas only to find the CO2 doesn’t even stay underground.

I have talked about nuclear before, and I won’t discuss the many problems with it in this post, other than to say that nuclear power doesn’t offer much of a GHG reduction strategy. Yes, if you operate a reactor over a very long time (much longer than the average lifespan of 25 years), it will produce fewer GHG emissions than coal, but it is far from carbon-free power. There are tremendous emissions associated with mining uranium, refining uranium and building reactors. In fact, it would take 15 years of operating a reactor before there was a net reduction in GHG. In other words, for the first 25 years or so (assuming a 10 year construction), a reactor actually increases GHG!

With the $320 million the Sask Party stripped from the Green Futures Fund, we could be investing in proven renewable energy and conservation. We can expand our proportion of hydro-electricity in three ways: firstly, partnering with Manitoba Hydro to purchase an additional 250 MW of power from new hydro development in Manitoba; secondly, partnering with James Smith Cree Nation to develop hydro on the Saskatchewan River; and thirdly, partnering with other First Nations in the north to develop small scale hydro there. Hydro provides some of the cheapest operating costs once built and is renewable. Hydro also works well with other intermittent forms of renewable power like wind and solar. Wind power could be expanded 9 fold, and within 5 years time we should be investing in solar for electrical generation. We should also investigate geothermal as a source of electricity, which like hydro, can be used to provide base load.

Unfortunately, it’s already too late for Saskatchewan to be leading in renewable energy research and development, many other places in the world are already doing that. What we have to be concerned about now is whether we can catch up quickly enough.

Poll results!

April 22nd, 2009 by Yens in NDP

I’m pleased to announce the results of an automated phone poll of over 16,000 present and former members of the Saskatchewan New Democratic Party. The poll was conducted by Direct Leap Technologies between April 11 and 16. 46% of the decided respondents picked Pedersen as their top choice, with Lingenfelter, Higgins and Meili having 33%, 15% and 6% respectively. 2,133 people responded to the poll, of which 51% indicated that they were undecided. 10% of respondents indicated they would not be participating in the leadership race.

Manufacturing Consent

April 9th, 2009 by Yens in NDP

The entire process surrounding Bruce Power’s proposed nuclear reactors smells to high heaven. More evidence of the lengths to which Bruce Power and the Saskatchewan Party have gone to manufacture consent have just been released by CBC this morning. Documents obtained by CBC show that Bruce Power was in secret discussions with Neil Collins, the business manager of IBEW (which represents many Sask Power workers) in the fall of 2007 to gain support for its nuclear reactor project. Small wonder that a year later when the Sask Party government created the Uranium Development Partnership (UDP), the token union member appointed to the panel was none other than Neil Collins. The documents show that Bruce Power and IBEW will work together to “identify and advocate for nuclear power” and that they agree to manage communications in an effective manner as issues emerge during Bruce Power’s feasibility study. The documents also show that Bruce Power is considering not just one reactor but two 1100 MW units and that this power will not replace any electricity generated from coal plants!

They have just announced a 2 week public consultation process. Yes, you read correctly - 2 weeks! This is likely the largest infrastructure project ever contemplated in Saskatchewan, certainly with the longest lasting consequences and the most potential danger to the population. And 2 weeks is the ‘consultation’ process.

Regardless of what you happen to believe about the feasibility of nuclear power, Saskatchewan people ought to be up in arms about this. Nothing in this entire process is about educating the public or seeking public approval. This is a textbook case of manufacturing consent.

Do we need nuclear?

March 27th, 2009 by Yens in NDP, Saskatchewan

We are confronted now with Sask Party/Bruce Power deal cooked up behind closed doors to build a nuclear reactor in the northwest part of Saskatchewan’s grain belt. They want to develop “Saskatchewan based opportunities for value added development of our uranium industry.”

Why do we need nuclear power?

Why would we go with the most dangerous, most complex and one of the most expensive options, when we have safer, simpler and cheaper options available? I am not opposed to new technology, but I do insist that there be clear benefits to embracing new technology which outweigh the costs. In all the research that I have done over the last year (which is a lot), it is clear to me that the costs associated with proven nuclear technology outweigh the benefits. The benefits are:

a tremendous ability to produce energy from a relatively small amount of material (but the real issue is not the quantity of material, rather the energy return on energy expended),
economic development, and
a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

The costs and risks are significant, including:

the low (but still significant) risk of an enormous incident,
the health costs of exposing a population to ongoing low level radiation (which we are just beginning to understand),
the economic costs of building the reactor (no reactor has ever been built without taxpayer money),
the economic costs of ’spinning reserves’ (backup power) equal to the size of the reactor required for NERC standards,
the economic costs of building transmission lines (at $1.5 million/km),
the economic costs of the costs of decommissioning (which are huge and will fall to the taxpayer),
the risk of building a reactor which may not work (eg. Gentilly 1, the Maples) or which fails before the capital investment is recovered, and
the economic costs of permanent waste storage (which hasn’t been proven or developed yet anywhere in the world).

You also have to compare the options that we have available - in which case you find that there is better economic development with renewable energy (wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and biomass), more grid reliability with renewable energy, better greenhouse gas reductions with renewables, and less concern about the availability of water with renewables. Despite the protestations of dinosaurs stuck in old paradigms, other places in the world are showing that renewables like wind and solar can be integrated into the power grid in much greater proportions than we are currently doing. The best dollar spent is on conservation and efficiency which could reduce our electricity demand by at least 10%. We could easily expand our wind power production 9 fold.

There are always experimental projects and proposals for new nuclear technology, and while there may eventually be nuclear technology developed that overcomes these obstacles, given the health, safety and economic record of the nuclear industry I am not prepared to take a leap of faith and commit massive amounts of other people’s money to expanding the nuclear industry. I believe strongly that we can no longer develop technologies or resources without a sustainable solution for dealing with waste products. It is irresponsible for our generation and unconscionable to leave such waste products for the next generation — our children — to deal with.

Let me quote from a 1985 book titled “Forevermore: Nuclear Waste in America” by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, at page 20:

No one knows how much there is. No one knows all the places where it is. And no one–despite all claims to the contrary–knows what to do with it. Not the government that encourages its production, not the industries that churn it out, not the scientists who created the processes that breed it. That is why radioactive waste in 1985 is held in “temporary” facilities, just as it was in 1945, just as it will be in 2005. Science, government, and industry have yet to devise the safe and permanent storage system they have promised for 30 years, one guaranteed to seal off the waste from people and the environment for as long as it will remain hazardous–forevermore.

You cannot see the radiation, or smell it, or taste it. But it is spreading across the American landscape. In 1950, waste from commercial use of the atom was counted in ounces, today, it is counted in tons.

Of far greater significance than weight is the curie content. The curie is used to measure radioactivity. In 1950, the curie level of this garbage was counted in the hundreds. Today, it is counted in the billions. At the end of 1984, waste kept in interim collection centers stood at 14.7 billion curies–enough to kill everyone in the United States.

The worst is yet to come. During the 1980s, businesses and institutions, but mostly electric utilities, will turn out twice as much waste–measured in terms of radioactivity– as they did in the three preceding decades combined.

Encouraging women

March 23rd, 2009 by Yens in NDP

The SNDW posed 2 questions to all the leadership candidates:

1. What steps will you take to ensure that women have greater participation in leadership positions at all levels within the Saskatchewan NDP?
2. What specific actions will you take to ensure the NDP meets its goal of having women make up 50 per cent of candidates in the 2011 election?

My combined response follows: I am committed to 50% of our candidates in the 2011 election being women. I publicly stated my commitment to this target when I declared my candidacy and I continue to state the importance of an inclusive, welcoming and representative party. By continually referring to the importance of the issue, I hope to build member support for choosing more women and minority candidates and leaders. Increasing the number of women who hold leadership positions at all levels of the party increases the visibility and acceptance of women as political leaders, and also increases the pool of women to run as potential candidates.

While campaigning for president, I encouraged a number of women who were also interested in party renewal to run for executive positions. As president, I suggested to a few women (including an aboriginal woman), that they should consider running for leadership positions.

The importance of having people in leadership positions actively encouraging individual women (or for that matter anyone) to run cannot be stressed enough.

I will continue to encourage women to seek leadership positions. I will be supportive and encouraging to parents who bring children to meetings. Children are vital to the continual renewal of our party. The party should provide the option of care for children (or other dependents) at all functions, and I believe that the party should budget an amount every year to ensure there are funds available for this purpose. In doing so, we demonstrate our commitment to establishing universal childcare and supporting families. The Bessie Ellis Fund which provides a small amount of financial assistance for women seeking nominations is a good idea, but needs to be better publicized. Nominations should be advertised well in advance, so that it is not up to a few insiders to find potential candidates and so that more than just a few insiders know of openings. I believe this will result in more qualified candidates, both women and men. I will advocate these actions with the provincial executive.

We also need to elect more women - not just nominate them. If we are to achieve this goal, an obvious place to begin is in our strongest seats. As leader, one of my first actions will be to privately discuss with our MLAs their plans for the next election. If any MLA is overdue for retirement, I will not hesitate to pointedly (but respectfully) encourage him/her to move on. All organizations need to continually renew their leadership.

We should not expect women to have to act like men to become part of the government – instead we should expect that government may change by having more women involved. As leader I will not tolerate disrespectful behaviour in the legislature which diminishes the public’s regard for the institution of government. I do not know if it is a disincentive for women, but regardless, I believe that if we want the public to take politicians seriously and with respect, the politicians must conduct themselves accordingly.

Response to Conway

March 5th, 2009 by Yens in NDP

John Conway writes “It’s Just Too Late” (Prairie Dog, Feb 26) and suggests that the NDP sold its soul back in the 1950s. He says he can’t get excited about the leadership race and his heart isn’t in it.

The party is at a crossroads. The NDP has to decide if forming government is a means to an end, or the end itself. We have to decide if we want to refocus our goals and produce a plan to achieve them, or whether we are satisfied with the status quo, providing whatever program happens to catch the media’s short attention span. This will not be the last fundamental choice of direction the NDP faces, but history suggests it may be quite some time until the next one comes along.

In 1933 the party identified supplying human needs, peace, and freedom as its goals in the Regina Manifesto. Private ownership was a fundamental underlying assumption, and central planning and public ownership were identified as major tools. The goals and tools outlined in the Regina Manifesto are as relevant today as they ever were, but we should not fall into the trap of assuming there has been little progress. So while public ownership and central planning remain as options, let’s not forget that they are only means to an end, and not the end. And recognize that they may not be the only means by which to accomplish our goals.

Saskatchewan’s population is now wealthier than 75% of the rest of the world’s citizens and we do supply human needs (albeit imperfectly), and live in peace and freedom. Thus we must ask ourselves: should the NDP’s goal be to continue to enrich our population or do we need to refocus? I suggest that the new goals of the NDP should be
- to build a province where all children believe that they have the opportunity to succeed and be happy, and
- to share our wealth and our wisdom with those less fortunate beyond our borders.

All children must believe in their own abilities and opportunities, because with that belief our children have the ability to overcome many obstacles on their own and by working together. With that belief, they have the motivation to overcome obstacles. Without that belief, we can provide opportunities on a silver platter, but they will be squandered.

So if we want to build a better next generation, how do we go about doing it? Firstly, we have to commit to supporting and encouraging the formation of positive attitudes in our children. The education system is the obvious choice, but it must start much earlier than kindergarten. Parents and adults need education too so that they become better role models and teachers themselves.

Secondly, we have to commit to reducing disincentives to such personal empowerment: poverty, poor health, discrimination, crime. We have built a strong health system, social safety nets and a justice system. But many of these disincentives to personal empowerment have a strong correlation to social inequality and the solutions are not easy. These challenges will always be with us. Not because they always have and we are powerless to change, but because humans seem to have a penchant for knowingly undertaking self-destructive behaviour. (For instance, we all know that smoking is bad for us, but a significant percentage of young people take up smoking every year.) Does that mean we ought not to strive to eliminate poverty, poor health, discrimination and crime? Definitely not. Giving up allows these problems to grow and the evidence clearly demonstrates we can make significant inroads by tackling social inequalities.

Thirdly, in addition to a government that wants to act, we need a government that can act. This means maintaining a strong economy. For Saskatchewan, that requires that a comprehensive energy strategy for the 21st century. Economies won’t run without energy, so we need a strategy to ensure that our economy can adapt to the energy transformation that is taking place globally. Despite the fact that Saskatchewan’s economy has diversified, our local rural economies still drive a lot of economic activity and the government must make a commitment to helping build local rural economies.

With that strong economy, the government still has to ensure there are sufficient revenues coming in. There are many options: taxes, royalties, public ownership. What Conway fails to appreciate is that the source of the funds is not as important as ensuring that the source remains and is stable. Public ownership is a valuable tool and ought not to be discarded, but taxes and royalties work as well. What is more important than the form is finding a way to connect the revenue source with the delivery of the service so that the public supports the method. Otherwise, we are doomed to the next conservative or liberal government privatizing the public assets, or cutting the taxes or royalties. If we are to deliver a long lasting, permanent benefit to our existing and future citizens we must connect the revenue source with the public benefit, and the public themselves have to believe there is a public benefit.

So the real question is not whether the NDP can be ‘prettified’ (Conway’s word) – the real question is whether the people who want social and economic justice will actually get off their moral high ground and dirty their hands in the political process. I concede it is easier to throw up your hands in despair and walk away. It is much harder to work with people, to find common ground and to reach compromises. That requires being reasonable. Conway might call that being moderate, but I take it as a compliment.

The NDP is the only party in Saskatchewan at this time with the desire and ability to accomplish the goals I have identified. So this spring, rather than just complaining from the sidelines I’ll be more than voting – I’m in the race. And my heart and hope are in it.

We Need a Plan

February 25th, 2009 by Yens in NDP

We need a plan.

We’re supposed to be the party of planning. Central planning of the economy is one of the main differences between us and the liberals and conservatives. Planning is one of the most important roles of government in the 21st century welfare state. So what is our plan? Does the NDP have a plan? Do we even know where we want to go? We have not identified any measurable goals, and for that matter, it’s been a long time since we had any discussion about the immeasure goals. So it should come as no great surprise that we don’t have a plan to get to whatever those unidentified goals might be. This is a frustration shared by many in our party, and it was a driving consideration in my leadership bid.

We need some measurable goals, and we need a plan.

So what should our goals and plan encompass? In my view, there are two very significant challenges for Saskatchewan for the next 50 years. They will affect nearly every government decision and have been for some time. One is energy production and consumption. The other is poverty, and its close and disturbing links to race. There are lots of other aspects of our lives, our communities and our economy, but it is difficult to find two challenges which so profoundly affect us. I’m not advocating that we abandon all else - to the contrary. Many of the ideas I will be proposing over the coming weeks will address these two goals, but they will affect many other aspects of our lives as well. In short, the ideas I will be proposing will have benefits at many levels. Why just tackle poverty for instance, if we can deal with economic development, and greenhouse gases at the same time? Why abandon all else for greenhouse gas targets, if we can promote rural and northern economic development and culture at the same time?

I have been sharing my ideas and I will be making more announcements in the near future, but the most important things are not my ideas, but everyone’s ideas. Many in our party and our province have great ideas, we just need to build a party that encourages and values the exchange and discussion of ideas.

We believe…

February 20th, 2009 by Yens in NDP

There’s a question I’ve been giving a lot of thought to in the last several months: What are the fundamental principles, values, and approaches that make us New Democrats?

It’s not an easy answer, because we don’t often think in the theoretical, usually we think about the concrete issues happening right now. In this busy world, who has time for philosophical questions? Most people don’t even spend the mental energy to find out what a political party’s position might be for the issue of the day, let alone stop to consider what the underlying philosophy of the party, or for that matter their own philosophy might be.

Here are my thoughts so far:

- we desire peace

- we desire happiness for all, not happiness for some at the expense of others

- we desire freedom for all, but recognize that the freedom of some must be limited so that all have equal freedom - thus we seek a balance between individual freedom and equality

- we desire prosperity for all - we recognize that prosperity does not guarantee happiness and that poverty makes happiness more difficult, but not impossible

- we believe we have an obligation to share the earth’s resources with people of the present and generations to come

- we recognize that political rights and freedoms are weakened, if not accompanied by economic power

- we recognize a balance between individual and collective effort: the enterprise and creativity of the individual enrich the human experience but by working together we can achieve results far greater than one person could alone

- we recognize that for every success there must be individual responsibility (i.e. the individual desire and accountability to one’s self) and community responsibility (i.e. help and support for the individual)

- we recognize that through planning we increase the likelihood of success, and therefore believe that through government planning we can use the economic and political power of government to achieve a result that is better for everyone in our communities

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