Tag: Allan Blakeney

Coming home to Abe and Gus sort of puts everything in perspective and I enjoy that.” Meili, 42, defeated Trent Wotherspoon earlier this month to win the leadership of Saskatchewan’s official Opposition. A family doctor by trade, he has practised across the province and did his residency in Saskatoon, where he’s spent the last several years. His wife is also a doctor, a pediatrician, who focuses on refugee health. Meili has known Calvert for more than a decade and calls him a friend. “I’ve had a chance to know him and Roy Romanow quite well, and often will call them up and just go and listen to their stories and hear what their experiences were and their thoughts on what happened during their time in leadership,” Meili says. He won the Saskatoon Meewasin seat in the legislature in a byelection last spring. His leadership campaign this time around included proposals for a $15 minimum wage, universal pharmacare and removing corporate and union donations from politics. Greg Poelzer, a political science professor at the University of Saskatchewan, says Meili’s election is a shift to the left for the party. He suggests that may help the NDP in urban areas, but not necessarily rural constituencies where the governing Saskatchewan Party just won three byelections. ‘That Scott Moe won.