Sask. NDP leadership hopeful picks up endorsement

Saskatchewan NDP leadership candidate Carla Beck received an endorsement from Saskatoon Eastview MLA Matt Love on Friday morning.

“I think that the right person to lead our party and and to lead our province is Carla,” Love said during a news conference at Market Mall in Saskatoon.

“Carla has a phenomenal reputation amongst teachers due to her time as education critic, and as I've listened to other teachers and hear them speak warmly about Carla and the work that she's done as an MLA, as an advocate for education, I feel like she's the right person to lead our party and to lead our province.”

(Pat McKay/CTV News)

Beck is vying against Kaitlyn Harvey to lead the party.

Love and Beck also took the opportunity to criticize the Sask Party’s appraoch to education funding in the province.

“We've heard in recent weeks the very real struggles that our education system is under in this province and make no mistake, this is a government that had the ability to make our education system a priority in this year's budget but this is a government that has signaled they simply do not care to find those solutions,” said Beck.

Beck says the NDP is hearing from people in the province who “haven’t seen themselves in our party for a long time”, and their messaging is beginning to resonate across Saskatchewan.

“This momentum for change is there,” she said.

“In every room, every community we've been, we've heard about a government who simply has stopped doing that work, stopped returning calls, stopped sitting down and listening, would rather send in lines to to defend what they're doing instead of admitting we have an issue here, that there are problems that we need to solve.”

The Saskatchewan NDP will select a new leader on June 26.

The party's current leader, Ryan Meili, announced he was stepping down in February.