Michelle Neill says 'everyday Islanders' at the heart of everything the NDP stands for
'We're all different types of people who want to help everyday Islanders'
This is the fourth in a series of profiles of P.E.I. provincial party leaders this week, heading into advance polls that start March 25. Regular voting day is April 3.
New Democratic Party of P.E.I. Leader Michelle Neill says she's not the kind of politician you'd expect.
That's the point.
"I like to call myself the most unpolitician politician there is, right?" Neill told CBC this week.
"I've lived here on the Island all my life, 50-plus years, and I want to ensure that everybody has equal access… to affordability, to health care, to housing. That's what I'm about. That's what the NDP is about."
Political announcements, podiums and the limelight are fine and all — but what she enjoys most is being on the doorstep listening to Islanders.
"I'm loving it. It's one of those things that if I could go door to door and talk to people about the concerns that I have and make money doing that, alone, I would love that," she said with a laugh.
"I want to ensure that anything that I bring forward to the legislature when I get there — because I'm going to be getting there, I hope — that I can make sure that I'm actually speaking from experience."
The party is running a full slate of candidates, some new and as young as 18 and some familiar names with years of campaigning experience.
They were the first to nominate a candidate ahead of this election and the first to publish their full party platform.
Who is Michelle Neill?
Neill is new to political leadership, but no stranger to public service.
She spent nearly 30 years working as a team leader and assistant manager in the federal civil service, and as a union president. She's taken part in several rounds of national collective bargaining within the Public Service Alliance of Canada.
She's also been involved in local organizations like Wings on Ice Skating Club, the Charlottetown Figure Skating Club, North Star Minor Hockey Association, Mothers Against Drunk Driving and more.
Neill's first shot at elected office was running in the 2021 federal election in Malpeque. That riding went to former Liberal MLA Heath MacDonald, but just a few months later Neill turned her attention to the provincial NDP leadership.
She was the only person to offer, and became leader at the party convention in Charlottetown in April 2022.
A year later, she's going into this election looking to write a new chapter in the history book of the NDP — one that includes a voice in the legislature for the party.
Because if you look back, history hasn't been kind to the NDP in this province.
The long journey of the NDP
This election campaign marks the seventh in a row where NDP candidates have hit the trail under a new leader. In that same stretch, this is only the third time they've run a full slate of candidates.
You'd have to go back to 1996 before coming across the first and only NDP member elected on Prince Edward Island: Dr. Herb Dickieson.
That election was a remarkable one for Island history. Long before Peter Bevan-Baker was the lone Green in the legislature, Dickieson and the NDP were first to shake up P.E.I.'s two-party political dominance. If the party had a golden age, this was it — and it is the root of the multi-party legislature the Island has now.
Dickieson was the MLA for West Point-Bloomfield for just one term, but has never really left politics. Since then he's been a darling in the party and an architect in helping build its future.
Neill hasn't forgotten the foundational role Dickieson played in challenging the Pat Binns government. He fought the idea of putting a toll on the Hillsborough Bridge; pushed to create a provincial ombudsperson (the PCs did it in 2021) and lobbied for universal pre-kindergarten in the education system (which the PCs also did in 2021).
He's done a lot of good, and he was only one NDP. Imagine if we had several more.— Michelle Neill, talking about former MLA Herb Dickieson
"He's done a lot of good, and he was only one NDP," Neill said. "Imagine if we had several more."
From 2000 through 2019, though, the party ran 131 candidates across seven elections and had zero people elected. Its share of the popular vote is regularly around three per cent, but has reached as high as 11 per cent.
Under a proportional system, the NDP would have had several members elected by now. But that's not the system P.E.I. has.
The task of getting an NDP candidate elected under a first-past-the-post system has proven to be mountainous. It is the colossus the party has, time and time again, failed to defeat.
Michelle Neill wants to change that.
'We are all different'
The ultimate goal is to govern the province, but getting in is the first step, and Neill is counting on it. History may not have been in the NDP's favour, but they're persistent. Dedicated in every election. The underdog without a sense of quit.
"I would love to form government. How wonderful would that be? What a coup," she said with a laugh.
"It's something that I aspire to, certainly, and you know what?… If we get a few candidates in, that again is still a win."
Among the many issues the NDP has identified in this campaign, health care is at the top. Staying firmly away from the privatization of health care is central to the party's policy.
So too are keeping provincial politicians out of Health P.E.I.'s operations, and putting fixes in place that health-care workers are asking for, Neill said.
"We need to cut out some of the political interference, to be quite honest," Neill said. "These are frontline workers that we never could have kept our health-care system going without them. So we have to ensure that we listen to all of them and put in place the ideas that they are talking about to make it better for everyone."
On that issue, and others, Neill said they are the party to get it done. A party of everyday Islanders, with solutions from everyday Islanders.
"We're hard workers, we're doctors, we're paramedics, we're accountants — we're all different types of people who want to help everyday Islanders," Neill said.
"We are all different. We all have different perspectives that we're bringing to the table, because that's extremely important. We want to ensure that there's diversity, that all Islanders can see themselves in the legislature."
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With files from Mitch Cormier