Ryan Meili

Ryan Meili (born April 11, 1975) is a Canadian physician and former politician from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Meili entered the College of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan in September 2000 after his third application, and graduated in 2004.

In 2001, he traveled to Quebec City as part of a peaceful protest at the Summit of the Americas.

He was arrested during the protest, but received an absolute discharge and had the conviction erased after one year.

Meili first became a member of the Saskatchewan New Democratic Party in 2001.

He completed his residency at the Westwinds Primary Health Centre in Saskatoon in June 2007.

In addition to working as a physician at the West Side Community Clinic in Saskatoon, Meili began working for the U of S and as an advocate for doctors and health care.

He became head of the College of Medicine's Division of Social Accountability and ran the College's Making the Links program, which coordinated practices for medical students in communities in inner-city Saskatoon, Northern Saskatchewan, and Mozambique.

He acted as a coordinator for the Student Wellness Initiative Toward Community Health (SWITCH), which provided further opportunities for Saskatoon students to gain community-based experience.

Meili also served as vice-chair for Canadian Doctors for Medicare, a national advocacy organization.

Party leader Lorne Calvert's retirement in 2008 triggered a leadership election, and in February 2009 Meili decided to enter the race to replace the former premier.

Meili was the fourth and final declared candidate in the race, joining former Deputy Premier Dwain Lingenfelter, Moose Jaw MLA Deb Higgins, and former party president Yens Pedersen.

With no formal political experience, Meili was considered an outsider in the race.

However, Meili ran a campaign that relied on grassroots volunteering and fundraising and focused on party renewal, and he placed a surprising second behind Lingenfelter, earning 45% of votes on the second and final ballot.

Meili had greater notoriety in the race compared to 2009, and he based his campaign around the ideas presented in his book, A Healthy Society.

When Weir dropped out ahead of the election and endorsed Meili, he was considered the front runner.

At the election, he led on the first ballot by more than 400 votes.

However, he ultimately finished second, losing to Broten by a slim margin of just 44 votes on the second ballot.

Meili was lauded for expanding party membership during the race, and in particular for attracting young people to the party.

In 2010, he sought the nomination for the riding of Saskatoon Sutherland.

However, although Meili was perceived as the front runner for the nomination, he ultimately dropped out of the race, citing family reasons, and Naveed Anwar secured the nomination.

Following the convention, Meili announced that he intended to run for the NDP in the 2011 provincial election.

The 2011 election reduced the NDP to just 9 seats in the legislature, tied for their worst election result in history, and Lingenfelter lost his own seat and resigned as leader.

In 2012 Meili published A Healthy Society: How a Focus on Health can Revive Canadian Democracy, a book that explored the concept of the social determinants of health and argued for their role in the political process.

This triggered a new leadership election, and in September 2012, Meili announced that he would again be seeking the leadership.

In the race Meili was joined by Saskatoon MLA Cam Broten, Regina MLA Trent Wotherspoon, and Regina economist Erin Weir.

In 2014 Meili considered but ultimately declined to seek the federal NDP nomination for the riding of Saskatoon West ahead of the 2015 federal election.

The NDP gained just one seat in the 2016 election, and like Lingenfelter before him, Broten lost his own seat and resigned as party leader shortly after the election, triggering yet another leadership race.

While Meili had by then run twice from outside the legislature, he announced in December 2016 that he would be seeking the nomination for a by-election to be held in the riding of Saskatoon Meewasin in 2017 after the death of MLA Roger Parent.

He previously served as the Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Saskatoon Meewasin from 2017 to 2022 and as leader of the Saskatchewan New Democratic Party from 2018 to 2022.

He has founded a number of health care-related initiatives such as the Student Wellness Initiative Toward Community Health (SWITCH), the University of Saskatchewan's Making the Links program, and the Upstream think tank.

Meili was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and grew up on a family farm near Courval.

He attended Vanier Collegiate in Moose Jaw before going on to the University of Saskatchewan (U of S) where he studied Human Anatomy and Languages.

After finishing his first degree, Meili made an unsuccessful application to the U of S medical school.

He then traveled to South America for five months, co-organizing a project called "Limbs and Light for Latin America."

The project raised money to purchase a school bus, which was then filled with prosthetic limbs for landmine victims and driven to Nicaragua.

Meili was successful in securing the nomination and he won the by-election in March 2017.

In May 2017, Meili announced that he would be joining the NDP leadership race to replace Broten.

Meili published an updated and expanded edition of the book in 2018.

After publishing the first edition Meili founded and led a non-profit think tank called Upstream: Institute for a Healthy Society, which has since joined the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.