Confusion versus sleaze

The two words capturing the essence of the current state of Saskatchewan politics are confusion and sleaze. First, the politics of confusion. The Calvert government seems rudderless, stumbling around looking for an agenda.

The consensus around the provincial budget--right, left and centre; business and labour--is that the government seems to have no clear plan, appearing uncertain about the meaning of its electoral mandate. Is the Calvert government fish or fowl? Is it a moderate social democratic government prepared to move forward on its strong popular vote mandate? Or is it merely a retread of the moderately neo-conservative government of Roy Romanow? The budget was full of this confusion. There were clear neo-conservative elements: an increase in the regressive PST; a public sector wage increase guideline--zero, one and one percent over three years--revealing a determination to solve the province's fiscal problems on the backs of the working class in the public sector; growing confrontations with labour, a recently settled SIAST strike and a looming strike at SaskPower. There was also the cut of 500 government jobs, the failure to reverse the unsustainable tax cuts the Romanow era granted business and high-income earners, and the refusal to raise more revenues from the province's resources.

But there were a few snippets of traditional social democracy. Health spending was increased 6.3 percent, education by 3.8 percent. The Crowns were re-organized and the Calvert government seems to be preparing some major initiatives in this sector. The cuts in government jobs were focussed on over-serviced rural areas, a legacy of Devine and Romanow.

So, just where is the government going?

Then there were the stupidities that further confused everyone: certain provincial parks would have their openings delayed, then they wouldn't; the premier said we should look at health premiums, then he said we shouldn't.

Such stumbling confusion leads to the conclusion that the Calvert government perhaps didn't expect to win the last election, focusing instead on maintaing a strong opposition to a SaskParty government. Thus it would now be a SaskParty government dealing with the economic difficulties, growing labour unrest, and a deepening health care crisis. Such a scenario is certainly consistent with what has happened: the Calvert government is clearly undecided on a clear agenda. Perhaps, then, the recent budget can be seen as a holding action while Calvert gets his ducks in a row and waits, hopefully, for an economic upturn, more federal dollars for health, and an improved equalization formula as promised by Goodale and Martin. In the meantime, Calvert's traditional political base is restive, confused, and increasingly annoyed.

Calvert's ace in the hole is Brad Wall and the SaskParty. If the NDP is suffering from confusion, perhaps even a bit of political dementia, Brad Wall and the SaskParty are wallowing in the politics of sleaze. Unwilling to come clean and bravely advocate his right-wing agenda, Brad Wall has paraded victim after victim of the failure of the health care system, putting them on public display to score political points. Not satisfied with that, the SaskParty has used the tragic murder of Janice Kinna--a victim of the Regina police's failure to respond quickly to a 911 call--to score more political points, laying the blame for the murder on the NDP government.

What's next? There's a rumour that the NDP government might cut education funding for special needs programs, an indefensible action that needs to be denounced. But will Brad Wall begin to parade kids with learning, physical and behavioural difficulties before the cameras at the legislature? Or victims of traffic accidents? Or sexual assaults? If Brad Wall believes this kind of politics will win the next election, he needs both a therapist and a tutor.

Then there was the Serby betrayal. Brad Wall promised that the SaskParty would not exploit deputy premier Clay Serby's absence from the legislature as he battled cancer. In one of the sleaziest reversals in Saskatchewan political history, Brad Wall and the SaskParty consistently exploited Serby's absence in a zealous determination to defeat the government. Though the NDP won a strong popular vote mandate, they only won 30 seats to the SaskParty's 28. With the appointment of a Speaker, that gave the NDP a one-seat edge, 29 to 28. With Serby gone the legislature was deadlocked 28 to 28. The SaskParty exploited the situation to force the budget to be examined in committee of the whole legislature, despite having agreed earlier to examinations in smaller committees. According to British parliamentary tradition the Speaker only breaks ties in favour of the government when it is a matter of confidence and defeat will force an election. Therefore, the legislature was in effect deadlocked on routine business. Wall desperately sought an opportunity to bring down the government to force an election. Serby's recent return to the Legislature has put an end to Wall's dream.

If the NDP expected to lose the last election, the SaskParty expected to win and have behaved as if they were entitled to win it ever since. Wall is convinced that they could win if an election was forced. They are probably wrong about that, and the public was not impressed with the sleazy exploitation of Serby's illness. But Brad Wall and the SaskParty are truly blindly obsessed, as visions of power tantalize them into acts of stupidity.

Another fatal flaw in Wall's approach is his knee-jerk support for every rural lamentation that emerges. We should once again bankrupt the province, as Wall's role model Grant Devine did, to sustain an unsustainable rural Saskatchewan: pour more money, without strings, into the pockets of farmers; give farmers an exemption from paying a fair share of education costs via property taxes; keep empty hospitals open and staffed; keep underused provincial government offices open and underused services staffed. We certainly need a plan for the rural economy and social structure, but that plan cannot be the SaskParty plan of pouring money into the bottomless pit of a rural society already in decline, nor giving every special interest in rural Saskatchewan the money they ask for.

My advice to the NDP: end the confusion, come clean, get clear, and crab left. My advice to Brad Wall: clean up your act, go back to the drawing board.

John Conway is a university of Regina political sociologist and the author of The West: The History of a Region in Confederation.

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