How Saskatchewan will buck a recent provincial election trend
Philip Saunders| CBC Online News | Oct. 8

Unlike other provincial elections this year, there is no strong favourite to either hold or take power in Saskatchewan. But there is almost a guarantee of an ideological battle royale.

There are two main contestants. One is the social democratic NDP, which has used its urban base of support to hold power since 1991. The other is the avowedly free-enterprise, rural-based Saskatchewan Party, a coalition which arose out of the ashes of the disgraced provincial Progressive Conservative Party.

Polling this spring suggested the Saskatchewan Party was in a position to take power. But the NDP, which holds 28 seats to the Saskatchewan Party's 26, has battled back with a series of moves designed to neutralize its rival's campaign ammunition.

With the two main parties being ideological opposites and their leaders facing political death if they lose, the tone has been fiery in the weeks leading up to the Oct. 8 election call. It should only get hotter now that the campaign has started.

At the core of the Nov. 5 election will be a fight over the role of government in Saskatchewan's economy, an issue that is central to its political history.

The NDP and its predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, has always argued Saskatchewan's isolation and small population means government must take a direct role in the economy. The NDP's disastrous 1982 election campaign was even centred on the province's "family of Crown corporations." Right-wing governments, be it Ross Thatcher's Liberals from 1964-1971 or Grant Devine's Progressive Conservatives from 1982-1991, have pushed to give the province a more free enterprise orientation like its Alberta neighbours.

It's worth noting that some say the NDP's rise back to power began when it successfully blocked the Devine government's 1989 attempt to privatize SaskEnergy, the natural gas utility.

The NDP must sense the electorate is in the mood for a change. Literature the party sent to Saskatchewan households in late September looked very much like negative political advertising designed to scare people away from supporting the Saskatchewan Party.

The flyer asked people why Opposition Saskatchewan Party Leader Elwin Hermanson was so negative about Saskatchewan. The NDP government has spent millions selling a positive Saskatchewan message to the rest of Canada and its own citizens in an effort to stem a perceived exodus of people and businesses to Alberta in the last decade. The flyer then listed all the ways a Saskatchewan Party government would be bad for the province and how the NDP has been good for it.

The Saskatchewan NDP Web site features a click-through list of doomsday reasons - all in stark black, with ominous white-and-red images and lettering - about how the Saskatchewan Party would decimate the province's Crown assets if they won. At the heart of this approach are Saskatchewan Party ideas like privatizing the major government-owned companies: SaskPower, SaskTel, SaskEnergy and SGI, the provincial insurance company.

In early October, the Saskatchewan Government Employees Union (SGEU), which represents about 20,000 government workers, distributed an election guide that warned its members about the perils of voting for the Saskatchewan Party. It even compared Hermanson to British Columbia's Gordon Campbell, who chopped a third of the civil service after sweeping the NDP government from power in one of the most lopsided election wins in Canadian history.

About 9,500 people are employed by the various provincial Crown assets. That makes the stewardship of those businesses a hot topic in any provincial election. Add several high-profile investment fumbles and the prevailing role government plays in the Saskatchewan economy becomes a powder keg for debate in this election.

One example of a political black eye was the government losing $28 million on a potato-processing plant. Premier Lorne Calvert said in late September he would establish a board of private business people to make investment decisions of up to $30 million without government approval. Earlier in September, Calvert restructured cabinet responsibility for Crowns and promised cheaper utilities. Whether this is enough to appease the electorate, who may view such a pre-election move with cynicism, remains to be seen.

Saskatchewan Party politicians have responded to NDP and labour fear-mongering by saying they will review all Crown businesses before making any changes. This approach hasn't reduced mistrust towards the party on the issue. It could force Hermanson to explicitly promise not to privatize the four main publicly owned Crowns.

All of this could bode well for the province's Liberals, who hold a lone seat in the legislature (there are three former Liberals in the 58-seat legislature sitting as independents). Novice Liberal Party Leader David Karwacki, who has never been elected to public office, has been trying to walk the middle road between the two main parties. While Hermanson and Calvert fight it out for their political lives, Karwacki's Liberals could again come up the middle and become king-makers. The Liberals did that in 1999 with the four seats they won under former leader Jim Melenchuk, who will be running in this election for the NDP.

On the general role of government, the Liberals say: "Government needs to act as a catalyst. Government can be activist, but no longer interventionist in the global economy." Karwacki has said that a review is needed of Crowns. While saying that he wouldn't privatize them, Karwacki has said he would change the focus of the core responsibilities of the province's four main Crowns. His reputation as a businessman could work to his favour in this regard.

Karwacki, 38, is still an unknown quantity as a politician. If voters are leery of Hermanson yet tired of the NDP, it is still unlikely they would make Karwacki premier. The Liberals' destiny lies in the hands of the candidates he has recruited to represent its moderate approach. If they can win enough seats, his party could again hold an important balance in the legislature.

Karwacki was a very vocal opponent of the 1999 coalition. That, combined with his outwardly anti-Saskatchewan Party policies, will make any potential balance-of-power decision interesting to watch.

There are other issues that will come into play during the election: government spending, health care and education taxation, to name a few. But the heart of the debate will be government's role in managing the economy, how to run government-owned assets, and getting the economy in Saskatchewan rolling.

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