Saskatchewan election - results and local impact

As predicted, the Sask Party has taken the government and the new Premier is Brad Wall. This CP story says:

Throughout the campaign, Wall tried to look like a premier by communicating his party's plan clearly and without caveat. He wasn't overly negative and, for the most part, he stayed out of the gutter.

Those qualities won Wall - a fresh-faced, smooth talker who is quick on his feet and good with a joke - the job of party leader in 2003. His first step was to move the Saskatchewan Party toward the middle of the road. Now he must guide his province through an economic boom that is luring people home with the promise of jobs and a bright future.

This table provides the latest election results. Those who care about such things will note that the Liberals have been shut out again.

Party	Elected	Leading	Total	Vote Share
SP	37	0	37	50.6%
NDP	21	0	21	37.4%
LIB	0	0	0	9.5%

Although Premier Williams has expressed the hope that the new government will continue as a stalwart ally in the fight against the federal government on Equalization, he's likely just whistling in the dark. The subject was not raised in the election and it looks like it's been moved to the backburner. Besides, that new government has better things to do than indulge in fights it can't win.

So with Lorne Calvert gone and Rodney MacDonald cutting a side deal, it looks like the big cheese stands alone after all.

That leaves Premier Williams limited options: make new friends among the premiers (a vanishingly remote possibility), start a process of rapprochement with the Harper federal government (difficult in light of Williams' election night attack) or just keep up the war in the hopes that he will outlast Harper or wear him down; none of them are easy options.

Election day in Saskatchewan (and videos)

It looks like the SaskParty (a rebuilt and re-branded Sask PC party which imploded after sending virtually every member of their last government caucus to jail) is heading to a romp over the NDP. Predictions from John Murney indicate seats of 38-48 for SaskParty, 12-22 for the NDP and the Liberals of 0-2.

On the web and on television, all the parties have been merrily churning out videos for both media. From the looks at these two ads, I can only assume it's been a mean and nasty campaign.

This SaskParty video is a pretty classic attack style video:



This NDP response video, while pretty standard, has some Monty Pythonesque features that catch the eye:



Meanwhile, there's also this guy, Voice of Saskatchewan, who seems to be carrying on a campaign of his own.



Good luck to all the candidates!

Prairie winds of change

In yesterday's Globe and Mail were two interesting articles pointing to political upheaval in two otherwise politically stable provinces: Alberta and Saskatchewan.

In a CTV interview, Preston Manning predicts rocky times ahead for Premier Stelmach. His compromise on royalties may have been a perfect one thus pleasing nobody. Manning expresses doubts that the decades long Progressive Conservative regime will be reelected saying that:

I think it's becoming increasingly unlikely unless, say, the government demonstrates a capacity that it hasn't shown thus far. I don't see votes going to the Liberals or the NDP. I think their biggest danger is another 150,000 people staying home who voted Conservative the last time and then that puts dozens and dozens of seats up for grabs.

Meanwhile, in the adjacent province of Saskatchewan, another longtime government, this time NDP, is also in jeopardy.

In this column, Janice MacKinnon, a former NDP finance minister argues that the Calvert government is out of touch, tapped out of ideas and that it will cost them. She argues:

The lesson to be learned is that when designing future social policies, political parties cannot merely return to the traditional idea of universal social programs. Instead, they must be more imaginative. They should build upon targeted programs, such as the National Child Benefit, which links benefits to income and is affordable in the long-term.

Another point made was the dearth of discussion in the election over Equalization. She notes that:

Equally revealing in the campaign was the role played by equalization - or rather non-role. Saskatchewan Premier Lorne Calvert had been the most outspoken ally of Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams in attacking the federal Conservatives for breaking their promise on equalization. For several months before the campaign, the NDP government focused on how the province had been shortchanged in its equalization entitlements. Yet during the election, equalization was hardly mentioned. Why? In part, the call for $800-million more in equalization funding at a time when the province is booming is at the very least confusing. Just as important, many voters do not understand or care about equalization. It is not a program that affects them directly.

Her final observation has as much to do with this province as it does with Saskatchewan:

The final campaign development of note has been the very transformation of Saskatchewan itself. In the past the province was called "next year country," reflecting the eternal optimism of a province that has seen its share of tough times. But with high commodity prices, an extensive research infrastructure centring on national facilities like the Canadian Light Source synchrotron, and an influx of people from Alberta, there is a feeling the province is on the cusp of a new era. Rather than fighting with federal governments over entitlements rooted in the past, people in Saskatchewan want to take advantage of the tremendous opportunities of the future. They sense what economic forecasters have predicted: Saskatchewan is joining Alberta and British Columbia as a major economic force in Western Canada.

How far are we from that point?

Saskatchewan election update

Things are looking grim for Premier Lorne Calvert. With the election day only a week away on November 7th, his party is behind, most voters want a change in government and there is little enthusiasm for Calvert himself. So says a pair of new polls from Probe Research Inc.

The first poll, on voter ID indicates:

With the support of 50 percent of decided voters, the Saskatchewan Party is the province’s most popular political party. Well back, the governing New Democrats are currently supported by 35 percent while the Liberals are the party of choice for 10 percent of Saskatchewan adults. A modest two percent of voters each report they will cast ballots for either Progressive Conservative or Green Party candidates. Thirty-one percent of those surveyed were unwilling or unable to express their voting intentions.

And while things may change, voter intent points to a more likely shift to the Saskatchewan Party than to the NDP:

Looking at voter certainty, 64 percent of Saskatchewan Party supporters have fully committed to casting ballots for that party on November 7th compared with only 47 percent of NDP voters who say they are “very certain” they will actually mark NDP ballots. These findings suggest that any late campaign shifting that may occur would favour the Saskatchewan Party more than the NDP.

The second poll details voter views on leadership and government in general. It too bodes ill for Calvert's regime:

Across the province, more than one-half of adults (54%) agreed that “the NDP have been in power for too long and it is now time for a change”. This compares with only 26 percent who affirmed that: “The NDP, led by Lorne Calvert, deserve to be re-elected based on their record and accomplishments over the past years”. One in five respondents (20%) chose not to affirm either position.

As for Premier Calvert's personal standing, it seems to have suffered worse for wear:

When asked which of the three main party leaders they felt would make the “Best Premier” of Saskatchewan, the leader of the Saskatchewan Party, Brad Wall, beats out incumbent Premier Lorne Calvert. Thirty-seven percent of those surveyed pointed to Mr. Wall as the best candidate for Premier while 25 percent named current Premier Lorne Calvert. Twelve percent thought Liberal leader David Karwacki would make the best Premier, while nearly one in four citizens (26%) were uncertain as to who would be best suited to occupy the province’s highest political office.

As posted previously, this staunch Williams ally on the Equalization front will soon find himself unemployed leaving Williams with only Nova Scotia's Rodney MacDonald, himself in a precarious position.

Big cheese stands alone

While amateur local pundits are eager to place Premier Williams front and center of the national stage, the shape of the political landscape for their hero points to growing isolation and continuing national irrelevance into the indefinite future.

When you clear through the noise of the regular fall Ottawa ritual of the rutting political parties bellowing and taking runs at each other, one thing becomes clear: there will be no election this year. Over the next month or so, each opposition party will make separate and independent runs at the government and the government will pretend that the runs actually mean something and will make their appropriate noises. Then everybody will go home satisfied that they have been seen to be doing something.

The Conservatives are still locked in minority territory, the opposition parties are still unprepared for an election, there are no burning issues to run on and nobody wants to call an election to be conducted over the pre-Christmas season. Layton already made that mistake once and even he has learned it's not wise to do that twice.

The real game will start with the spring budget.

And the more time goes by, the fewer national allies Williams has to count on. MacDonald of Nova Scotia has looked after the interests of his own province and made a separate peace with the feds. In truth, he was never a reliable ally at the best of times because there was so little money at stake for him. And now with a single bland assurance, Harper and McKay have neutralized that problem.

Harper and MacDonald's success in burying the hatchet lies in the fact that talks continued between the governments through the conduit of Peter MacKay. He was critical to making the deal happen.

Williams has no such conduit. He has emasculated Loyola Hearn and our Ottawa plenipotentiary is nowhere to be seen.

There's no doubt that the deal was in the works for a while and the announcement was held off until after the NL provincial election. For one thing it takes up to weeks to coordinate a federal-provincial announcement of this magnitude. For another, Harper knew full well that Williams would use the deal as the excuse to launch yet another provincial jihad against Ottawa.

That's the problem with being so predictable - it gives the initiative to others.

Whether the deal is good or not for Nova Scotia is irrelevant. MacDonald is now out of the game and the Williams' parting shots at him as "weak" will make him disinclined to be sympathetic in the future.

Meanwhile, Premier Calvert of Saskatchewan has called an election and his outlook is not bright. He is a familiar and tired leader heading a familiar and tired party that has been in power for 16 years and has been 15-20% behind in the polls for too long. There is always a chance that he might pull it out but that's not where the smart money is going.

As for the other provincial premiers, the Williams hobbyhorse of broken federal promises that nobody ever expected to see kept anyways combined with absolutely no interest in Equalization as an issue in any premier's suite of any note across the country ensures a big ho-hum response to his same old song.

The key to long term success in federal-provincial relations is in making friends and influencing people through a combination of tenacity, flexibility and the ability to make allies through the sharing of common interests. Predictable, incessant, inflexible, noisy combativeness excites the local nationalist extremists back home; nobody else cares anymore.