Tag: Scott Moe

A budget 19 months in advance of the next provincial election campaign should be starting to give us a clue as to what that campaign will be about. Scott Moe and Ryan Meili may not personally dislike each other. Why Moe wouldn’t do this anyway is confounding. After all, the Sask. This week, the right thing for Moe would have been to at least start messaging that extreme views like the ones we are seeing on the yellow vest Facebook page are both unwanted and actually detrimental to the Sask. One gets why there may be a burning desire in the Sask. Party’s political ads. But in end, it was Eyre, Moe and the Sask. If the Sask. There again, maybe this is just what Saskatchewan politics is destined to be like for the next 19 months.

Given that Saskatchewan was the first place in North America with a social democratic government, it’s not as if we are strangers to overheated rhetoric. But there are rules and one of the more important rules here (and most everywhere in the country) is that you confine your politics to your own jurisdiction. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe crossed that line this week in a tweet directed at Alberta voters urging them to unite behind one conservative party to defeat NDP Premier Rachel Notley. “Dear Albertans, Prior to the formation of @SaskParty 20 years ago, our province was the example of what dividing the free enterprise movement will do: electing NDP governments, over and over again. Moe is supposed to be the premier for everyone in Saskatchewan. You weren’t elected by anyone in Alberta. You don’t represent “the free enterprise movement.” Nowhere in your job description does it state that it’s your role to prevent “electing NDP governments.” Your job is not to hurry Rachel Notley along to her political demise, which seems an inevitability, anyway. It’s bad the next time Saskatchewan has to go to a western premiers’ conference to talk about the New West Partnership or to talk about stocking Saskatchewan beer in Alberta or even barring Alberta licence plates at Saskatchewan work sites. Party government’s need to pick a fight with Alberta over something.) It’s really bad because it represents a mindset of partisanship taking precedent over what’s good for the province.

The saddest thing about the Saskatchewan Party’s recent negative political advertising isn’t that it’s a reflection of today’s social-media-driven political debate (although today’s social media surely isn’t helping this age-old problem). If one is ever inclined to see what it’s like living with a partisan mindset, follow a few old political warhorses on Twitter … or perhaps even a few current politicians emboldened by the notion that decency and good grace are no longer qualities voters want. Conservative, Liberal, NDP … it really doesn’t matter the party. What they’ve always shared is a core belief that enraging, engaging and mobilizing a support base is more critical than some “subjective” view of what’s true. Social media is often selling angry, half-truths in a dark, petty way, but this is what negative political advertising has always been. After all, Meili did say Saskatchewan should “consider a modest carbon tax” made in Saskatchewan, which would still put him in the camp envisioned by federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna. And Meili did call the federal court case (and the Saskatchewan government’s general opposition to the federal Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act) “a pointless crusade.” The anti-pipeline rally Meili attended before he was an MLA was to protest the Husky oil spill in the North Saskatchewan River and the doctor mostly talked about preventing negative health outcomes. And there was nothing more hypocritical or misleading in this Sask. Party ad than its line: “When it was time to fight Trudeau’s equalization plan that hurts provinces like Saskatchewan, he didn’t say anything at all.” A dozen years ago, the NDP government, the Saskatchewan Party Opposition and the federal Conservative Opposition were in 100 per cent agreement that non-renewable resources should be removed from the equalization formula — a questionable national strategy, but one that would have provided Saskatchewan with $800 million more annually in federal transfer payment revenue. The really sad thing is we still have negative political ads because they still work … perhaps better than ever.