Saskatchewan decides Moe is better

Coalition cruises to fourth majority

Brad Wall tells an anecdote about the first time he won an election, in 1999, as a candidate for the nascent Saskatchewan Party, watching the results roll in on TV and seeing the party had won an urban seat.

“I was so jacked to get elected in my hometown,” Wall recalled in an interview with the National Post on Monday, as Saskatchewan was headed to the polls in a provincial and pandemic election. “Turned out it was me — Swift Current was the urban seat. The definition may have shocked people and surprised people in Swift Current.”

The Saskatchewan Party has steadily grown since, rising from a party with a rural base to one that cruised on Monday night to its fourth straight majority win. Since 2007, when Wall first became premier, the party has dominated provincial politics, taking seats in Regina and Saskatoon and throughout the rest of the province.

The party is now headed by Scott Moe, who took over the top job in 2018, and Monday won his first victory as leader and premier. The party’s lasting popular appeal with voters doesn’t mean there are not cracks in foundations, some of them stemming from the very roots of the party itself, born out of a coalition of Saskatchewan Liberals, Progressive Conservatives and Reform Party members.

Unlike Alberta, which has decades of conservative rule, broken up by only four years of Rachel Notley’s New Democrats, Saskatchewan has had a more varied political history — much of it dominated by the New Democrats and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, which held power in the province in a significant majority of elections since 1944.

That all changed after the Saskatchewan Party was formed. And once Wall became premier in 2007, the party has hung on to power ever since and added seats each time they went to the polls: 38 out of 58 seats in 2007, 49 of 58 in 2011, and 51 of 61 in 2016.

As of Monday night, the Sask Party was leading in more than 40 constituencies, with more than 61,000 mailin ballots yet to be counted. It is more than the 31 needed to control the 61-seat legislature. Some races in Saskatoon and Regina were too tight to call, including the Saskatoon constituency of NDP Leader Ryan Meili.

There are a number of factors that have gone into the growth of the Saskatchewan Party. One of the biggest is timing.

The Saskatchewan Party came along when the prairie province began to turn around economically. The provincial population was growing. It became a “have” instead of a “have not” province.

“The mentality of thinking we’re the poorer neighbour to our richer cousin on the other side of the border in Alberta ... that’s gone,” explained Greg Poelzer, a professor in the school of environment and sustainability at the University of Saskatchewan and an observer of provincial politics. “And I think Brad Wall was transformative for the province in changing that kind of outlook.”

Wall, the first Saskatchewan Party premier, said the economy formed the “north star” of the party’s approach to governance. And while it focused on the economy, he said the party didn’t ignore its social obligations, such as health care.

“A little good fortune helps, you have a good economic plan, focus on it and then make sure you demonstrate you understand it’s not all about pie charts and GDP — it’s about people,” said Wall, who retired in 2018.

Moe campaigned on a message to recover the economy from the COVID-19 pandemic and to introduce millions of dollars in tax credits and rebates.

During Wall’s time as leader, the party also put a considerable amount of effort into winning urban seats, finding good candidates and overhauling the party platform.

“We basically said, ‘we’re not changing the principles of the party, but we’re going to start with a clean slate on policy,’” said Wall.

Understanding the party’s popular appeal means knowing where it came from.

The party emerged in August 1997 as a coalition of former Liberals and Progressive Conservatives who’d been trampled by NDP in elections through the 1990s.

“You had provincial Liberals, provincial PCs and federal Reformers, and that’s a formidable coalition,” Wall said. “They just laid that all aside, and said it’s important for us to have a united alternative to the NDP.”

That it’s a coalition, that Saskatchewan isn’t as resolutely conservative as is often thought, is a salient fact, says Poelzer. The risk, he explained, is if the harder line Saskatchewan has been taking with regards to Ottawa will alienate people in the all-important coalition.

“Where the Sask Party ... has been very successful was building a broad coalition of federal Liberals and federal Conservatives,” said Poelzer. “Right now, I would argue that (the) Sask Party is on the verge of where that is starting to unravel.

“Without that liberal-centre vote and centre-right vote, the NDP would dominate elections.”

At the same time, the Buffalo Party has popped up on the right wing of Saskatchewan politics, rising on the heat generated from western alienation. There’s also the Progressive Conservative Party of Saskatchewan to contend with.

The right does have a power base in Saskatchewan, Wall said, but he points to evidence the coalition still exists: One candidate, Chris Guerette, for example, campaigned for the federal Liberals in 2015.

“It’s got to continue to be a ... big tent party,” said Wall.

LIAM RICHARDS / THE CANADIAN PRESS Saskatchewan Party Leader Scott Moe embraces his wife Krista at his Monday night victory speech at the party's campaign event in Saskatoon.