Empty gestures and cheap shots

In a recent scrum, the premier was asked about his party’s decline in polls. “Not true! Not true!” he insisted.

Wall’s new tack on opinion polls is one of many clues he’s adopted a different style of leadership. Now that he’s up against an Opposition that’s gaining momentum, gone is the clever, congenial premier. Wall 2.0 and his party seem committed to another strategy: the kind of foot-stomping, victim-posturing, “fake news”-decrying rhetoric we’ve come to expect of their allies elsewhere.

Take MLA Tina Beaudry-Mellor’s recent social media tirade in which she vilifies left-wing activists for exercising their right to protest the government’s austerity measures at Regina Pride. “It was an attempt to diminish or silence our genuine effort to widen the space for the LGBT community,” she wrote. “I wish those individuals would think past their own agenda to the people and youth they harm for nothing more than a cheap political shot. Sad.”

Beaudry-Mellor raises an important concern about the harm that political action

(or inaction) does to queer youth. Thirty-three per cent of LGB teens attempt suicide, compared with seven per cent of the general population.

Gender and sexuality alliance groups nurture social development and a sense of self-worth for students who struggle with their identity. Giving all high schools the right to a GSA would protect vulnerable youth and show true ally ship with LGBTQ2+ people. Yet Sask. Party MLAs voted against this, calling it “symbolic” and “unnecessary.”

If a genuine effort is to be made, this is an important place to start. Instead, the Sask. Party is making the empty gesture of marching in a parade, while taking cheap political shots at journalists and activists. Sad.

London Gregory is a Saskatoon entrepreneur who identifies as a gay person of colour