Moe quietly emphasizing team approach in bid to replace Wall

If you ask Scott Moe how a rural MLA who has vehemently opposed a carbon tax as environment minister appeals to urban Saskatchewan voters, be prepared for a rather fulsome answer.

“It’s political, but it’s more than that, too,” Moe says before launching into a surprisingly thorough dissertation on his Saskatchewan Party’s opposition to federal government carbon pricing.

Moe cites Evraz Regina; the pipe and steelmaker has already moved fewer carbon-emitting blast furnaces, but could potentially shed good-paying city jobs if the decision has to be made to relocate elsewhere in the world where four to five times the emissions are permitted. Nor does the federal government seem to understand, Moe notes, zero tillage farming practised in Saskatchewan absorbs 11.7 million tonnes a year of carbon or that even grassland easements absorb 11 tonnes per acre a year.

It’s an answer that won’t satisfy everyone but it exceeds the usually glib, clipped response to the Justin Trudeau carbon tax one normally gets.

It’s an answer that suggests this Saskatchewan Party leadership hopeful is more sincerely passionate and more versed in matters than first meets the eye. And it may be why the low-key Moe so quickly gained both large caucus support and status as a front-runner.

“I’m not Brad Wall and will never be Brad Wall,” said the Shellbrook-Rosthern MLA first elected in 2011. “I’m Scott Moe.”

Moe may still be an enigma outside Sask. Party circles, but what does seem obvious is that he isn’t just the rural caucus’s candidate who announced his candidacy last September in front of an implement dealership with 22 fellow MLAs standing beside him.

“Everybody’s personality (in this race) and how they put themselves out there as a politician is very different,” Moe said. “I’m probably not as forceful when it comes to getting my name out there.”

Nevertheless, his social media feeds are chock full of endorsements from colleagues, underscoring his theme that his leadership will be more about a team approach that he has developed.

He is quick to note that he would have likely run even if Health Minister Jim Reiter had been in the race and that his support comes from both rural and city caucus members, including Jeremy Harrison, Kevin Doherty and Reiter, who have embraced his team approach.

And while much has been made about his candidacy being a case of the “Sask. Party circling the tractors,” Moe makes no apologies for choosing a successful Saskatoon-area business as the location for his kickoff or his support base that he says nicely represents how his 20-year-old party must come together in both rural and urban Saskatchewan if it is going to continue its run of success.

Moe is committed to winning a healthy majority in 2020 and growing that majority government in 2024, by what he sees as a leadership style that recognizes the interconnection of urban and rural.

He says he intends to accomplish that by further examining what went wrong at the Global Transportation Hub, regardless of the RCMP investigation outcome, and stronger policies in education, where he’s vowed to restore $30 million in funding after the 2017-18 budget reductions — the latter being one of his proudest policy initiatives.

Both supporters and rivals are quick to describe Moe as a far more cerebral student of governance and politics than many assume — somewhat surprising for a guy who describes politics as “not my first career choice.”

His interests started at the volunteer/local political level that led him to a heated nomination in March 2011 in which he successfully challenged then sitting Sask. Party MLA Dennis Allchurch.

Moreover, his current leadership campaign has resulted in the re-emergence of two drunk driving convictions and a separate atfault traffic accident that resulted in a fatality — all occurring when he was a young adult.

“You can’t change mistakes that you made,” he said, adding he’s acknowledged he learned from them.

Similarly, Moe says he intends to lead a party that has also come together by learning from its own past mistakes.