Our politicians have been acting like children
It was a week in Saskatchewan where we really got a glimpse of how much of a mess we have got ourselves in.
Simply put folks: It’s ugly. It was so ugly this week a few of you may have reverted back to your childhood penchant of sticking your fingers in your ears, screaming la-lala-la-la and pretending you can’t hear any of it.
But that’s not how adults handle problems. Sadly, there were few politicians on either of the legislative chamber where there was much “adulting” going on this week.
The grown-up, ugly reality was evident in the province’s credit rating downgrade from DBRS Morningstar to AA low as a result of “two significant economic shocks in the past decade.”
One of those “shocks” is budgetary problems flowing from COVID -19 costs and plummeting tax and oil and gas revenues. However, DBRS also cited the “impact of the 2014-2016 commodity price correction” that pretty much flies in the face of Finance Minister Donna Harpauer’s notion this is just a “pandemic deficit.”
Sadly, what DBRS is essentially saying is we are now about five years past the end of our 10-year boom. Other bond-rating agencies are at least hinting at the same thing. Credit ratings are like ocean liners: They’re hard to turn around once they start heading in one direction.
Harpauer tried to raise hope that half the $2.4-billion deficit can be attributed to $1.1 billon in spending to deal with COVID -19 — spending we won’t necessarily have to worry about next year. Unfortunately, close to half of that spending is actually funded by federal programming dollars for abandoned well clean up, wage support for health workers and support for small businesses that we will only get this year.
A couple more things you probably don’t want hear is that we’ll still be fixing this budget mess years after COVID -19 has passed and that it’s going to be a whole lot longer than we thought before we see COVID-19 is no longer a concern in Saskatchewan.
An outbreak at two Hutterite colonies near Maple Creek produced another rise in new cases that had been down to one or no new cases in recent days.
This is not the fault of government, but it was a bold reminder that COVID-19 is still hovering over us like those giant alien space ships in the horror movies we used to watch as kids.
Into this COVID-19 world we will be sending our own kids back to school come September. However, we learned this week we are doing so without added money for cleaning and disinfecting and few practical provisions for social distancing in overcrowded classrooms — especially for high school students who encounter different students and teachers in every class.
New Democrat education critic Carla Beck did raise these scary prospects at the end in of the last question period of the week, but the Opposition spent far too much of its limited time during this short sitting chasing scandals down rabbit holes or trying to stir up the notion that it is the secret intent of this conservative-minded government sell off Crown corporations to pay for the deficit.
One gets the politics here and perhaps the sincere frustration with a Sask. Party government playing political games of its own at this critical time. One even gets the NDP frustrations with the schoolyard bullying they endure in the assembly from the likes of Health Minister Jim Reiter and Government House leader Jeremy Harrison, the resident classroom tattletale whose priority this week was pressing Speaker Mark Docherty to censure Cathy Sproule for a tweet simply asking for debate. Childish.
Less understandable is how it devolved into classroom chaos that ultimately led to NDP Leader Ryan Meili giving the government bench the finger — not a brilliant move for a leader the public doesn’t particularly take seriously anyway.
We are a province now confronted with some of biggest challenges of our generation and our politicians are responding by acting like children.
This was the ugly, grown-up reality.
Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-post and Saskatoon Starphoenix.