Notwithstanding anything else, Wall is about political expediency

We are at the point, the Saskatchewan Party government now tells us, where we can no longer pay more than $2,100 for a funeral for deceased social assistance recipients.

The 2017-18 Saskatchewan budget cut the flat rate for burial costs for SAP (Saskatchewan Assistance Program) and SAID (Saskatchewan Assured Income for Disability) clients by 45 per cent to $2,100 from $3,850.

As Saskatoon reporter Tammy Robert noted, the old $3,850 rate covered the cost of moving the dead body, a cheap casket or urn, the hearse ride to the grave and necessary paperwork. But that $3,850 government funeral cost wouldn’t include flowers, music, an obituary, meal or a headstone.

This is not the message the family-valued-oriented Sask. Party government wants to send.

“I’m certainly not a heartless person,” Social Services Minister Tina Beaudry-Mellor said after the issue was raised by the NDP in Monday’s question period.

“My priority was really to keep the lights on and food on the table and roofs over people’s heads in this budget, and unfortunately this was one of a number of difficult decisions.”

Alas, things are so bad in Saskatchewan right now that Beaudry-Mellor says her government has no choice but to abandon its self-proclaimed principles — at the expense of a decent burial for the indigent.

So wouldn’t the Sask. Party government now be looking at every opportunity to reduce other less-essential costs?

Wouldn’t one such less-essential cost be public funding of religious-based schools? After all, if you no longer view it as economically or religiously important to pay for spiritual guidance in hospitals, why pay for nonsecular teaching in schools?

Even if you agree with Premier Brad Wall’s assessment that Saskatchewan people have a constitutional right to separate, religious public schools, what’s the valid, principled argument for taxpayers paying people to send their kids to “separate” schools for reasons that have nothing to do with religious teachings? Choice? That’s usually something you make based on affordability. Those who die with nothing to their name don’t have such a choice.

As Beaudry-Mellor suggests, the problem isn’t so much that she and her Sask. Party government are heartless. Rather, a Sask. Party government dealing with the 2016-17 budget’s $1.3-billion deficit, doesn’t want to do anything that truly risks its stranglehold on power.

That means a daily spin of the moral compass in search of political expediency. Principles be damned. Just proceed in the direction that creates the least fuss and reaps the most reward.

This also explains Wall’s decision to apply the notwithstanding clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to the recent Court of Queen’s Bench ruling prohibiting public funding for Catholic students who aren’t really Catholic but are going to Saskatchewan Catholic schools for other reasons.

Yes, abiding by Justice Donald Layh’s April 20 ruling by 2018 would be somewhat chaotic for both the government and approximate 10,000 non-Catholic students currently attending Catholic schools. But the ruling is being appealed. And Justice Layh seems to offer clarity and choice — the two issues Wall says are in play.

Moreover, Wall noted himself Monday his government is building joint-use public/separate schools as it adjusts to changing realities.

That Wall on Monday cited the fear of rural school closures like in Theodore — the source of a decade-long court battle that started when a local school switched from the public to the separate system in 2003 to avoid closing the 43-student school — suggests some rather scrambled logic.

Less scrambled, however, is Wall’s political intent.

No sooner had he announced the use of the notwithstanding clause than his social media feed was filled with graphics championing Wall as defender of both Catholic schools and other religious-based education. Much of the rest of the day was spent questioning whether the NDP was as wholeheartedly supportive.

A principled decision? Well, those in the Sask. Party government are hard to find right now.