Beaudry-Mellor may not address SP gov’t’s image problem

In some ways, the Saskatchewan Party couldn’t find a better first entry into its leadership race than Regina MLA Tina Beaudry Mellor.

Were it not enough that she is an urban woman, devoted mom and a university-level political science instructor, she’s also the government’s social services minister capable of taking the edge off the Sask. Party’s too-farright-wing image. For example, after the horrific weekend events in Charlottesville, Beaudry Mellor tweeted “in a world where you can be anything, be kind” with an accompanying tearful emoji.

However, Beaudry-Mellor and the Sask. Party may have been taken aback by the cynicism it solicited. “Poor people’s funerals,” responded blogger and Maclean’s writer Tammy Robert in one Twitter reply. Social issues continue to be a fault line for the Sask. Party — not unlike the way they have become a seemingly unbridgeable chasm in the United States.

Sure, Charlottesville demonstrates more overt social/racial problems. Beaudry-Mellor was responding to neo-Nazis running around with tiki torches and swastikas to the cheers of the Ku Klux Klan leadership.

We all saw a U.S. president who chose to first condemn “many sides” finally get around Monday to actually condemning murderous white supremacists. We don’t have neo-Nazis marching in the streets in Saskatchewan, but we do have both social issues and racism problems of our own. The most blatant example of such overt racism occurred in the aftermath of last year’s killing of Red Pheasant First Nation resident Colten Boushie in a Biggar-area farmyard. A website frequented by Saskatchewan farmers was flooded with hate about First Nations.

By contrast, Premier Brad Wall’s immediate condemnation was one of his all-time best moments. But such events also remind us this is a province and country with a seamless chain that moves from the reasonable right wing to the extreme right to the alt-right peddling its bigotry.

It is a chain linked by both social and mainstream media voices, desperate to normalize their radical views. We’ve witnessed this in everything from private talk radio’s defence of the Proud Boys (supposedly, in the name of free speech) to Ezra Levant’s Rebel Media, which may now be imploding because of its close ties to both the news events and personalities of Charlottesville and the U.S. alt-right. Wall has managed to distance the Sask. Party from the more bigoted views, but he hasn’t exactly been shy about allowing such voices to carry some of his economic and social policy issues, or even joining them on some of their more popular issues, like the screening of Syrian immigrants or the federal payout to Omar Khadr.

And the fear of the Sask. Party sliding too far down that rightwing chain has endured since the party’s creation 20 years ago, when the radical right almost took it over with their calls for ending the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission and for chain gangs for inmates. Now, talk of Conservative MP Brad Trost taking a run at leadership has party insiders in near-panic mode.

Beaudry-Mellor is a muchneeded and important counterbalance.But problems emerging from the 2017-18 budget may be her undoing. It’s almost as if the social services minister’s leadership hopes were fed a poison apple — a theory made more interesting by rumours of Wall’s displeasure last January over ministers prematurely organizing leadership campaigns. The aforementioned decision to cut government-paid funeral costs for the indigent had Beaudry-Mellor declaring she was “not a heartless person.” Embarrassingly, her government had to restore funding. And there have been plenty of other social services issues. The Saskatchewan Housing Corporation is now looking at selling low-income units. Amendments to the Saskatchewan Assured Income for Disability will mean new recipients will no longer get both SAID payments and Old Age Security Act payments after Sept. 1. Home repair benefits for people on income assistance are being eliminated. Maybe this was just policy tinkering coincidentally made necessary in tougher economic/budget times. But it may mean that Beaudry-Mellor might not be able to address the Sask. Party’s long-standing social-issue problems.