Moe winning by being on right side of issues

One gets what Opposition Leader Ryan Meili and Premier Scott Moe are trying to do in the very early days of their new jobs.

And while neither has been flawless, it can be argued that both have likely exceeded some expectations.

Moe may not have yet emerged from the shadow of Brad Wall, but recent Angus Reid polling shows Moe to be the most popular premier in Canada (or at least, tied with B.C. NDP Premier John Horgan at 52 per cent).

By way of comparison, Moe’s first approval rating was only one percentage point down from Wall’s 53 per cent in December that recovered from a low of 45 per cent last June.

However, Moe’s popularity may start taking a slide 17 days from now, with the presentation of the 2018-19 Saskatchewan budget.

The first bitter taste of the coming budget came down Friday with news of $17.7 million more in fee hikes. Included are speeding ticket hikes of $30 per ticket and a doubling of the per-kilometre-over-the-speed-limit charge and increases in environmental handling charges on tetra containers, aluminum cans, plastic jugs, glass and most every container.

But Meili has his own unpopular agenda, and it’s fair to say his agenda is strictly of his own choosing.

Sure, the NDP leader may have scored points with some in his quest to find areas in which the legislature can function more co-operatively. To some extent, this approach worked this week on issues like mental health and the fentanyl crisis, where there shouldn’t be a partisan take.

Certainly, it makes sense for a perceived left-winger like Meili to position himself as rational and willing to do politics differently.

However, that may be just half the reason why Moe is doing better than Meili. People aren’t clamouring for politics to be done differently, and — to the NDP’s shock and horror — may not yet think Moe is doing a bad job.

The evidence for this is Moe’s premier-approval rating after less than two months on the job, where he’s done little more than what Saskatchewan saw and expected Brad Wall to do.

Admittedly, Moe is not as smooth as Wall and bears the burden of having inherited Wall’s problems, such as what to do with the GTH fiasco that’s become the Saskatchewan Party government’s Spudco. This, too, may soon take a toll on Moe’s honeymoon popularity.

But there has been this tendency to sell Moe short (see: recent Sask. Party leadership contest) and perhaps an even greater tendency to simply assume provincial voters see the debt and GTH scandal to be of more significance than the general policy direction of this government. Again, the Angus Reid poll and three recent rural by-elections suggest otherwise — at least for now.

Even before the selection of Meili, the NDP struggled to be viewed as moderate enough to be electable in the mainstream Saskatchewan that exists beyond Regina and the west side of Saskatoon. Elsewhere, voters have other issues that go beyond rural crime and race relations dividing the province.

What’s been stirred up is the never-quite-dormant disdain for all things Trudeau, which explains much of the Moe/Sask. Party approach.

Consider Moe’s recent endorsement of Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley’s threat to cut off the oil taps to B.C. over its NDP government’s opposition of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline. It was politically clever and demonstrated reasonability (siding with a political enemy like NDP Alberta over a shared cause) while still promoting Saskatchewan resource development and criticizing Justin Trudeau.

Now contrast that with Meili this week calling the government’s anti-carbontax agenda a “pointless crusade.” Even if Meili was only referring to the government’s specious constitutional challenge, he badly lost the message war.

Simply put: what Meili is selling is hard to sell in Saskatchewan. Moe’s sale is much easier. Moreover, people can already see him in the premier’s job.

And until voters are truly disenchanted with the way he’s doing that job, Moe has a big advantage.