Goodale was passionate about irrigation project
If you’ve been curious what former Wascana Liberal MP Ralph Goodale has been up to, he just received the Award for Excellence in the Cause of Parliamentary Democracy from the Churchill Society for the Advancement of Parliamentary Democracy.
He becomes the 37th recipient of this honour — started in 1983 and named after British Conservative Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill — and is believed to be the first person from Saskatchewan to receive it.
One can only wonder how much it must irritate Conservative partisans — including those with Westwatch Canada who did everything in their power to defeat the nine-term Liberal MP in October — to see Goodale feted with an award named after a Conservative icon.
And one can only wonder whether it wouldn’t be a tad helpful to now have at least one Saskatchewan government MP — especially, one passionate about the issue — promoting the province’s massive $4-billion irrigation project announced last week.
Realistically, the one to blame for Goodale’s defeat is the Liberals themselves.
Politics is all about winning as many seats as possible. There aren’t many rules, other than you can’t interfere with those going to the polls or tamper with the ballots they cast. Ultimately, voters are always right.
Moreover, there has always been a massive contrarian streak in Saskatchewan federal voters who have often sent opposition MPS to Ottawa for nearly a century now — mostly, Conservatives to oppose Liberal governments, although this province even elected 10 New Democrats in 1988 to spite Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives.
And there’s obviously little reason to feel sorry for Goodale in his “retirement.”
Since losing in October, he has been appointed special adviser to Ottawa on the shooting down of Ukrainian Airlines Flight PS752 six months ago that killed 55 Canadian citizens.
Goodale has also found time to promote irrigation in the Regina-moose Jaw corridor, as he did in an op-ed piece two months before last week’s announcement by the Saskatchewan Party government of its plan to irrigate 500,000 acres (202,300 hectares) within 10 years.
In his May op-ed, he noted the COVID-19 “crisis is a terrible thing to waste” and that “minds are turning cautiously to how best to transition back to more normal circumstances.”
Citing rapid climate change producing damaging storms, floods, droughts and wildfires, Goodale proposed a plan to “complete the original plan for the South Saskatchewan River Project by building conduits to carry precious water from Diefenbaker Lake across a much larger portion of the grainbelt — southeast into the Qu’appelle Valley and west toward Rosetown.”
He cited a $3-billion cost split between the federal and provincial governments and that the canals would “create thousands of person years of employment” needed in wake of the completion of the Regina Bypass. It was, arguably, a better sell-job than we heard from the provincial announcement last week.
That announcement lacked a much-needed federal funding component and answers to problematic jurisdictional issues involving interprovincial water flow, the environment and First Nations rights. Herein lies the problem.
In an interview Wednesday, Goodale said he was working on a proposal in earnest for the past three years and the project actually followed him through his ministerial assignments of Agriculture, Finance, Natural Resources, Public Works and even his last as Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness that dealt with natural disaster costs.
Goodale noted the last federal budget set aside funds allowing stakeholder groups like the Agriculture Producers Association of Saskatchewan, the Saskatchewan Cattlemen’s Association and Ducks Unlimited to hold preliminary meetings. Goodale said he also met with Lyle Stewart after he become Saskatchewan’s legislative secretary to the minister responsible for water security last August to explore green and public works funding.
This is in no way to suggest that not having a government MP vaguely resembles a viable excuse for holding up federal financial support, but it is to suggest that not having government representation makes moving forward on any project that much tougher.
This, too, is the reality of politics.
Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-post and Saskatoon Starphoenix.