Wall drives off into sunset with licence plate askew

In one’s dramatic drive off into the sunset, it’s preferable not to veer into the ditch.

Brad Wall’s exit west — his Saskatchewan licence plate scraping the pavement as it dangles off his rear bumper — has not been quite the perfect, graceful departure that many expected.

For this, there is no one to blame other than Brad Wall — ironic, because Wall himself has always been all too aware of his major foibles as premier.

The 10-year Saskatchewan premier was fond of saying that, if you can’t say something in the legislature with a smile on your face, perhaps you shouldn’t say it at all.

Far too many words were exchanged between Wall and Premier Rachel Notley without a smile — specifically, when it came to the bizarre licence plates war that we were told was all about the Alberta NDP government’s mistreating of Saskatchewan contractors.

Alas, we are now told this whole mess was really all about something designed to make us all happy: Beer.

Admittedly, there are those of us who have always found beer to be a noble cause. Moreover, Saskatchewan may have a legitimate beef with Alberta under the Agreement on Internal Trade when it comes to that province’s decision to mark up out-of-province craft beer. But Wall, Economy Minister Steven Bonk et al. knew the beer issue was a separate one, and one well on its way to resolution.

So after weeks of Highways Minister David Marit hinting contractors here were unfairly treated and the “perfect solution” was to force Alberta workers/companies to buy Saskatchewan vehicle plates, the Saskatchewan Party government was forced to bail on any such notion Monday.

The jig was up. The government knew it would lose badly on the licence plate question before a New West Partnership arbitration panel.

Out came Monday a grim response from Saskatchewan’s executive council that was in marked contrast to the giddiness and unabashed smirking from the Alberta NDP ... and the rest of that province, for that matter. (Hell, even United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney supported Notley’s position.)

There again, it’s tough to keep up a smile when you’re trying to save face.

In fairness to Wall, Notley was also being churlish in her response to reporters, every bit as eager to childishly poke at a political enemy.

The difference, however, is that Notley didn’t start this unwinnable trade war.

Nor was it Notley who escalated the matter to the point where it became a bit of a national laughingstock for Wall by pursuing a problem never proven to actually exist for reasons that seemed to have everything to do with pure partisanship.

As obviously successful a premier as Brad Wall has been, it has always been necessary to take the good with the bad.

For as good-natured and affable as Wall has been, he clearly has revealed his blind spots — blind spots only worsened by surrounding himself with those with the same political views, and especially those in his inner circle whom he has worked with and known since college days at the University of Saskatchewan in the mid-1980s.

Under such circumstances, it’s been all too easy and common for Wall to take unsubstantiated claims (like the ones he said came from the Saskatchewan Heavy Construction Association that Saskatchewan plates were being banned in Alberta) and run with them. It bears repeating: Not one verified complaint actually came forward. And as Bonk confirmed Monday, there was never any meaningful dialogue with the Alberta government prior to — or even after — taking action.

It has been unfortunately typical of the group-thought process that occasionally dictated Wall government decision-making. Consider the driving force behind the 2012 decision to cancel the Film Employment Tax Credit. Convinced the industry was a rats’ nest of NDP partisans undeserving of taxpayer subsidization, it had to go.

And the more the affected party pushed back, the more self-righteous Wall’s cabal was in its decision-making.

This isn’t Wall’s only legacy, but it is a part of it.