FOIP just one reason province should apologize
Sometime during Premier Scott Moe's tenure, his alltoo-frequent comment, “I make no apologies,” became the Saskatchewan Party government's mission statement.
It's perhaps the biggest and certainly the most negative change from the days of Brad Wall, when a little humility seemed a prerequisite for a cabinet job.
Unfortunately, the prevailing Sask. Party cabinet view now seems to be that the government does as it pleases and no one in government should ever have to apologize for anything.
The problem, however, is that people inside and outside this province are starting to notice — bad timing, for a government that will be humbly asking for our votes this fall.
About everywhere you wander in this province right now, you tend to trip over this unattended Sask. Party baggage.
As of this writing, we were still awaiting the vote results on a Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation (STF) contract that — regardless of outcome — has produced significant animosity between the government and teachers, and far too many others.
This, too, is a problem that might have been mitigated by a few unpretentious government admissions that it could have handled these negotiations better.
But rather than calm the water, this government stirred the pot right up to the very end, with Education Minister Jeremy Cockrill further aggravating teachers by musing that the school year may need to be extended, while they were busy with voting.
Teachers noticed the remark. Is it any wonder they still seem angry?
Of course, some might categorize these as missteps by a new and inexperienced minister in a government that has clearly lost a veteran cabinet before the election.
But it really seems part of a bigger problem — part of this top-down-driven attitudinal adjustment where Moe and company have declared they “make no apologies” for ministerial travel bills and trade offices or massive debt and overspending or the handling of COVID-19 or problems they created for the LGBTQ2S+ community through Bill 137, or having the highest per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the country.
No gaffe big enough to merit an apology.
Of course, the Sask. Party government has so far got away with this cocksure approach and may continue to do so. But there tends to be a cumulative toll — especially when others begin to notice the problem.
Consider a Thursday story in the Globe and Mail suggesting 13 Saskatchewan government ministries simply disregarded a ruling from this province's Freedom of Information and Privacy (FOIP) Commissioner to simply release information.
“In virtually identical response letters, every ministry declined to do so, stating that they had fulfilled their requirements under the law,” the newspaper reported, adding that to FOIP Commissioner Ron Kruzeniski's ruling that the government needed to comply, the justice ministry said it “does not accept the recommendation.”
Sure, it's an issue that holds little interest outside the media. And let's face it: fewer and fewer are paying attention to concerns in the media, even when the media raises issues that more directly affect them.
Given the myriad of other problems out there, it's only in places like this where you will even hear about such nonsense. At worst, the government likely sees this as another brief glance at Justice Minister Bronwyn Eyre again throwing around her weight in an inappropriate way.
But the big problem for a government that “does not accept” the learned ruling from a highly credible officer of the legislature is that it snugly fits into this forming narrative of self-righteous entitlement.
And when such unflattering perceptions hit the national stage, voters are reminded it wasn't always this way. Once upon a time, on the night of Nov. 7, 2007, when he was elected premier, Brad Wall declared: “And now for something completely different.”
It causes voters to wonder what happened to Wall's mantra that this would be “the most open and transparent government in the history of the province,” or his vow to “leave the place a bit better than he found it”?
And then they wonder:
Why doesn't Moe's government ever apologize?