Attitude at heart of NDP malaise
Watching reaction to the end of the fall sitting of the legislature, a few thoughts fell into place about the changing face of Saskatchewan politics. And it has changed.
We are the only province whose major political players are not either of the old-line Liberal or Progressive Conservative parties.
The newest party, Premier Brad Wall’s Saskatchewan Party, which was created in 1997, is clearly in control of the political agenda while the old party, the NDP — founded as a Prairie populist movement in the 1930s — is struggling with identity as much as relevance.
The fall sitting began by focusing on Wall’s growth plan for Saskatchewan and ended with the tabling of a comprehensive and balanced Saskatchewan Employment Act.
In between, there was debate over spinning off a commercial Crown corporation and liberalizing decades-old, NDP-supported restrictive liquor policies.
As official Opposition, the NDP effectively moved the government to agree to make public an asbestos building registry. The government also made long-promised changes to workplace safety regulations, which satisfied concerns raised by the Opposition.
Beyond these, the NDP did not land an effective punch during the session.
In part, that’s because the party is focused on its pending March leadership selection. But there is something else going on.
Until Wall was elected in 2007, the NDP had been Saskatchewan’s natural governing party — an effective political machine that had ruled for all but 16 years from 1944 to 2007.
The one-time NDP powerhouse, now with just nine seats in the 58seat legislature, seems to be banking on a strategy that is entirely out of step with the vast majority of Saskatchewan people: Hoping things go wrong and the rest of us start viewing the world through the same negative lens of lower expectations, pessimism and churlishness that many New Democrats have.
Even when the NDP was in power, there was a consistent pattern of deliberately driving down public expectations and settling for mediocrity rather than best practises or excellence.
What else can explain former NDP premier Lorne Calvert’s bizarre reaction to Saskatchewan becoming a “have” province by saying we would “always be in and out of have-not province status.”
Ditto for the NDP cabinet minister who defended historic population losses by suggesting there would be more resources left over for the rest of us who stayed.
So pronounced was the history of pessimism that by the time the economy began rebounding in 2006, when the NDP was still in government, Calvert and his party appeared less to own prosperity than to awkwardly tolerate it, while the hopeful and positive Wall became the optimistic face of a stronger future, even when he was still opposition leader.
The tradition continues today, as NDP politicians, proxies and commentators pessimistically analyze resource revenues and government debt and even lament the government ”overselling” Saskatchewan.
NDP interim leader John Nilson spoke to the Globe and Mail of the “myth” of a booming economy.
Other NDP politicians and proxies focus nearly exclusively on those they believe are being left behind in the “so-called boom.”
While Saskatchewan faces the opportunity and challenge of it highest-ever population, weekly earnings, number of employed people and economic growth — not to mention revenues from consumption and income taxes from a wealthier population — the NDP tune of class struggle, gloom and negativity has never sounded more dissonant.
For politics watchers, the NDP’s weak performance leads to the question: “Were they really that good for all those years or were the NDP alternatives that bad?”
The New Saskatchewan is a compassionate place.
Public generosity and assistance, both through government programs and charity, are targeting homelessness, food bank use and poverty with greater focus than they ever were during generations of NDP governments, which seemed powerless to stem social ills.
As the NDP readies for the bell lap in its leadership race after Christmas there will be much talk of rebuilding or rebranding the party.
Unless attitudes change, where success can be embraced, wealth created and growth used to lift up all people, the NDP will continue to be a party of naysayers — sort of like the grumpy cousin who shows up at the birthday party only to remind us that we’re all actually closer to dying than we were last year.