Wall: Sky Darkens for Sunshine Premier

[Oscar]

Wall: Sky Darkens for Sunshine Premier

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August 8, 2016 J. F. Conway

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall had already broken one promise even before he called the election: “We didn't make a lot of election promises, but we made one significant one – to keep Saskatchewan strong” (Regina Leader-Post, 18 June 2016) – unless, of course, you embrace that old bromide, “what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.” The post-election sky of the Sunshine Premier has darkened as the spectre of economic collapse haunts him. Despite his glorious history making third term (finally humbling the CCF/NDP, the former natural governing party of the province), Wall's fresh mandate in office has quickly become a nightmare. The next years look ugly and Wall will bear the responsibility, just as he eagerly took credit for the boom times he squandered during his first two terms.

Wall knew the collapse was coming, hence his refusal to present a budget in the run-up to the election. But he remained in denial, clinging to the fantasy that the prices for oil and potash might rebound staving off disaster. Wall's fantasy is now in tatters. How bad is it? Though Wall hid it, his government racked up deficits in six of the last nine years while claiming balanced budgets. By 2017 the public debt (accumulated deficits and borrowing) will reach almost $15-billion; by 2020, almost $16-billion. To put it another way, about $13,000 of debt for every child, woman, and man in the province, will rise to $15,000 in 2020, rivalling the per capita debt left by former Conservative Premier Grant Devine upon defeat in 1991.

Sunshine Premier, Doom and Gloom Economy

As the resource collapse reverberates through the spin-off general economy, the news gets worse each day: rising unemployment; a cascade of lay-offs; closures of businesses and industries; low job creation; a tanking of capital investment; drops in retail sales, manufacturing shipments, and housing starts – in other words, general economic stagnation and decline. Overall the Saskatchewan economy shrank by 1.4% in 2015 – only Alberta and Newfoundland fared worse, shrinking by 4% and 2.2% respectively. Wall's never-ending drivel about growing economic diversification is just so much Babbitt boosterism. The Saskatchewan economy is no more diversified than it was a decade and more ago; energy still comprises 25 per cent of the provincial economy.

Wall's former cheerleading media chorus, which previously expressed general, occasionally qualified, enthusiasm for the Wall government, has dramatically changed its tune. When the Regina Leader-Post's Murray Mandryk routinely characterizes Wall with terms like “dishonest,” “mean-spirited,” “desperate,” “shill for the oil industry,” and “bleeding school divisions to death,” you know there has been a seismic shift. The Regina Leader-Post's financial editor, Bruce Johnstone, who never quite bought into Wall's voodoo economics, finally became brutally frank about Wall's economic development strategy, describing it as “a shambles.” Each day, the news pages of the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon Star Phoenix are full of bad economic news; it has become impossible to ignore and even more impossible to give it a positive spin. Reality sometimes trumps ideology.

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Sadly, Wall in fact appears to be unassailable for now, given the ineffectiveness of the NDP Opposition. So far the NDP has not responded with a sustained, coherent critique of Wall's program of government that is rooted in a clear alternative vision and backed up with an alternative economic development strategy. Rather, committed as it is to neoliberalism with a human face, all the NDP can do is nibble around the edges with minor criticisms. It has not been able to bring itself to say yes to progressive tax increases; yes to increased resource royalties and rents; yes to a public economic development strategy; yes to massive investments in health, education and public infrastructure; and yes to a public energy Crown to develop green alternatives to coal, oil and natural gas.

Wall deserves to leave office under an even darker cloud than either Ross Thatcher or Grant Devine. And as things unravel around him, that just might be in the cards. •

J. F. Conway is a University of Regina political sociologist and author of The Rise of the New West: The History of a Region in Confederation, published in 2014.

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Wall: Sunshine Premier Makes History

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June 23, 2016 J. F. Conway

Saskatchewan Party leader Brad Wall has earned a major place in Saskatchewan's political history. On April 4 he broke the back of the NDP, the province's “natural governing party” since 1944. Until Wall's first victory in 2007 the CCF/NDP ruled the province, suffering only two interruptions. Liberal Ross Thatcher defeated Woodrow Lloyd's CCF in 1964 and 1967, only to be crushed by Allan Blakeney's NDP in 1971. Tory Grant Devine defeated Blakeney in 1982 and 1986, only to be wiped out by Roy Romanow's NDP in 1991. Until Wall's victory over Lorne Calvert's NDP in 2007 the CCF/NDP ruled the province for 46 years from 1944 to 2007. Both Thatcher and Devine became minor footnotes in Saskatchewan's history. Wall will not suffer this humiliation. He made history by winning a third term.

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