Full Comment - One province is still fighting Trudeau’s carbon taxes—and winning

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00:00:49.920 Once upon a time, the provincial government that was most likely to fight the federal government in Ottawa

00:00:55.360 would have been found in the province of Quebec.

00:00:57.440 That is no longer the case.

00:00:58.960 Look west, John, man.

00:01:00.400 Look west.

00:01:01.000 That is the new battlefront for at least the current Trudeau liberal government.

00:01:05.580 Hello and welcome to the Full Comment Podcast.

00:01:07.460 My name is Brian Lilly, your host.

00:01:09.200 And today we're taking a look westward towards Saskatchewan, towards the land of the open skies.

00:01:14.660 Or is that the big skies?

00:01:16.100 We'll ask our guest, John Gormley, about that.

00:01:18.580 And he is a former MP for the Battleforts area, but that was a long time ago.

00:01:23.280 And in between then and now, he had a 25-year radio career across Saskatchewan, taking the pulse of the province.

00:01:29.640 He joins me now.

00:01:30.360 John, thanks for the time.

00:01:32.020 Brian, always great to be here.

00:01:33.360 And it's land of the living skies.

00:01:35.100 Land of the living skies.

00:01:36.040 I should know these things.

00:01:37.160 I really should.

00:01:38.060 But let's talk about this change.

00:01:40.660 When you were in Ottawa two lifetimes ago, the battle was always between Ottawa and Quebec City.

00:01:49.420 Now it's between Ottawa and Edmonton, or Ottawa and Regina.

00:01:53.180 That's a big shift, isn't it?

00:01:56.880 It is.

00:01:57.800 But in many ways, my brief political career, and I always say it ended because of ill health.

00:02:04.480 The voters got sick of me after four years.

00:02:07.100 The time in Ottawa was very much a Quebec orientation.

00:02:11.980 But that was also at the end of my career, 1988, the first election, the Reform Party ran candidates in.

00:02:18.420 Within five years, the Reform Party had carved out pretty clearly the West wants in message.

00:02:24.900 So there's been this growing sense of Western alienation, particularly with Mr. Trudeau, open, unbridled hostility to the West.

00:02:36.780 So it should be no surprise that the single largest unit, which of course is the area contiguous Saskatchewan next to Alberta,

00:02:45.520 take that area, you've got a GDP of Norway, you've got the fifth largest oil producer on Earth,

00:02:52.680 the largest potash producer on Earth, the second largest uranium producer on Earth.

00:02:58.700 So take Alberta and Saskatchewan as a united region.

00:03:02.820 We punch well above our weight.

00:03:05.140 And Mr. Trudeau significantly hasn't just held us back.

00:03:09.740 He's actually gone hunting for us in many cases.

00:03:12.920 And there's a frustration.

00:03:14.140 When we had Scott Moe on the podcast a while ago, we talked about the famous cartoon, the milk cow.

00:03:20.260 That's more than 100 years old.

00:03:22.480 And for people that haven't seen it, it's a cow grazing in Western Canada while people milk it and take all the riches in Eastern Canada.

00:03:30.400 And that's very much Trudeau's attitude towards the West, isn't it?

00:03:34.400 It is very much.

00:03:35.320 I mean, he wants, and I'm never sure with Mr. Trudeau, you know, the level of strategy and how long, you know, you connect those beads.

00:03:45.740 I mean, if part of the specific strategy is to bring Western Canada into behaving better by limiting our oil and gas, limiting our mining potential, putting us in our place, that's not going to happen.

00:04:01.920 I don't know if he's that strategically advanced or if in the short-term obsession with clean energy policy, a number of these 2030 and 2035 dictates, you know, if that's – but we are clearly the casualty of that.

00:04:17.120 What you just described there reminded me of the old saying, beatings will continue until morale improves.

00:04:22.960 That seems to be his thinking on that.

00:04:25.800 So there's a new element of this $42 million fight, but that's overpaying the carbon tax on home heating fuels that Saskatchewan refused to collect.

00:04:39.240 I want to get to the court fight in that in a moment, but you mentioned his obsession with clean energy and clean fuels and climate change.

00:04:47.760 He's been down in Washington for the NATO meetings over the last week.

00:04:52.460 He's trying to say that some of our defense spending or some of our climate change spending has to count towards defense because climate change is a major national security issue.

00:05:03.160 That's the level of obsession.

00:05:04.560 I mean, none of the other countries, as far as I know, are doing this, and most of them are all committed to lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

00:05:12.420 He's the one saying, we're going to count this.

00:05:15.580 Well, if Greta Thunberg is helping him make policy, and I suspect sometimes when he speaks this way, she might be, that's, again, a rational in Trudeau world response.

00:05:29.560 It's rational in nobody else's world, and many of the efforts that will continue to reduce the largest emitters of CO2, which are industrial, can be done by adaptation, can be done by innovation, can be done a number of ways.

00:05:46.240 Canada has doubled down on taxing citizens for everything, and it hasn't worked, and I know we'll talk about the Saskatchewan standoff.

00:05:55.780 It's not going to work.

00:05:56.980 Yeah, let's talk about that standoff.

00:05:59.840 Court injunction at this point, it's not a full victory, but it's a temporary victory, and that is the federal government came and tried to essentially garnish $42 million out of the Treasury of Saskatchewan, and the court said, oh, wait, hang on.

00:06:18.840 You can't do that.

00:06:19.920 You can't, and as a lawyer, I watch this, and I think, first of all, let's take the step, let's pull it all the way back to division of powers.

00:06:30.800 Section 91, section 92 of the Constitution Act of 1867, formerly the British North America Act, the Supreme Court of Canada allowed Ottawa to move into an area of taxation that constitutionally they were not permitted to because climate change and the overheating of the planet was something that wasn't contemplated in 1867.

00:06:57.280 It gave Ottawa the ability to fill that void or move in what was called peace order and good government to regulate something it ought not to regulate, in other words, taxing citizens that way.

00:07:11.300 It was a very weak decision that hung on peace order and good government.

00:07:15.960 On its face, a number of constitutional scholars would think the court got it wrong, but let's assume the court got it right.

00:07:22.800 Once you then start to apply that tax, if you're still and getting offside in new ways under the Constitution, does a province simply say, oh, well, you're allowed to levy the tax, so now I have to pay the tax when you tell one part of the country that over half the people who pay the tax don't pay the tax anymore?

00:07:47.700 Maybe we should back up and unpack this a bit.

00:07:50.120 Of course, the fight over this $42 million is because after the Trudeau government was facing plummeting poll numbers in Atlantic Canada, they decided that they would not charge the carbon tax on home heating oil.

00:08:06.860 Now, they say that this is an across-the-country national move, and yes, you can find a few people in Ontario, I think it's about 1% to 2% of the population use home heating oil, mostly in rural areas.

00:08:20.580 You can find a few people in Saskatchewan and in Alberta, but where are they mostly?

00:08:24.820 They're in Atlantic Canada, and so this was a partisan political party decision dressed up as public policy.

00:08:32.980 Scott Moe, Premier of Saskatchewan, looked at this and said, well, if they're not paying it, our people aren't paying it, and the reason you guys can do that is because you're all communists in Saskatchewan, and you still own an energy company, right?

00:08:46.100 Sask Energy is the main supplier of natural gas, and he's not charging it on that, so that's what the fight is over.

00:08:54.800 Absolutely, and here's the other issue. Natural gas is, in terms of the way you generate BTUs of heat, is still one of the most effective methods of heating.

00:09:08.460 In Ontario, home heating oil, of course, is the highest producing of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, so the Atlantic has always been way offside.

00:09:21.140 So Mr. Trudeau says, well, I'll incent you by not charging it anymore, in other words, I'll allow you to keep per unit of energy, quote, polluting.

00:09:31.620 I can't use the word pollutant carbon dioxide in the same sentence, but I shall, because Mr. Trudeau does.

00:09:36.600 That's how Trudeau says, yeah.

00:09:37.540 The Atlantic are multiples greater polluters than Saskatchewan, and they get a free pass, so they're not going to be charged as long as they continue to pollute.

00:09:49.580 And then, the incentive will be to move you to heat pumps.

00:09:54.600 Well, heat pumps run purely on the electrical grid.

00:09:59.040 How do you produce that electricity?

00:10:01.680 Well, in the Atlantic, you produce it by natural gas and a bit of coal.

00:10:07.760 So let's get this circuit, it's like electric vehicles.

00:10:10.360 We should all drive electric vehicles and generate twice as much electricity as we need by using fossil fuels.

00:10:16.560 So, again, in the internal Trudeau world of this bizarre cult, this somehow makes sense.

00:10:25.620 So now I'm the premier of Saskatchewan.

00:10:27.780 I look at this and say, we lost on Ottawa allowing peace order and good government to levy a tax.

00:10:34.480 Do we have a duty when that tax is unfairly applied in one region?

00:10:41.680 Yes, we do.

00:10:42.600 So, to the people on the political left who are doing this, well, it's the law.

00:10:47.120 You don't get to opt out of income tax.

00:10:49.760 Well, the federal government doesn't take a region of the country and say, you don't get to pay any income tax.

00:10:55.500 Everybody else does.

00:10:56.540 If Ottawa did that, you'd have other provinces saying, we don't pay the income tax here.

00:11:01.200 Oh, I'd be opting out of income tax if they did that.

00:11:04.260 Dingle.

00:11:06.160 So something you said in that leads me to another area of the fight.

00:11:14.980 Scott Moe, Danielle Smith have both said that they will use all their powers to fight Bill C-59.

00:11:23.460 This is the one that it's a budget or implementation bill.

00:11:28.440 It's for the fall economic statement, but it includes provisions that the oil and gas industry is incredibly worried about.

00:11:37.260 In fact, some of the lobby groups for the oil and gas industry took pretty much everything down off their website and social media

00:11:43.160 because they're worried about being prosecuted for false statements.

00:11:48.720 And, you know, some of the supporters of the Trudeau government say, well, then they shouldn't make false statements.

00:11:54.500 Except who's the arbiter of, you know, what the false statement is?

00:11:58.620 You mentioned that natural gas burns cleaner.

00:12:01.820 Charlie Angus, if the NDP had a bill before parliament, still does, calling for that to be made illegal to say, well, natural gas burns cleaner than oil.

00:12:11.400 Even though it does, he says you shouldn't be allowed to say it because you're greenwashing.

00:12:15.500 People are worried that this new power given to the competition tribunal is going to see statements like that prosecuted.

00:12:25.140 And, you know, sure, it won't be prosecuted criminally, but it's going to be prosecuted through a judicial process where you can face millions of dollars in fines.

00:12:35.560 That is utter insanity.

00:12:37.480 It is completely, but is it any less insane than a similar regulatory proceeding on two different legs that they want to bring in to the Internet?

00:12:50.820 The idea that one can regulate speech, one can regulate a certain commentary.

00:12:56.000 So we live in a Canada today, and even though we haven't had the robust kind of free speech that America has under the First Amendment, we had a pretty good Canadian consensus on what constituted free speech under this government, whether it's their favorite hobby horse of the climate panic and crisis, or it's the attempt to regulate the media and the Internet.

00:13:20.660 That we're living in a Canada that the sense of free speech is completely diluted, gone.

00:13:25.940 So when I'm out in your neck of the woods, when I'm out in Sask, I hear about these things all the time.

00:13:32.860 People are very concerned about the erosion of basic liberties.

00:13:39.380 What do you hear when you're out?

00:13:40.720 I know you're not doing an open line call every day anymore.

00:13:44.880 You're back to practicing a bit of law and a bit of being a semi-retired man and golfing.

00:13:49.920 But what do you hear when you're on the golf course, when you're in the coffee shops, in the restaurants?

00:13:54.360 What do people tell you?

00:13:55.940 I think there's a bit of a division.

00:13:58.400 People who care deeply about the country and think a little see this being the precursor on a lot of fronts to a Canada that no one ever imagined would be this way.

00:14:11.600 And again, so much for Mr. Trudeau's post-national state.

00:14:15.540 It's again, did he sit down nine years ago and map out this kind of inexorable decline in Canada?

00:14:25.940 Or was this simply a set of unintended consequences?

00:14:29.500 I don't know the answer.

00:14:31.040 That's a group that, you know, I hang with some in that group.

00:14:34.620 Others, when you look at the carbon tax, when you look at inflation, when you look at interest rates, affordability is a huge issue.

00:14:43.820 In fact, the Angus Reid Institute poll just out last night does canvass this idea of am I struggling?

00:14:52.560 Well, Saskatchewan is among the top level of people who are struggling.

00:14:56.880 And we don't have million dollar house average prices.

00:15:00.560 Our houses are quite affordable here.

00:15:02.040 But we drive more.

00:15:03.980 We have the same impact on interest rates.

00:15:07.960 Affordability is affecting particularly younger families in a lot of pretty important ways.

00:15:14.040 On that housing front, one of the conservative MPs put out an infographic the other day showing what percentage of your income you need to pay for an average home in all kinds of places.

00:15:24.840 And it's the first time I thought maybe I should move to Regina.

00:15:27.420 I think it was about 25%.

00:15:29.400 Here in Toronto, it's 78 in Vancouver.

00:15:31.760 It's over 100% of the average income to pay for an average home.

00:15:35.900 So, look, do you think that the disconnect between Western Canada and I'll call it Central Canada, because really, we're not East.

00:15:45.840 We're in the middle of the country here in Ontario and in Quebec.

00:15:49.120 And that's the power base.

00:15:50.220 And that's who the politicians try and placate. 0.99

00:15:54.440 Do you think the antipathy, the antagonism that comes from the government and many in the media is because they just don't understand it.

00:16:04.280 They've never done what I did last fall.

00:16:09.440 You know, drove from Saskatoon out to Coots, Alberta.

00:16:13.440 You see a different way of life.

00:16:15.260 You know, not just in the city, but, you know, I couldn't tell you how many cows I saw, how many oil jacks.

00:16:22.320 It is vastly different than a downtown Toronto or downtown Ottawa life, a downtown Montreal life.

00:16:29.820 Vastly different.

00:16:31.160 And the people making the decisions, be they elected officials or bureaucrats, simply don't know what it's like out in a place like Saskatchewan.

00:16:39.320 That's very true.

00:16:41.220 I mean, we have, it's popular, of course, in America to refer to bi-coastalism.

00:16:46.840 You know, if you live in New York, you live in L.A., you have an entirely different value set than the so-called flyover states.

00:16:54.920 States you fly over on your way between New York and L.A.

00:16:57.860 In this country, there is, of course, the famous Laurentian area.

00:17:03.880 So pick the, you know, whether it's a Laurentian triangle, the Laurentian section, but pick Ottawa, pick Toronto, head over to Montreal, take all of the people inside that group.

00:17:15.240 And then the extended suburb of the Laurentians, of course, is Vancouver.

00:17:19.440 So if those are your policy setters, your official pundits, the people who comment for a living, the people who make policy for a living and get elected for a living, that does leave out a big chunk of this country.

00:17:37.500 So that's really, this is the Canada that we live in as Western Canadians.

00:17:42.780 And yet, even in this part of the country, all you have to do is drive up Highway 17 from Ottawa up the valley, as they say.

00:17:51.480 You get a very different point of view that's probably more in line with what you would get driving between Regina and Saskatchewan.

00:17:58.500 You can drive up to St. Gabriel de Brandon in that section of Quebec, north of Three Rivers.

00:18:08.180 And you're going to, you know, get a viewpoint that, again, much more similar to where you are.

00:18:14.100 But the policy setters, as you say, all come from this one area.

00:18:18.820 And they don't look at what you have to offer as being as valuable as what we have here.

00:18:25.600 Yep, absolutely.

00:18:26.240 And of course, that wouldn't be problematic if inside that Laurentian Triangle, you didn't have the significant number of millions of Canadians and the number of seats.

00:18:38.820 So, again, this is how we accept Canada.

00:18:42.560 And if you, you know, I go back to when you asked me about, you know, my life in Ottawa in the 1980s, there was a strong sense of regional identity.

00:18:52.300 But in the 80s, you were, as a Western Canadian, quite concerned about the cod fishery, because, of course, it was in trouble.

00:19:01.640 It later ended up closing down. 0.98

00:19:03.640 As a Western Canadian, I gave a crap about the Atlantic. 0.96

00:19:08.540 I was also concerned about the dairy sector in Quebec. 0.96

00:19:11.500 I was concerned about forestry in B.C., because there was this sense that if you were to build a Canada at a compromise, you had to look out for certain regions.

00:19:19.880 That's completely gone now.

00:19:21.700 Well, I was going to say, do you still get that sense?

00:19:24.640 No, not at all.

00:19:25.380 The only reason the aforementioned point about Mr. Trudeau on home heating oil did what he did in Atlantic Canada was he had absolutely safe liberal seats that were messaging him back in the Wednesday caucus meeting every week.

00:19:41.540 Good grief, we're going to lose.

00:19:43.360 And we're going to lose 20 seats in Atlantic Canada, and that's going to mean the liberals are done.

00:19:48.620 That was the precursor to what's been happening in recent months, where now the polling shows they're down everywhere.

00:19:55.200 So, you know, to the extent there was a regional concern, it was crass politics.

00:19:59.720 When I was there, you were concerned about what constituted a Canadian identity.

00:20:05.140 That doesn't exist anymore.

00:20:06.440 I want to ask you about Saskatchewan provincial politics in a bit, and we'll do that after the break.

00:20:11.780 But before we go to the break, let me ask you what's changed in Saskatchewan.

00:20:16.900 You've got, what, 14 MPs.

00:20:19.360 Every single one of them represents the Conservative Party, and that is not about to change.

00:20:23.520 It used to be that there were new Democrat MPs from Saskatchewan.

00:20:27.560 There were liberal MPs.

00:20:28.700 Ralph Goodale was lonely for a while, but what changed?

00:20:32.620 Was it the attitude of the parties, the attitude of the people, a bit of both?

00:20:38.180 All of the above.

00:20:39.700 I think in this, again, the Saskatchewan I was elected in, we had nine Conservatives and five new Democrats.

00:20:47.780 After the free trade election, we had four Conservatives and ten new Democrats.

00:20:53.680 So most of us were tossed out in 1988 over free trade, which was weird, because the most trade-dependent province in Canada is Saskatchewan.

00:21:03.860 It was the strongest oppositional province on the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.

00:21:08.920 So in those days, the NDP had a rural, agrarian presence.

00:21:14.520 The NDP was a much wider, more circulating party than they are today.

00:21:18.760 Today, the NDP is very much an urban, very, very hard left-wing party, which causes them problems provincially in particular.

00:21:28.760 But that would be the biggest distinction.

00:21:31.300 The Tories have become a larger tent party.

00:21:35.640 The NDP has become a smaller tent, and that's manifesting itself.

00:21:39.080 What about the federal Liberals?

00:21:40.700 I mean, they couldn't get elected dog catcher in Saskatchewan now.

00:21:44.840 No.

00:21:45.420 There is no federal Liberal presence here.

00:21:47.960 And Ralph Goodale was an outlier.

00:21:51.000 It was explained to me, and I've often said this to anybody who's patient enough to listen, that the week I arrived in Ottawa, an old political hand in the Conservative Party took me out.

00:22:02.560 We went to a fancy dining room, and he looked at me and he said, son, you do know the 16% rule.

00:22:08.900 And I said, that rule would be, and I didn't have a clue what he meant.

00:22:12.560 And he said, when you're a new candidate elected, 84% of the votes you get, every 100 votes, 84 of them you got because of your leader, your party, its policies.

00:22:25.580 You generated 16 of that 100.

00:22:29.260 And he said, with every election, that 16 will grow.

00:22:32.960 And I don't know if that's scientific or not, but it stuck with me because it's very true, particularly in national politics.

00:22:40.680 Ralph Goodale took that 16, and by the time he was, the poor guy was just drowning.

00:22:49.500 I mean, you know, we've talked about the carbon tax.

00:22:51.680 Ralph Goodale, who's a brilliant man, I think he was a gold medalist in law school.

00:22:56.320 Ralph would look at the camera and actually try to explain that if only we could do away with all income tax, all provincial sales tax, the carbon tax would be the salvation of Saskatchewan.

00:23:08.280 And people would listen to him and think, Ralph, did you bump your head?

00:23:12.340 I mean, so, you know, Ralph was trying to carry the liberal message.

00:23:17.440 His effectiveness, of course, had been he was a terrific local riding MP who probably got out of every 100 votes, 80 were for Ralph.

00:23:27.360 Of course, even that couldn't work because by the time Ralph was finally sent packing, Saskatchewan had said, we just don't do liberals anymore and we're not going to.

00:23:37.380 So let's talk about provincial politics when we come back from the break in one of the many provinces where there is no provincial liberal party.

00:23:46.080 It's a two way race.

00:23:46.780 We'll get into that in moments.

00:23:48.660 So there's no liberal party provincially in Saskatchewan.

00:23:52.220 It is a battle between the Saskatchewan party and the NDP.

00:23:58.400 Now, talk to us about the Saskatchewan party for people that aren't stubble jumpers. 0.88

00:24:02.620 You know, if you're not a stubble jumper, you're hearing that name and you're saying, I'm not sure what that is.

00:24:07.720 Well, it's an amazing testament to the Saskatchewan that I've lived my life in.

00:24:14.120 I remember as a kid, the NDP was coming off a 20 year run, which had been the longest single uninterrupted run.

00:24:22.960 Tommy Douglas gets elected in 44.

00:24:24.620 The Liberal Party gets elected in 64.

00:24:28.000 The NDP was everywhere.

00:24:29.800 They were rural.

00:24:30.920 They were urban.

00:24:32.080 Small businesses put NDP signs up.

00:24:34.800 I mean, the NDP was a force of nature.

00:24:37.260 They were a machine.

00:24:38.720 But even in those days, I remember thinking they don't win elections with over 50 percent of the vote.

00:24:45.980 Tommy Douglas, I think only twice, had 50 percent.

00:24:48.620 And then, of course, when the NDP in 71 sent the Liberals packing, they had over 50 percent.

00:24:56.900 In 91, when the NDP sent the Tories packing, they had over 50 percent.

00:25:01.560 But here was the natural governing party for 60 plus years that rarely ever had 50 percent.

00:25:08.480 Why?

00:25:09.340 You had Conservatives and Liberals who always split the remaining half of the vote.

00:25:15.340 So, the NDP, Tommy Douglas' great parable was the black cats and the white cats.

00:25:22.220 It was called Mouse Land.

00:25:23.740 And he talked about the wee mice.

00:25:26.340 And he talked about the NDP and the people as wee mice.

00:25:29.620 Did you ever hear this?

00:25:30.560 No.

00:25:31.080 It was a famous parable.

00:25:32.840 In fact, the NDP actually have it printed.

00:25:35.520 You can buy it on the NDP website.

00:25:37.440 They actually got Tommy Douglas narrating it.

00:25:39.760 It's still, for people who love ancient history, the parable of Mouse Land.

00:25:43.880 And the wee mice, and, of course, the funny part was those of us who have had mice, they crap everywhere and eat the wiring.

00:25:51.260 I never signed up to be a mouse.

00:25:53.720 But, see, it was black cats and white cats.

00:25:56.960 And the cats were always concerned only about eating the mice.

00:26:00.080 So, if you could have the black cats fighting with the white cats, the wee mice could continue to live unmolested.

00:26:07.600 So, that was the Douglas parable.

00:26:09.000 It was the singular most effective political strategy I've ever seen.

00:26:15.460 60 years it worked for the NDP.

00:26:17.920 Conservatives and liberals fight.

00:26:20.300 Ross Thatcher in 64 coalesces the non-NDP around him.

00:26:25.680 He gets two terms.

00:26:27.200 Grant Devine in 82.

00:26:28.800 Conservative.

00:26:29.760 The liberals collapse.

00:26:31.140 He coalesces around him.

00:26:32.920 The non-NDPers. 0.95

00:26:34.240 He gets two terms.

00:26:35.060 But, invariably, the NDP knew when the mice came home, they would be governing Saskatchewan.

00:26:42.920 So, in 1997, four conservatives, and the conservatives are at a low ebb.

00:26:49.600 They've been badly beaten in 91.

00:26:52.580 The liberals are on the ascent, but they've got a really quirky leader who's just not really hitting the right tone.

00:26:58.900 Four liberals, four conservatives create a thing called the Saskatchewan Party.

00:27:03.780 The conservatives collapse.

00:27:06.420 The liberals collapse.

00:27:08.360 The Sask Party is the people who aren't NDPers.

00:27:12.800 And, lo and behold, what happens when all of the non-NDP mice get together in one party?

00:27:20.380 They win in 07.

00:27:22.080 Not a big win.

00:27:23.680 Brad Wall wins only 10 seats more than the NDP, 12 seats.

00:27:28.500 2011, he demolishes them down to a dozen seats in a 60-seat house.

00:27:35.580 2016, 2020, now 24.

00:27:38.820 So, the Sask Party, this fall, will have been governing for 17 uninterrupted years.

00:27:46.360 Unthinkable in Saskatchewan if you aren't the NDP.

00:27:49.100 So, what's going to happen in the coming election?

00:27:54.140 The Moe government, you know, one of my favorite sayings in politics is eventually the voters get sick of your face. 0.96

00:28:02.040 That's the illness factor that you were alluding to earlier in your career.

00:28:07.000 Voters just get sick of your face or they want change.

00:28:09.560 Is Brad, or Brad Moe, is Scott Moe's government in danger of voters saying, you know what, we're going to give the NDP a try?

00:28:20.220 The NDP have had a few hapless leaders, to put it mildly.

00:28:25.720 They seem to be on a better footing now.

00:28:30.340 But I'm looking at this from afar.

00:28:32.620 What do you see?

00:28:33.200 The other point of when the NDP comes back, they have usually crafted a bigger tent.

00:28:42.360 And again, they get close.

00:28:43.720 In fact, both in 71 and 91, they actually got over 50% of the vote.

00:28:48.240 So, they had people so frustrated with the Liberals in the 60s, Tories in the 80s, that they said, I'm voting for the NDP.

00:28:56.500 We're not at that point in Saskatchewan.

00:28:58.260 The NDP has certainly been in the ascent, and some of that is, exactly as you've talked about, Brian, fatigue.

00:29:05.360 This is nearly a 20-year government.

00:29:07.800 That's a long run.

00:29:09.180 Alan Blakely, the great NDP Premier of the 70s, put it even better.

00:29:13.540 He said, the day you get elected, they give you a backpack.

00:29:16.620 And every day, they put a pebble in the backpack.

00:29:20.020 And there comes a time when you can't keep walking with that backpack.

00:29:25.080 So, every government, and usually governments go about 10 years before the backpack becomes too heavy.

00:29:32.120 The Sask Party brand isn't really affected much.

00:29:37.660 In the cities, the NDP is typically stronger in the cities.

00:29:41.440 They've had a bit of a rally.

00:29:42.760 They've had a renaissance.

00:29:43.400 The final part of that test is, if the NDP come back in the cities, you look at the NDP caucus, and you say, who in these people could be the new ministers of a new government?

00:29:55.720 At this point in Saskatchewan, I'm not sure Carla Beck is a Premier.

00:30:00.520 I sort of start losing count on cabinet material at about four.

00:30:04.100 So, the NDP are growing, but they're not a threat yet.

00:30:09.460 I warn Sask Party people, if the Sask Party are re-elected this fall, which is quite likely four years hence, if the Sask Party hasn't done a major reset, a major urban policy, major initiatives to be new,

00:30:26.660 by that time, there'll be a 21-year-old government, and they will likely find themselves being replaced.

00:30:33.120 So, you mentioned Carla Beck.

00:30:35.980 She's the leader of the NDP.

00:30:37.560 She represents a Regina Riding, so that's the urban part that you were talking about.

00:30:43.220 But she does have farm roots, like an awful lot of people in the cities in Saskatchewan. 0.95

00:30:49.680 Is she able to speak to those voters?

00:30:54.200 Some of the other leaders, they couldn't talk to anybody off of 2nd Avenue in Saskatoon.

00:30:58.480 Is she able to reach out into small-town farming communities, the places where more seats are?

00:31:07.740 She is certainly better than the past four NDP leaders.

00:31:12.120 It was funny.

00:31:13.000 I drove through Frances, Saskatchewan twice last week, and all I kept thinking as I pulled up to Frances was,

00:31:19.200 Carla Beck's from Frances, because she opens every single speech, urban or rural, as a girl from Frances, and then, you know, talks about growing up on a farm.

00:31:29.760 The bigger test, though, and a friend of mine who is a, as I am, a political junkie, says,

00:31:36.060 Snap quiz.

00:31:37.320 Who's the NDP ag critic?

00:31:38.780 I don't have a clue.

00:31:42.320 I had to look it up.

00:31:43.540 By the way, it's a city MLA named Trent Wotherspoon, who's the longest-serving MLA in the NDP.

00:31:49.260 He's a schoolteacher from Regina.

00:31:51.300 But, you know, the NDP can't tell people who their critic is, never mind what's their policy.

00:31:57.720 So, you know, until and unless, and in Saskatchewan, here's an insider's tip.

00:32:02.720 The NDP, if they're going to win seats, it'll be Regina and Saskatoon, sometimes more weighted Regina, I think, as they are today.

00:32:11.800 Saskatoon, secondly.

00:32:13.320 The evolution begins when they start winning the two Prince Albert seats and the two Moosejaw seats.

00:32:19.580 Then you've got the second or the third level of cities after Moosejaw and PA.

00:32:25.040 You've got North Battleford, Lloyd Minster, Estevan, Weyburn, Melfort.

00:32:30.920 You've got those communities.

00:32:32.900 And in the past, Yorkton, in the past, those communities were able to sustain NDP MLAs.

00:32:38.280 In those ridings, the NDP doesn't even show up.

00:32:43.520 They don't represent Weyburn, the home of Tommy Douglas?

00:32:46.860 The home of Tommy Douglas and the home of the Bakken oil play and oil production in Saskatchewan, which has been so beaten up by the left and the obsession over pipelines and climate change that, no, you couldn't get a new Democrat elected dog catcher in Weyburn today.

00:33:07.100 Is it also still the home of the KFC buffet?

00:33:13.880 That one may have passed.

00:33:16.360 Humboldt and Weyburn had all-you-can-eat KFC buffets, which was a well-kept secret in many parts of Saskatchewan because we didn't want other people in.

00:33:27.360 Well, you know, it sounds good, but then you're going to pay for it later.

00:33:30.840 Or you ever.

00:33:31.420 So let's talk about two of the issues that have dogged the Sask Party, and I want to ask you if they've damaged them enough to, you know, give Scott Moe pause for concern.

00:33:41.000 Because there was a poll out.

00:33:43.620 I'm just going to pull it up here.

00:33:45.460 This would have been early to mid-February.

00:33:49.780 And I'm forgetting the name of the firm now because it's not on this chart.

00:33:53.080 But, you know, Saskatchewan firm, it had the NDP at just within two points of the Sask Party in February.

00:34:03.580 And I asked friends in the polling industry, and they said, no, it's a viable and reputable firm.

00:34:09.640 Since then, the Sask Party has bounced back.

00:34:12.600 But that was in the middle of a fight with the teachers.

00:34:15.120 And, you know, people will complain about the school system, what have you, but they like their kid's teacher.

00:34:22.860 Did they misplay with the teachers?

00:34:25.020 And has that been settled out?

00:34:26.640 What was the issue there?

00:34:28.520 It was a complicated issue.

00:34:31.140 And, of course, there are layers and layers underneath it.

00:34:35.180 The teachers, the last four contract negotiations, certainly three of them, actually resulted in labor action.

00:34:42.940 The teachers' union president for a couple of those disputes was a former NDP candidate, a guy named Patrick Mays.

00:34:52.720 The teachers, again, like any big union, you've got average rank-and-file great teachers who go to work every day.

00:35:00.500 You've got a union executive and leadership that is as or more left-wing than the Ontario Teachers' Union, the American Teachers' Association.

00:35:10.200 I mean, the teachers' union movement is irredeemably hard left-wing, and Saskatchewan's the same.

00:35:20.000 In fact, fun fact, the premier who succeeded Tommy Douglas, Woodrow Lloyd, was actually an executive in the Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation and ran the union for years.

00:35:30.400 So, in Saskatchewan, the teachers' union has always been a pretty solid NDP ally.

00:35:36.220 So, is it a coincidence that this thing hit impasse, hit these sorts of issues six months before an election?

00:35:45.040 I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday, but I'm suspecting, you know, there was a pretty hard political play.

00:35:51.240 The government could not, and I don't think they will, give up the ability to run the school system.

00:36:00.940 The teachers, and it was an odd bargaining position.

00:36:04.440 We want more money, and the two sides were part on money, as they often are, but the teachers said,

00:36:09.780 more important is we want in the teachers' union contract class-size composition, the challenges of running individual schools.

00:36:19.680 They wanted that bargained in as a teacher issue.

00:36:23.140 Well, everybody knows school boards run school divisions, school divisions run schools.

00:36:28.680 The provincial legislature, every year, votes an appropriation for school expansion, school renovation, these things.

00:36:36.220 So, the teachers had really overreached.

00:36:39.180 They were able to use a couple of collective agreements in British Columbia as evidence,

00:36:43.980 but other than that, there's scant evidence a union should be running the workplace.

00:36:50.940 So, that was the impasse, but the union did very well, I thought, in positioning themselves

00:36:57.180 as were simply good, hard-working teachers who want a better environment for your kids.

00:37:03.780 Pretty hard to rebut that.

00:37:05.180 So, I've given you the long explanation onto this whole question of class, size, and composition.

00:37:12.480 You don't put that in a collective agreement.

00:37:14.180 So, it's now off at arbitration.

00:37:16.420 The parties will try to find their way through it.

00:37:19.080 One of the other issues was a very weird controversy about an MLA being booted from cabinet,

00:37:28.020 or he was government house leader, I believe, being booted from that position.

00:37:31.460 One, long-time ally of Scott Moe, one of Scott Moe's closest advisors, being removed from

00:37:37.440 a position because he brought a gun into the legislature.

00:37:41.540 Now, that sounds bad, and a lot of people go, oh, wow, how dare he?

00:37:45.740 Of course, he's got to be fired, but there's weird internal party politics at play here, isn't

00:37:50.240 there?

00:37:50.980 There is.

00:37:51.980 So, let's unpack this.

00:37:54.560 Jeremy Harrison, you know, he's the guy that actually introduced me to Scott Moe years ago

00:38:01.520 and said he'll be the next premier.

00:38:03.420 I know Jeremy from his time in Ottawa when he was an MP.

00:38:06.920 He's been around politics a long time.

00:38:09.000 He's been an MLA for years after he lost his federal seat.

00:38:13.820 What was he doing, bringing a gun into the legislature, and how did it become a controversy

00:38:19.080 that cost him his job?

00:38:20.820 This was a really peculiar story.

00:38:22.740 Let me just go back a little bit.

00:38:25.800 Jeremy Harrison did something that I think is indefensible, and like you, Jeremy Harrison's

00:38:30.320 a friend of mine, and I think he's been a pretty effective cabinet minister and pretty

00:38:35.300 senior MLA.

00:38:36.840 For some inexplicable reason, and this is not the kind of thing I think that people should

00:38:42.220 have their wits about them, he's the government house leader.

00:38:45.360 He's unhappy with rulings the speaker makes, and welcome to real world.

00:38:50.120 House leaders of the opposition, the government, are always getting cross-threaded with the

00:38:54.040 speaker.

00:38:54.780 So he texts not just one or two, but dozens of texts, really nasty things, you know, dropping 1.00

00:39:03.360 the F-bomb, accusing the speaker of basically being a congenital idiot. 1.00

00:39:07.880 Now, the speaker, of course, is a Sask Party member. 1.00

00:39:11.260 As our listeners will know, one of the MLAs gets chosen as the speaker, who's then the

00:39:16.940 adjudicator of the debates.

00:39:19.160 The speaker is an old-timey guy who'd been in cabinet briefly, Randy Weeks, a good rural

00:39:25.400 MLA, not the most effective senior leader in government, becomes the speaker.

00:39:31.720 Weeks, like a lot of very entitled rural MLA, says, well, I'm going to run a few more times

00:39:37.980 and get elected.

00:39:39.800 Riding redistribution, his riding disappears.

00:39:43.100 So Weeks looks over at a nearby riding that's become vacant, and I'll take that one.

00:39:48.280 Well, a local farmer in that riding said, no, you won't.

00:39:51.240 And as a contested nomination, Weeks loses.

00:39:54.280 So Randy Weeks has no seat to run in.

00:39:58.140 The sense was, he believed the party should have said, Randy, you've been here nearly 20

00:40:04.120 years, you're one of us, we'll look out for you.

00:40:06.460 No, the party said-

00:40:07.940 So he wanted someone like Jeremy Harrison or Scott Moe to say, we'll protect your seat.

00:40:13.020 Bingle.

00:40:13.640 You new farmer running in this riding, step aside, you could have Randy Weeks.

00:40:18.480 They didn't do it.

00:40:19.500 They just let Randy fight his own battle.

00:40:22.180 He lost.

00:40:23.100 So all of a sudden, Randy Weeks is now a man who, as the session is expiring, once this

00:40:28.600 session's over, he'll still be an MLA until the election's called, but he won't be an MLA

00:40:33.720 anymore.

00:40:34.080 So for some reason, and I don't know, I can't look inside people's minds, Randy Weeks, toward

00:40:40.680 the end of the session, says, I want to say a few things.

00:40:43.780 Begins to read these texts verbatim.

00:40:48.020 And again, I thought, like, who in the modern world would send anyone a text knowing it could

00:40:54.500 be on the front page of the paper?

00:40:56.280 It could be shared publicly.

00:40:58.040 So Jeremy Harrison, I think, wears that.

00:41:01.880 I don't think it was behavior fitting of a government house leader.

00:41:05.680 I would think Jeremy should be above that.

00:41:08.360 So he wears it.

00:41:10.440 Randy Weeks continues to go down this road and says, I'm very concerned about this person

00:41:16.240 and his stability.

00:41:17.320 And then begins to sort of paint him as a gun nut.

00:41:20.820 Now, Jeremy Harrison is a sports shooter.

00:41:23.680 He's a hunter.

00:41:24.800 He's a gun owner.

00:41:26.600 Well, he's not a gun nut, though.

00:41:28.960 Not in my experience.

00:41:30.460 This just in Sherlock, several hundred thousand people in Saskatchewan are sports shooters and

00:41:37.240 hunters.

00:41:37.580 So then, and Weeks goes on, and you'd appreciate this because I know you know about guns.

00:41:42.540 Weeks says he owns guns that are military assault style weapons.

00:41:48.240 So he uses the Trudeau term, right?

00:41:50.440 And they have magazines of four bullets.

00:41:54.820 But that's legal.

00:41:56.060 The law is five.

00:41:57.160 Yeah.

00:41:57.500 Sorry, Randy.

00:41:58.160 Okay, don't let me get in the way.

00:41:59.900 That could be modified to be used as assault style.

00:42:04.000 So he goes on, and I'm thinking, every person who has a rifle in their gun safe is listening

00:42:10.980 to this thinking, what the hell are you saying?

00:42:13.500 But then he says, and he brought a gun into the legislature.

00:42:17.820 So then the story is, apparently on a hunting soldier, Harrison ends up bringing a gun to

00:42:26.140 work.

00:42:26.780 Now, we joked about this because there's a lot of workplaces in Saskatchewan.

00:42:29.880 People will bring a gun in a case during hunting season and say, hey, after work today, we're

00:42:34.480 going to go duck hunting.

00:42:35.760 But the legislative precincts are different.

00:42:39.180 So then there becomes a question.

00:42:41.120 First of all, the response to the government is, this is fabricated nonsense, completely

00:42:45.280 made up.

00:42:46.560 Well, Jeremy Harrison remembers that eight years ago, he did bring a gun during hunting season.

00:42:52.180 So then he has to back up.

00:42:54.120 Then, well, did he leave the gun with the sergeant at arms?

00:42:57.200 Did he bring it into his office?

00:42:58.440 And then the analysis begins.

00:43:00.840 But if you believe guns are frightening things used in mass shootings by a cabinet minister,

00:43:08.920 gee, maybe Jeremy Harrison was intent.

00:43:12.060 Oh, and then the media found he was wearing camo on that day.

00:43:18.340 Because he was going hunting.

00:43:20.800 Going hunting.

00:43:21.760 Exactly.

00:43:22.040 So a lot of the, so inside the gun community, there was sort of this general sense, this

00:43:28.860 is wacky.

00:43:29.800 But it made the government look bad.

00:43:32.380 It made Harrison look bad.

00:43:33.840 And to a lot of people who don't own guns, what the heck are you doing bringing a gun 0.97

00:43:37.300 dork? 0.91

00:43:37.720 It's a, so really, let's boil this down to its, its essence. 0.97

00:43:44.900 This is internal party politics of these two guys fighting.

00:43:49.700 And then Scott Moe has to adjudicate and basically says, okay, Harrison, you're out for now because

00:43:55.040 I don't want the headache heading into an election.

00:43:58.200 Yes.

00:43:58.760 And maybe don't text the speaker in future.

00:44:02.560 So again, he was stripped as house leader, which he should have been.

00:44:05.880 Because if you've got a house leader, you know, dropping F-bombs to the speaker, I don't

00:44:09.980 care who you are.

00:44:10.820 That's, that's wrong.

00:44:11.580 But so it was more the texts than the gun thing.

00:44:14.580 I think that's what precipitated it.

00:44:16.940 But weeks by going on this gun thing went down a road that I thought was, oh yeah, and

00:44:22.340 that was the other one too.

00:44:23.160 So when Saskatchewan passed the Firearms Act, there's a lot of heckling back and forth.

00:44:28.100 And he said, I heard the house leader say, I want to be able to carry, have a carry permit

00:44:35.460 for a gun.

00:44:36.220 So he wants a handgun on top of it all.

00:44:38.980 And I remember thinking that seemed to be a stretch because we don't have people typically,

00:44:44.480 as you know, to get a permit to carry a handgun in Canada is a pretty rare thing.

00:44:48.860 So that got into it too.

00:44:50.400 But here was Randy Weeks, rural MLA, very rural, sort of trying to get the urban anti-gun

00:44:59.200 lobby to ratchet up the concern.

00:45:02.100 So it was a peculiar thing.

00:45:04.940 So the election is October.

00:45:07.300 What happens?

00:45:09.060 It'll be late October if Saskatchewan adheres to the four-year set election dates.

00:45:16.020 There will be some challenges for the Sask party.

00:45:18.900 There are several urban seats that they're going to have to fight the NDP hard on.

00:45:24.560 They may lose.

00:45:26.060 You start to look at the seat constellation in the rural areas.

00:45:31.700 I don't see the NDP gaining a seat.

00:45:34.740 I see the NDP challenging in several seats, both in Regina and Saskatoon.

00:45:41.180 But in Saskatchewan, the magic number is 31 seats.

00:45:45.840 That's, of course, it's in a 61-seat house.

00:45:48.800 31 is a majority.

00:45:50.400 When you count the rural seats up, you're already at about 32, 33.

00:45:54.760 So that would assume no urban seats.

00:45:58.620 And the Sask party clearly will be returned in suburban seats.

00:46:02.080 So when you do the math, you're still in that range of high 30s to 40-ish.

00:46:07.140 Well, it's going to be a fascinating time, and we'll be watching eagerly from Toronto.

00:46:15.140 John, thanks for the time today.

00:46:17.220 Brian, always great connecting, my friend, and thanks for having me.

00:46:20.760 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:46:23.280 My name is Brian Lilly, your host.

00:46:24.880 This episode was produced by Andre Pru.

00:46:26.920 Theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:46:28.380 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

00:46:30.660 You can subscribe to Full Comment on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon.

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00:46:44.540 Thanks for listening.

00:46:45.340 Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.

Full Comment - July 15, 2024

One province is still fighting Trudeau’s carbon taxes—and winning

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