Maybe I’m just an old, semi-retired teacher writing Op-Ed columns in a community newspaper that encourages freedom of speech by publishing my “leftist” analyses of political events; what really bugs me, however, is that other than those writing questionable hypotheses for well-funded right wing organizations such as the Fraser Institute or the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, there doesn’t appear to be anyone in the Prince Albert region willing to challenge my perceptions, at least not with facts questioning my point of view. Insults – maybe, and yes, I get them; but that isn’t “debate”; it’s just someone who has stopped thinking for himself, and in all likelihood votes for right-wing parties such as the Sask Party, the CPC, or now, apparently, for Saskatchewan separation from the rest of Canada.
Just how stupid is that?
When I live in a province of immigrants whose genetic constituency demands one “debate” politics in a civil yet confrontational manner, losing an argument doesn’t mean the battle is over, it just means the “round” is over. It was time for a beer, anyway, so get ready for the next round. Even “ties” are a win in this game of life, and if that happens, then at least you know you have a friend, as opposed to winning and then some clown wanting to pound your face in as a result.
Where I miss debating between parties the most is in elections. Politicians, especially those of a “conservative” vein can’t “debate” anymore; in the province that gave us Dief the Chief, that sucks. Today’s campaign “speeches” consist mostly of “career politicians” (Poilievre, Scheer, Manning) standing in front of an audience spewing Utopian dreams masquerading as actual policy, but can really be broken down into his “telling” you what a lousy job the other guy has been doing, OR, if you’re in “power”, calling the Opposition candidate “just another tax and spend Dipper”. This coming from two premiers, Moe and Wall, who judging by the size of our current deficit, might have some trouble today passing one of my Grade 10 math classes.
All this posturing is nothing more than vacuous tripe. What I’d really like to see – especially now, with Don the Con blowing smoke in Canada’s direction, is for our premier to call an election, NOW, just so we can identify the grifters wanting us to become “the 51st state” of MAGA-LAND, formerly known on pre-Trumpian maps as the “United States of America”.
This rather “early” election call wouldn’t cost that much, really, as far as the NDP would be concerned. The only task they’d have to accomplish is to get Scott Moe to explain to those of us who still call ourselves “Canadians” why it is that his party has more empathy for the likes of Allan Kerpan and the fairy tale Maverick Party than loyalty to a nation requiring a unified approach to dealing with The Apprentice and his on-again, off-again tariff war.
Unfortunately, no one in the Saskatchewan Party knows how to debate – seriously. Former Premier Brad Wall acknowledged that point at the start of the 2011 campaign, sensing that the NDP would be asking rural folk why it was that their local “hospitals”, now mostly called “clinics” because of the added consultative services that the Calvert government had added in order to assist local doctors in their ability to provide preventative health care measures, were being categorized as “closed”, decided that he had a good thing going, so told everyone that HIS candidates would no longer be participating in local debates that only resulted in “same old, same old” rhetoric coming from disgruntled folk probably being egged on by union anarchists, but devoting themselves to “meeting their constituents” in door-to-door campaigning – not on reserves, mind you, because THEY “didn’t pay taxes”, but in meeting “the real folk whose pioneering efforts gave life and purpose to this province.”
They also gave us Medicare, but I guess that since that form of governmental program is more “socialist” in nature, he wouldn’t want his candidates to mention health care even as a process; suddenly invisible “hospitals” actually filled with patients, well that’s OK…
And so, for just over 15 years, we’ve heard nothing new from the Saskatchewan Party, watched the scandals pile up while the SP gave jobs away to overseas, American and Alberta-homed companies, constructive debate reduced to gossip-mongering on social media.
Personally speaking, I wish Scott Moe would actually read what “true conservatives” believe about this idea that we should become the U.S.A.’s 51st state. Professional columnist and blogger Jen Gerson, for instance, maintains the USA is now “managed” by a “government of children”, led by a convicted felon running “an administration of pathetic Baby-Men Beta-Cuck weirdos who can’t help but continue to act like aggrieved puppies even after they’ve secured real and material power.”
Scott Moe, however, is not swayed by such rhetoric, preferring at best to be nothing more than a tepid supporter of a united Team Canada. In so doing, however, he is literally disrespecting the feelings of our rural settlers who settled this land and had family members die in two world wars to preserve our freedom as a nation.
Premier Moe, you claim that your party is “the voice of rural Saskatchewan”…
Prove it. Call an election.
I don’t need a hypocrite jeopardizing my right to be called a Canadian citizen.
