I never thought I’d be stating this, but I miss former Carlton MLA Joe Hargrave. Political posturing aside, whenever I criticized a policy he was supporting (usually budgetary in nature, as was the STC closure), he at least had the courtesy to politely query as to “why” I had taken such an approach, and that essentially told me two things about his dedication to the true role of a politician: first, he recognizes that there never is an “end” to resolving socioeconomic issues, because there’s always some “wrinkle” that ends up being brought up once the legislation is in place, and secondly, he was not only aware of the need to protect his personal credibility, but that sense of self-protection was overridden by life’s daily realities of the need to see to the affairs of his constituents.
Not so, it seems, for the two invisible MLA’s who’ve replaced Nicole Rancourt, his Northcote NDP opposite, and himself. Mr. Hargrave not only read the Herald to keep himself up to date in the affairs of the city while contributing to the content of his Monthly Reports – after I criticized him for using the opportunity as a campaigning tool, but better late than never, I guess. Ms. Ross and Mr. Kasun, on the other hand, appear to have no problem with the Sask Party drones at Head Office, or they’d stop repeating about the glories of having a “heliport” being built on the expanded Union hospital, as though that didn’t remind us that we need such service because the Sask Party has refused to upgrade medical services in the north. Even if patients have to be flown in from La Loche, the mine sites or a First Nation, there’s a fairly good chance that since the government isn’t working on enticing more doctors to come practise in Prince Albert, they might end up having to take another emergency flight to Saskatoon or Edmonton to receive appropriate treatment.
Am I dumping on Prince Albert’s MLA’s? Of course I am, and in the following weeks I’m not going to be terribly complimentary to Batoche’s Darlene Roden and Saskatchewan Rivers’ Eric Schmalz, whose only accomplishment to date is defeating Nadine Wilson in an election. Why would I care, when none of them seem to be able to do anything in the way of developing economic policies that would finally give Prince Albert the opportunity to attain its goal of becoming the Gateway to the North.
It’s not as though I disrespect opposing political belief; when I was teaching at Wilcox’s Athol Murray College (the home of former UCP leader and Alberta premier, Jason Kenney), I regularly debated semantics with Grant Devine’s front man, Eric Berntson, at least until his “Because we can!” explanation for advocating the ruthless policies that the Devine government would put into place once coming to power in 1982 made me realize that you can’t mix political opinion with an already full glass of Chivas Regal.
Political debate took a downturn under former Premier Brad Wall in 2016 when MLA candidates declined discussion opportunities, especially from unions or environmentalists raising the alarm about the SP’s “Let it burn” when referring to northern wildfire concerns. What’s worse, they’ve now replaced such discussion during sessions at the Marble Palace with a steady stream of ridicule for any comment generated that even mildly critiques their legislative agenda.
In my opinion, no one has “mastered” this technique of maintaining that ridicule is a “true form” of debate than current Minister of the Crowns, Meadow Lake MLA Jeremy Harrison.
Mr. Harrison, if one recalls, once carried a firearm into the Legislature, only to follow this act of defiance by pulling a “bully-boy” routine on the former Speaker Randy Weekes – a member of his OWN party. Why would he do this? Does he occasionally miss the power rush he once enjoyed when foreclosing on a mortgage?
Who knows?
It’s truly ironic that Mr. Harrison has literally doubled down on the “ridicule rhetoric” following the election of Avi Lewis, and to be honest, it’s making him sound more and more like some frat boy who can’t get a date on Friday night. In 2016 Canada was on the cusp of finally having “Mad Tom” Mulcair, the NDP’s Leader of the Opposition, about to become the prime minister and removing our “National Governing Party” (aka “Liberals”) temporarily, at least, from holding that vainglorious title. Alas, even as Mr. Mulcair was presenting his credentials for that role to the Assembly of First Nations, Avi Lewis and his partner Naomi Kline were presenting the LEAP Manifesto to the federal convention floor in Edmonton – and suddenly the ALT-right were given rise to join the battle pitting them against the “progressive forces” of the NDP for subliminally threatening its only sacred idol, Big Oil, with extinction.
The LEAP Manifesto is nothing more than an academic treatise, and well thought out. It advanced a theory in which petroleum products would no longer strangulate our economic environment (as it is doing even now during the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran), and by “leaving it in the ground” would finally give the world opportunity to bring its polluting influence upon our environment and climate fluctuation under control. Convention delegates approved a motion to study the document, and that should have been the end of discussion – except…
The new Leader of the federal NDP, Avi Lewis, has admitted – several times – that there will always be a reason to use oil, but to the 2016 Sask Party government, by our provincial party ALSO laying claim to the same affiliation, it meant that “YOUR party is siding with a bunch of leftist crazies in Edmonton who would DARE to terminate the generous flow of royalties to our Treasury and risk economic catastrophe upon us all”.
The provincial NDP caucus, unable to contain the 18th Century thought process wending its way through to Sask Party followers, could only have its 11 members sit there and take this stupidity, with, quite naturally, Mr. Harrison being only too eager to reintroduce the tactic to the current session within the Legislature.
Today, though, Mr. Harrison’s pretentions that the Sask Party is standing up for oil workers’ job rights is missing the point here; the numbers of these so-called “supporters” have been decimated over the last two years as Big Oil has laid off over 38,000 people, and another 50,000 are going to become victims of AI “productivity” moves being taken by the industry.
The NDP worries about those 88,000 people, Mr. Harrison; in fact, they’d like to be able to utilize their talents to allow them to be retrained for true trades and get our housing starts up to our population’s needs, without trying to blame immigrants from pushing the price of decent starter housing into the stratosphere.
Does your party – the Sask Party – have the resources to provide the necessary retraining of these individuals so that they might regain their dignity in again having opportunity to again feed their family?
Of course, you don’t – so WHY are you laughing at the NDP? At least they understand what their jobs are responsible for performing, by trying to make Saskatchewan a better place to live.
You should try it sometime…
Ken MacDougall is a retired teacher and former election candidate for the federal NDP. His column appears on Saturdays.
