MANDRYK: CANADIAN PATRIOTISM THE NEXT DIVISIVE ISSUE IN SASKATCHEWAN POLITICS
Budget day is one of the best-behaviour days at the Saskatchewan legislature.
Along with Throne Speech Day when the assembly galleries and chamber floor are crammed with invited guests — often friends and family — elected politicians tend to rise to the occasion and abandon the usual aside banter and snide remarks.
Moreover, being less divisive was part of the message Premier Scott Moe seemed to receive from those voters in the fall election who expressed their unhappiness with a Saskatchewan Party government out of touch with their priorities.
Just don’t expect this ceasing of hostilities to last very long.
There remain hangovers from the October election, not the least of which is the role the NDP believe Moe’s Sask. Party government played in the attack on NDP Regina Walsh Acres MLA Jared Clarke’s kids.
Already, there is a significant layer of tension hovering over this new 30th Saskatchewan legislature.
And that tension is quite likely to go up a notch — perhaps in Wednesday afternoon’s question period that invited guests and TV viewers will get to hear live even before Finance Minister Jim Reiter delivers his first budget.
Some of that has to do with the aforementioned recent political history and shifting political dynamics that now see the NDP Opposition within four seats of the governing Sask. Party.
Some of it has to do with the fact that — while the two sides of the legislature are about equal — there are visible differences representing the great divides in Saskatchewan right now: the Opposition side being younger, more gender balanced, urban and more ethnically diverse and the government side being older, largely male and rural.
But the greatest divide in the legislature right now may be the one thing that should bring us together — that we are under attack from the U.S. and President Donald Trump.
Decked out in a Team Canada hockey jersey with four large maple leaf flags behind her, NDP Leader Carla Beck announced her Opposition caucus would introduce an emergency motion in the legislature this week condemning Trump for “proposing the annexation of Canada and imposing tariffs on Canadian goods.”
“On our soil last week, we saw Donald Trump’s secretary of state again undermine Canada,” Beck said at a news conference Monday. “This whole period has been one heck of wakeup call …
“This is a time for all hands on deck. The only way we are going to upend those forces that are currently at play is to lean into what has always been our strength as a province — our ability to work together, to look out for each other and to get things done. It’s clear we are going to have to work together right across the country and across party lines.”
Beck then condemned Moe for being the last Canadian premier to speak out, last to impose countermeasures and for the “very weakest response to Donald Trump’s threats and insults.”
“Scott Moe has said we can’t take (Trump) ‘literally’ but we should take him ‘seriously.’ I don’t even know what that means,” Beck said, adding that what we have seen from Moe simply isn’t good enough and that “it’s time for leaders to step up.”
Of course, Moe has insisted that there’s more to be gained in finding allies within the U.S. Republican administration than in being one more angry anti-Trump Canadian.
But NDP justice critic Nicole Sarauer was quick to note that Alberta and Saskatchewan — Canada’s two most conservative provinces — have been cited by the Republican administration as the entry point into making Canada the 51st state.
Moe has also stated that will not happen, but it is noticeable that the Saskatchewan premier has been far more critical of pending Chinese tariffs on canola than U.S. tariffs on everything — much to the glee of many of his conservative-minded followers.
Patriotism and how Moe stands up to the U.S. and Trump are quickly becoming one more thing dividing our politics.
In a Saskatchewan legislature already divided, it could make for an uncomfortable spring sitting.
Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
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2025-03-18T12:12:28Z
