2023 Election Night Coverage - CBC.ca
3/14/2023
"...with most ridings having now counted the majority of first-preference votes, it appears that the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation of Saskatchewan will lead the next government. As of right now, the CCF sits on 34 seats, two short of a majority government, on first preferences; CBC can project the CCF as Likely to win a majority. With only first-preferences, the Reform SK government of Premier Brad Trost appears to have been reduced to 25 seats having headed into the election with 29, and the Conservatives under Brad Wall appear to enjoy 12 seats, having entered the election with 7. Canadian Action, which had hoped to enter a second provincial legislature after their federal breakthrough three years ago and subsequent securing of Official Party status in Manitoba in 2021, do not appear to have sufficient first preferences in any current seats and are at this time unlikely to enter the Legislature of Saskatchewan...
...at Reform SK's election night event in Saskatoon, Premier Brad Trost confirmed that he intends to resign as leader of Reform SK, the provincial arm of the Reform Party, following a leadership election within the next nine months. Trost declined to comment further, other than stating, "It appears once again that the Conservative Party, contrary to its name, represents itself rather than a united front against socialism in Saskatchewan and I congratulate Brad Wall on helping elect Cam Broten as our Premier...
...Wall, on his second go as leader of the provincial Tories, declared that the evening's results were a vindication of his decision to return to the helm of the Saskatchewan Conservative Association in 2018 after the indictment and resignation of former party leader Bill Boyd and further supported his triggering an election eight months early. "The people of this great province have shown that they do not trust people like Brad Trost in power and that they will punish a government that increasingly ceases to represent fiscal responsibility and a broad popular mandate..."
...national elections analyst Cynthia Sellers noted that once again, the "Shy Reform" effect has appeared in the west, as Trost's Reformers have dramatically outperformed polling that suggested they would slip to third position and that Wall's Tories were likely to form the official opposition. While both parties have a good chance to changing their seat counts on second preferences, it is unlikely that either will do so to the point that the Tories can make up a thirteen-seat gap...
...noise out of CCF headquarters where Broten just spoke to supporters that questioned certain campaign decisions made by the Broten camp and are left wondering what could have been, despairing that Reform SK will still form the opposition and that polling that indicated the CCF could win upwards of 45 seats on first preferences...
...the Prime Minister's office issued a statement of congratulations to Broten and the provincial CCF on their electoral triumph, which now brings the number of Co-operative provincial governments to two, along with British Columbia, in support of the incumbent federal Cabinet..."
"FOR SASKATCHEWAN, A CLEAR CHOICE."
- Editorial Opinion, SK Today
"...when Saskatchewanians go to the polls on Tuesday the 13th, they face perhaps the clearest choice since Canadians told the Manningites "no more!" at the federal level in 2004. Forget for a moment what one may think of Brad Trost's reactionary cultural views, his contempt for the electorate's intelligence and his difficult relationship with the truth - this is not about whether Brad Trost is a good man (he probably isn't), this is about whether Brad Trost and his fellow neanderthals in Reform SK deserve another four years to run the province of Saskatchewan into the ground and continue to be the laggard economically and socially of this great country. The answer to that question is no, and the data supports it.
Reform's entire raison d'etre has ostensibly been to capture the genuinely reformist and populist spirit of the Progressives who emerged from the United Farmers movement of the early 20th century and update it for the age of mass media, globalization and, by the time Preston Manning was able to make them relevant, a Canada adrift both within the Commonwealth and internally, as the Quebecois independence movement finally forced the issue in October 1991. In practice, of course, "Reform" has meant a program more right-wing than the traditionalist, elitist Tories ever proposed, particularly on cultural matters. I do not doubt that what many Reformers believe is sincerely held; I do strongly doubt that their cultural agenda is relevant to the concerns of most Saskatchewanians. The collapse of the provincial Tories in the 1990s and high-profile Liberal corruption scandals left a massive gap in the opposition to the then-all-powerful CCF that Reform quickly filled, denying the CCF a third majority government in 1999 and then winning their own majority four years later in the wake of the end of the commodities boom and at the nadir of the 2002-05 economic depression, which like all economic pullbacks struck Saskatchewan particularly hard as demand for oil, potash and grains overseas dropped sharply. Into this fray stepped the slick, populist Reform Party of Saskatchewan, now known as Reform SK, behind Elwin Hermanson and a very media-savvy operation that, upon winning government from the flailing CCF government in November 2003, instituted easily the most reactionary policy agenda in the previous hundred years of Canadian history, rewinding the clock back to the 19th century, and what has followed since has been a legacy of nothing but failure.
Reform SK has governed Saskatchewan for roughly sixteen of the last twenty years, with the sad and misbegotten Dwain Lingenfelter interregnum of 2011-15 the only break. In that time, what have they reformed, exactly? Set aside the more colorfully infamous policies of the past two decades like the "boot camps" for juvenile offenders and look at the hard facts. Saskatchewan is the only province in the Confederation that has seen school divisions go to a three-day school week because they cannot afford to pay teachers and administrators (and in one infamous case, keep the lights on). It is both somehow the province with the highest birthrate, highest rate of single motherhood, and also the oldest province with the highest pension and welfare costs. Rather than reinvest in the province, Reform SK privatized provincially-owned crown corporations to the highest bidder and slashed income taxes for high-earners while raising taxes on groceries. First Nations communities have been terrorized by provincial police studded with former paramilitary commanders, labor protests violently put down, and the province's mental hospitals shut down, leaving Regina and Saskatoon with some of the highest rates of homelessness and drug abuse in Canada. Saskatchewan today, despite its vast mineral wealth in potash, uranium and oil and gas, receives the highest amount of equalization payments in Canada and yet has objectively the lowest-ranked and most expensive provincial health care, school and police services. Saskatchewan has barely seen population growth in the last three decades, and has the highest rate of outmigration of any Canadian province, particularly of college graduates and ethnic minorities. No province, even Alberta, has an economic base that pollutes or emits more and attempts to do less about it, and Reform SK has shown itself hostile to the dignity of the disabled, the gay community, and the poor.
Rather than shy away from this record of mind-boggling incompetence, Reform SK has doubled-down. Trost, a failed former Reform MP chucked out on his rear in 2008, slithered back into power thanks largely to the self-immolation of former Premier David Anderson's career mere weeks after leading Reform to a minority government supported by the Tories in 2019. The Anderson-Patzer Affair would have shamed most party leaders into a more sober and moderate course - not Trost, one of the most famously inflammatory federal Reformers. Rather than fix Reform SK's well-deserved reputation for scandal, he has instead spent most of his time since becoming Premier in March of 2020 picking fights with the federal Julian Cabinet and defending Cabinet ministers who were members of paramilitaries in the 1990s (Ken Murphy), have been convicted for taking bribes from Chinese Triads (Matt White), been caught plying underage women with drugs and alcohol to do God knows what at a Free Churches convention in Calgary (Matt Lynne), and engaging in a mass firing of educators and school administrators at the height of a recession in order to debut curricula that denounces Louis Riel as a terrorist and offers mealy-mouthed apologia for government death squads operating in Quebec at the height of the Troubles (Leslie Wyndham), and that is before one gets into the bevy of backbenchers with drunk driving or domestic violence accusations. One could say that this is the action of a government straight out of 1963 rather than 2023, but the old-fashioned God, King and Canada-style, Orange-hued Tories of days gone by would have punted Trost and his ilk straight from the party.
The alternatives are, to be sure, lacking. Brad Wall successfully brought the Tories back from the dead nearly twenty years ago into a third-party of federal Liberals and Conservatives put off by polarized Saskatchewan politics, but his second stint since taking over for Bill Boyd in 2018 has been less than promising with his shift to the right to pick off disenchanted Reformers, and until the "Battle of the Brads" this past January that brought down Trost's government in a confidence vote eight months ahead of the anticipated election sometime by early November his Tories had provided the confidence that allowed Trost's kakistocracy to reign supreme. His proposals are classically Tory - culturally elitist, thuggishly protectionist, and softly developmentalist, claiming to be inspired by the ability of similar resource economies such as neighboring Alberta or Texas to pivot to a more diversified growth model but offering few tangible ideas on how to deliver other than vague bromides covered up by his avuncular good charm. While Canadian history is dotted with worst-to-first stories, Wall seems unlikely to do much more than split off moderate conservatives appalled by Reform SK, which perhaps is good enough.
The CCF's Cam Broten is not exactly the second coming of Tommy Douglas, Allen Blakeney or Roy Romanow. He is not a particularly talented speaker, has faced pernicious criticism from supporters of disgraced former CCF leader Erin Weir as well as the party's hard-left, and his unsure command of policy issues suggests a lightweight. However, considering the alternative, Broten will at least appoint serious-minded Cabinet ministers rather than criminals, and he has seemed much more sure of himself on the big stage now than in 2019, when he was suddenly thrust into the role after Weir was forced out over sexual harassment allegations. Considering the scandals, indictments and media circuses that have surrounded all three of the province's parties in the last six years, perhaps a dull, technocrat center-left social democrat such as Broten is the best solution to our crumbling health care system, failing schools, and incessant brain drain to other provinces or greener pastures south of the border. For that reason, we endorse Broten, and suspect that the polling that indicates a fairly decisive loss for Reform SK is correct that the people of our great province endorse him too.
Because God help us all if they don't."
(Note: All Party leaders, Premiers etc are real people - the four criminal Cabinet members are all fictional. Part of the “blend” I promised to eventually come)
