NDP Defeated After 16-Year: Reign in Saskatchewan
2007Barry Weisleder 2007-12The page as the paper published it (Wayback Machine) →
From the paper's own web edition, recovered from the Internet Archive: the text as the paper put it online, not machine-read. The printed issue of December 2007 is not held.
by Barry Weisleder / December 2007
Sixteen years of New Democratic Party government in the western prairie province of Saskatchewan ended on November 7 when the right wing Saskatchewan Party captured 37 seats to the NDP’s 21.
The Liberal Party was shut out in the vote that left neighbouring Manitoba as the only province in Canada still led by the labour-based NDP.
Technically, the Saskatchewan Party is a new party. Actually, it was formed in 1997 as a coalition of Conservatives and Liberals following the break up of the disgraced Saskatchewan Progressive Conservative Party whose 10 years in government eventually landed 14 Conservative members of the Legislature in jail for fraud and breech of trust.
For its part, the NDP brass should know by now that trying to be all things to all people often results in being nothing much to anybody. In an attempt to under cut the growing popularity of the Saskatchewan Party, NDP Premier Lorne Calvert attempted to appear more conservative. He promised tax cuts and private-sector wage restraints.
In the opinion of Ken Rasmussen, director of the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Regina, the tactic backfired big time.
“The NDP moved to the centre of the right and that had people thinking, ‘Why not vote for the real thing?’” he said.
Brad Wall, 41, the Premier-elect who managed to convince voters that he was not planning to privatize provincial services and public corporations, began his election night victory speech with the all too cute and unintentionally ironic expression, “And now for something completely different.”