News Analysis
The Saskatchewan Party’s narrow majority win on Oct. 28 and the stark urban-rural divide in the province raises questions as to what lies behind such stark polarization.
Premier Scott Moe led his party to a fifth straight majority government in the election, taking 35 of 61 seats, taking 53 percent of the vote. However, the party was shut out in Regina and won only two seats in Saskatoon. The party swept all other ridings, except for two in the far north of the province. In 2020, the Saskatchewan Party won 48 seats with 60.7 percent of the vote, while the NDP took 13 seats with 31.6 percent support. Ken Coates, professor emeritus at the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, said the rural-urban divide stretches far beyond Saskatchewan’s borders.
“It’s not just in the province, it’s in the country. It’s across North America, and it’s in much of the Western world. So, it’s basically a divide between the way the world was and the way the world is going to be,” Coates said in an interview.
“Rural areas are just part of an economy that has not been strong,“ he added. ”And so you’ve got different worlds, different realities, and that’s just part of Saskatchewan life. Neither party is able to bridge that divide.”
“Now some may allude to tonight’s results as it means that we are divided in this province, and I would disagree with that,” he said. “You wanted what was best for the province that we know, love, and live in, and in this I would say each of us is united.”
In 2020, Moe’s party won eight seats in Saskatoon and seven in Regina, while the NDP was shut out of all but the most northern rural areas, just as it was in this year’s election.
Looking to the past, there’s a historical background to the rural-urban divide. The most recent NDP-governing era in the province began in 1991 after huge debt accumulated during two terms of a Progressive Conservative government. The NDP slashed spending in rural areas to balance the books, closing 52 hospitals and minimizing highway spending. Public education relied heavily on property taxes, placing disproportionate burdens on farmers.
These factors and the passing of old NDP supporters from the Tommy Douglas era led to a collapse in the party’s rural support.
Many MLAs of the previous PC government were implicated in an expense scandal that further tarnished the party brand. So in 1997, four Liberal MLAs and four PC MLAs representing rural areas left their caucuses to form the Saskatchewan Party as a united front against the NDP. Their NDP rivals won narrow victories in 1999 and 2003, until the Sask. Party enjoyed soaring popularity under a new leader, Brad Wall. He won majority governments in 2007, 2011, and 2016 before Moe took over as leader and premier in 2018.
‘Growing Detachment’
The last time Saskatchewan saw a fifth consecutive majority win was in
1960 under Tommy Douglas, leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, now called the NDP.
Malcolm Bird, political science professor at the University of Winnipeg, called the Saskatchewan Party’s fifth straight majority win an “astonishing” and “pretty remarkable” accomplishment, given Saskatchewan’s history as “the birthplace of the NDP.”
Bird told The Epoch Times that differing takes on the “cultural wars” and the cities’ “cosmopolitan, urban dynamic” are only one element of why rural people vote differently. The rest owes itself to a “growing detachment” regarding how each side generates wealth.
“I don’t think a lot of urban Canadians really understand what Canada still does on the economic front, and how important the resources and the agriculture and even the manufacturing is to our economic well-being,” he said.
Bird said many prominent political issues still span rural and urban interests in both Manitoba and Saskatchewan, such as the cost of living, increasing crime, and health-care delivery.
“Across the political spectrum, fiscal prudence has gone out the window,” Bird said, and the fact right-leaning governments in Ontario and Saskatchewan run deficits “shows you now we’re really in a pickle.”
David Leis, vice president of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, said cultural issues are a deciding factor in the votes between urban and rural areas. The NDP and teacher unions heavily criticized the governing Sask. Party for bringing in new legislation that requires parents to provide consent before students can have their pronouns changed in schools. Leis says that in rural areas there is less support for such issues as not keeping parents informed of changes to children’s lives at schools when it comes to gender issues.
“In urban areas where the state is large, many public sector-related unions and associated intermediaries, like universities, not-for-profit groups—really believe strongly in that kind of narrative,” he says.
Coates said the “bitter divide … shows every sign of getting worse rather than better,” adding that there’s no easy solution.
“It’s a challenge for the Saskatchewan Party to figure out the needs of the urban voters, and a challenge for the NDP to figure out rural Saskatchewan and to find a way to knit them together.”
