As the Oct. 28 provincial election draws near, the incumbent Saskatchewan Party is touting its record and a proposed tax cut as it strives to win its fifth straight majority government, contested by an NDP calling for change as well as more money for health care and education.
The New Democrats, led by Regina MLA Carla Beck, are more competitive this year, with an Angus Reid pre-election poll in late August placing the NDP in first place in Regina and Saskatoon, with the Sask. Party leading most other places.
Polling aggregator 338Canada shows that as of Sept. 24, province-wide popular support for the incumbent Sask. Party is at 51 percent, and 40 percent for the NDP.
Ken Coates, a professor emeritus at Saskatchewan’s Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, says the long reign of the Sask. Party is both its weakness and its strength.
“The government’s been in office for a very long time, and you collect a whole series of reasons to be concerned and opposed,” Coates said in an interview.
“The Sask. Party wants to fight the election against the federal government, against Justin Trudeau. They really want this to be about who is the best person to possibly defend the province against federal intrusions.”
The Sask. Party won three majority governments under Brad Wall and one under Scott Moe in 2020. That year, Moe’s party took 60.67 percent of the vote and 48 ridings, while the NDP got 31.59 percent of the vote and 13 ridings.
The first full term under Scott Moe saw the provincial government contesting Ottawa on issues related to resources. A year ago, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled against the federal government’s Impact Assessment Act. Beginning Jan. 1 this year, the province removed the federal carbon tax on both electric and natural gas home heating. This decision came after Ottawa announced a three-year pause on the federal carbon tax for heating oil, which largely benefits Atlantic Canada, where 30 percent of households use the oil.
Tom Flanagan, political science professor emeritus at the University of Calgary, says Saskatchewan’s economy makes it a more likely residents will vote for parties with right-leaning policies.
“Its prosperity is based on natural resources: oil and gas, potash, forest products, uranium. So these are all factors that tend to correlate with voting for a more conservative party, a business-oriented party,” he said. “The same kind of factors that have promoted conservative dominance in Alberta are now at work in Saskatchewan.”
Flanagan said political history in Saskatchewan and other provinces shows that the Sask. Party’s election-winning streak could continue. But on the other hand, “nothing lasts forever.”
“As a party is in power over a long period of time, people become dissatisfied for one reason or another,” he said. “It certainly wouldn’t be a surprise if the NDP would win, because that’s the nature of politics.”
Duelling Policy Planks
NDP Leader Beck hammered the Sask. Party on doctor shortages and wait times in the spring session of the legislature. On the campaign trail, she has promised to increase the number of health-care staff in the province, calling it “dead last” in health care compared to the rest of Canada. Beck was referring to statistics compiled by the Canadian Institute for Health Information indicating that Saskatchewan had the longest median wait times in Canada in 2023 for knee and hip replacements, at 318 days and 232 days respectively.On its busiest day in early October, the emergency room of Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital struggled to care for 121 patients in a space designed for just 35 beds, reported WestCentralOnline.com.
“There’s a phenomenal health-care challenge in the province of Saskatchewan,” Coates said.
The Saskatchewan Party adopted two policy planks on health that the NDP had long been calling for. The Sask. Party on Oct. 7 said a re-elected Moe government would provide a 50 percent refundable tax credit for the cost of a first fertility treatment, for a benefit of up to $10,000. The party also announced it would host a task force with nurses on health care.
The NDP has also criticized the Sask. Party for doing too little on affordability measures. Beck has pledged to remove the provincial sales tax for ready-to-eat grocery items and children’s clothing, to freeze the small business tax, and to suspend provincial tax on gas and diesel for six months.
The Sask. Party’s central platform promise is broad tax relief. It said its plan will reduce income taxes by raising the personal exemption, spousal exemption, child exemption, and seniors supplement by $500 each year for the next four years. Combined with its government’s indexation of personal tax rates, a family of four will save more than $3,400 over those years, the party said.
On Oct. 8, Moe also promised to increase the Disability Tax Credit for adults, the Disability Tax Credit Supplement for children, and the Caregiver Tax Credit by 25 percent.
‘Pragmatic Idealism’
According to budgetary cost projections based on 2024 election promises, the NDP platform will produce a $163.7 million deficit in 2025–26, which will gradually come down, resulting in a $57.1 million surplus in 2028–29.The Sask. Party’s campaign co-chair Donna Harpauer said the public shouldn’t trust those numbers, calling the NDP’s plan “fantasy and fiction and nothing more.” Harpauer, who was Moe’s finance minister while in government, said her party’s costed platform is coming. Saskatchewan’s current fiscal year’s first-quarter results increased the 2024–25 forecast deficit to $354 million, up $80.6 million from the 2024–25 budget’s forecast of $273.2 million, Moe’s government reported in August.
Coates says the balance of addressing perceived needs while maintaining fiscal prudence is what the NDP needs to reach from the core to the outskirts of major cities and into the suburbs and smaller cities.
“Carla Black is working very, very hard to try to sort of find that middle ground between keeping her more trade union supporters and public service trade union workers on board and trying to reach out to new constituents, and that is a very interesting challenge,” he said.
James Pitsula, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Regina, said “pragmatic idealism” has been a mainstay of Saskatchewan politics. He said fluctuations in the farming and resource economy temper any governmental efforts to build a better society.
“People don’t take things for granted as much in a province like Saskatchewan, because there’s prosperity today, and maybe it won’t be prosperity the next day, because it’s a heavily export economy,” Pitsula told The Epoch Times. “There are these cycles of growth—rapid growth, and then a trough,” he said.
Tommy Douglas led the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation to its first Saskatchewan election win in 1944 and to its fifth straight win in 1960. As premier, he oversaw 16 straight balanced budgets before leaving provincial politics in 1961, becoming the first federal NDP leader from 1961 to 1971.
Pitsula says a fifth straight win for the Sask. Party would be “very impressive” and called the party’s current streak “a significant political era, whether they win or lose” this time around.
Carleton University political science professor Scott Edward Bennett says the government has had a defensible record on the economic file until the present day, but some voters may still want change.
“Saskatchewan is affected by some of the illnesses of the general Canadian economy, but, by and large, the province has adjusted to these trends as well as can be expected,” Bennett told The Epoch Times.
“Having said that, the polls do indicate that there are concerns about housing, health care and inflation. Would another government deal with these better than the current government?”
Bennett is unsure the NDP can resist spending more to please its voter base.
“Modern NDP governments also tend to be very tax and spend, but they are often more interested in expanding government employment. That might make some of the urban very young happy, and they do give a fair amount of support to the NDP in current polls,” he said
The Canadian Press contributed to this report.
