ARCHERWILL, Sask. – Two producers waiting to unload at an Archerwill elevator pause for a minute when asked what they think of the provincial election campaign.
“There’s nothing for agriculture in any way, shape or form,” said one. “Fertilizer keeps going up, chemicals keep going up, inputs are going up, but there’s nothing to help.”
Campaigning political parties “always used to give us something, that’s why we would get excited, but we don’t look for that any more.”
Farmers across the Kelvington-Wadena constituency, a riding that sprawls from Muenster to Endeavour and from rich farmland to forest fringe pastures, were similarly ambivalent about the provincial election. Throughout the riding some campaign signs are visible, but there’s little of the passion that accompanies some elections.
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With an ambivalent electorate comes many undecided voters and it’s these people that candidates Darrel Cunningham, June Draude and Dwayne Evans will try to swing to their side.
While riding boundaries across Saskatchewan have been changed since the last election, the area went Progressive Conservative in 1986 and New Democrat in 1991. Only about 14 percent of voters supported the Liberals in 1991, up from a mere five percent in 1986.
But both Cunningham, the NDP candidate and present agriculture minister, and Liberal candidate June Draude expect the local Tory vote to collapse, leaving it a two-way race. One week and half into the campaign Progressive Conservative candidate Evans had not begun to campaign and only met with his riding executive last week.
As Cunningham walks from door to door around his home town of Lintlaw and in Endeavour, in the eastern end of the constituency, he receives a lot of smiles and words of support.
He said he has been concentrating on the towns of the riding because most farmers are still seeding. He said the farmers are generally supportive, although some are unhappy about certain things the NDP has done since 1991.
“What we’re getting is ‘You guys are doing a good job, but you shouldn’t have closed our hospital,’ or ‘You shouldn’t have raised the gas tax,’ or ‘You should have given the farmer a tax break,’ ” he said.
“But they think we’ve done a good job with most things, like balancing the budget.”
Cunningham said the government’s changes to the Gross Revenue Insurance Plan, made before he became agriculture minister, have angered some farmers, but “people are saying ‘It really hurt me, I didn’t like it, but I guess you had to change it because the program was no good.’ “
Naicam farmer and NDP supporter Warren Loyns agreed.
Both Cunningham and Loyns said they think the riding will stay with the NDP.
Draude hears a different story when she campaigns.
High utility rates, high taxes, the GRIP changes and the NDP’s hospital closures have angered people in the riding and will push many the Liberal way.
Draude, who runs a playground equipment manufacturing business that employs up to 60 people, said voters aren’t going to thank the NDP for balancing the budget because “they did it with their money.
“They feel the farmers and small businesses have shouldered” the cost of a balanced budget, she said. And many feel the government has ignored them.
“They feel they haven’t been listened to in the last few years. The government just isn’t interested in rural Saskatchewan,” she said.
One thoroughly disillusioned farmer is Bob Kerpan. He voted NDP for 30 years, but voted for the Reform party in the federal election and is supporting Draude this time.
Foreclosures continue
He said he felt betrayed when the NDP took office and farm foreclosures continued. He used to believe the NDP could defend farmers against big business, but the Romanow government’s courting of corporate investment has embittered him.
“They were a good party, but when they started supporting companies like Cargill with a $50 million gift I don’t see them as a socialist party any more,” he said. “It’s big business and they just proved they could be bought.”
He said he will vote Liberal not because the party will spend money on programs to help farmers, but because he doesn’t look to government for solutions any more.
Cunningham said the western part of the riding should be fertile ground for NDP votes because of good recent crops and a mini-boom among the small manufacturing businesses there.
But Draude said people there have prospered in spite of the government, and will vote Liberal because that party is promising lower taxes and less government.
Whether the election contest will heat up in Kelvington-Wadena will probably not be known until after seeding is completed. A Preeceville elevator operator, who serves many farmers from the riding, said: “I wouldn’t have the guts to ask them about an election now. They’re all too busy and grumpy getting their seed in.”
