It’s just past noon and the tables at Dick Wong’s cafe in Saltcoats, Sask. are filling up.
Local farmers and townspeople order the special, and then chat about the weather, compare seeding conditions and wonder if their neighbors in flooded southern Manitoba will get a crop in.
Those looking for election hype won’t find it here. Some here say voter apathy in the southeastern Saskatchewan constituency of Yorkton-Melville is at an all-time high.
“What election?” coffee shop owner and former Yorkton newspaperman Dick DeRyk said with a sarcastic laugh when asked how voters will cast their ballots.
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“I’ve lived here for 30 years and this is the first one where I’ve really seen that the election is not at all on people’s minds,” said DeRyk.
The riding, which runs from Hudson Bay in the north, along the Manitoba border as far south as Melville and west to Kelvington, is prime farming country.
With most constituents either in the fields or getting ready to seed, DeRyk said Dick Wong’s isn’t the only place lacking an appetite for the election.
“They’ve been trying to arrange candidate debates and the candidates aren’t even interested.”
Question election timing
Calling the election now was “just another example of Ontario’s insensitivity to the West,” he said.
“We’re close to Manitoba here and see on the news what they’re going through. You get pretty cynical when ChrŽtien goes out there to throw a sandbag and then calls an election.”
Melville farmer and NDP candidate Evan Carlson said voter apathy isn’t as great as he
expected.
Job creation, rural roads, the rail transportation crisis and protection of health care are foremost on voters’ minds, he said.
The area was a traditional NDP stronghold until Reformer Garry Breitkreuz upset Lorne Nystrom’s 25-year hold in the riding.
Nystrom is running next door in the Qu’Appelle riding, a fact Liberal candidate Lloyd Sandercock is quick to criticize.
As former head of the Canadian Chicken Marketing agency for three years, Sandercock said he knows his way around Ottawa and could make things happen for Yorkton-Melville constituents.
“Clearly Canadians are going to elect ChrŽtien and voters here are saying this time they want someone in government and that will be you,” Sandercock said, touting his experience and understanding of agriculture policy.
Running on record
Breitkreuz, a former high school teacher, is banking on his record during the last term He speaks against the gun control bill and pushes for lower taxes.
“The response I get is that people appreciate what I’ve been doing. They say ‘you’ve been working for us.’ “
The comment alludes to one of the main criticisms of Nystrom. According to Breitkreuz, he’s giving his constituents something they learned to go without.
Yorkton mayor Ben Weber agrees.
“You hardly saw the guy any more and after some 20 years, people are ready for change,” he said.
But others describe the riding’s dramatic swing in 1993 as an anti-Nystrom, rather than pro-Reform, vote.
Sandercock points out his rival may have talked a lot in the House of Commons, but only three times about agriculture.
When asked about Sandercock, Breitkreuz all but dismisses the Liberal candidate, noting he doesn’t live in the riding.
Sandercock lives in Fort Qu’Appelle, 20 kilometres outside the riding, but owns a fertilizer business in Buchanan and a poultry operation in Balcarres, within the riding.
Weber, a lifelong Saskatchewan resident, predicts the race will be between the Liberal and Reform candidates. It’s too soon for the NDP to make a comeback, he said, and the PCs have never had a strong presence in southeastern Saskatchewan.
Farming roots
Yorkton surgeon Ivan Daunt, the candidate for the Progressive Conservative party, said the party’s pro-farmer roots will replace the “bad name” some voters connect with former prime minister Brian Mulroney and former Saskatchewan premier Grant Devine.
MacKenzie New Democrat MP Vic Althouse, whose riding will be partly absorbed by the new Yorkton-Melville boundaries, said either way, farmers in the riding won’t likely support any political party for its stand on agriculture issues.
“There’s no programs for farmers to vote for any more,” said Althouse, who is stepping down June 1.