PRINCE ALBERT, Sask. – For third-time NDP candidate Valerie Mushinski, it was a delicious miscue by a federal Conservative minister that she hopes foretells the future.
In November, she wrote a letter to her local newspaper, theNipawin Journal,condemning the federal Conservatives’ treatment of veterans.
Several weeks later, the newspaper published a rebuttal letter from veterans’ affairs minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn, responding to the letter from “Prince Albert MP Valerie Mushinski.”
Actually, Prince Albert Conservative MP Randy Hoback sits not that far from Blackburn in the House of Commons.
Read Also
Organic farmers urged to make better use of trade deals
Organic growers should be singing CUSMA’s praises, according to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
“It was nice recognition,” she smiled during an interview. The letter hangs on the bulletin board in her campaign office.
Doesn’t the NDP wish.
Saskatchewan candidates hope that a late-campaign national surge in party popularity and favourable reviews for leader Jack Layton will give their local campaigns a boost, but the party has been in the doldrums in the province for more than a decade.
The Prince Albert riding is an example.
It was solidly NDP from 1980 until 1993 after the death of former Progressive Conservative MP and prime minister John Diefenbaker. It was briefly Liberal and then solidly Reform and Conservative since 1997.
It reflects the steady decline of the NDP in the province that saw its electoral birth.
The party held 10 of 14 Saskatchewan seats as recently as 1988. The last federal New Democrat was elected in the province in 2000.
This election, the party considers its best bet to be Saskatoon-Rose-town- Biggar, where former National Farmers Union president Nettie Wiebe is trying for the fourth time to win election after three tantalizingly close losses.
Tom McIntosh, head of the political science department at the University of Regina, is not convinced this is the election for the NDP breakthrough.
“I would be shocked if we see any significant change in the political make-up of the province after May 2,” he said.
“Nettie Wiebe is their best hope, but I think she would need a three-way race to win and I don’t see that.”
In 2008, the Liberal vote collapsed in the riding to a distant fourth.
Analysts of Saskatchewan politics suggest a number of reasons for the NDP decline in the province, beginning with the collapse of Liberal strength.
“The NDP really needs three-way races where the Liberals drain away some Conservative votes and that just is not happening,” said McIntosh.
Meanwhile, the Saskatchewan countryside has changed.
There are fewer farmers, larger farms, weaker towns, less of a rural community culture and more of an entrepreneurial attitude among farmers, says veteran University of Regina political scientist Howard Leeson.
“There really has been a conservatization of the rural attitude in Saskatchewan,” he said.
“The disappearance of the smaller farms and the co-operatives and community activities those farmers supported have made a huge difference. That was the NDP base and now there is much more a business approach.”
As a farm activist and former longtime president of the National Farmers Union, Swift Current-area farmer Stewart Wells has watched the transformation of rural Saskatchewan with dismay.
“Farmers seem to have bought into the notion that what is good for companies in the food system is good for farmers, the trickle down theory,” he said.
“That certainly wasn’t the view of the farmers who built the co-ops, built the pool, built the CCF.”
Wells, a one-time Saskatchewan Wheat Pool delegate, sees the 1990s demise of the pool as a co-operative as a pivotal moment in the change in rural Saskatchewan attitudes.
The pool maintained a strong rural base, an extensive committee system that flagged emerging issues and a strong communications machine that stressed the value of co-operation and support for the Canadian Wheat Board.
Wells has an old pool notebook with the slogan: “every bushel of wheat delivered through the pool is a vote for the Canadian Wheat Board.”
Now, while Saskatchewan farmers vote for pro-single desk CWB directors, they also vote for Conservatives vowing to abolish the single desk.
“It really isn’t a ballot question for farmers anymore,” said Leeson.
“They market many of their own crops and have a business outlook, even if they support the board in director elections.”
McIntosh suggested a final piece of the puzzle is that all Saskatchewan urban ridings now have rural components.
“I think if there were some strictly urban seats as there were in 1988, the NDP would win some seats,” he said.
“But strong Conservative support in the country portion of the ridings cancel a lot of urban NDP votes.”
