THE long-awaited, once-postponed Saskatchewan election is finally on.
Premier Roy Romanow’s announcement came last week as many farmers across the province were rolling out their combines, and opposition politicians made much of the fact that the premier has called the election at harvest time.
The sad fact is that, once a June election was ruled out, September or October were the only reasonable alternatives.
July and August are holiday times when too many voters would be away from home. November and December weather is not conducive to campaigning in Saskatchewan. Late October can be iffy.
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Given our weather difficulties this spring and in what has passed for summer, and the fact that harvest will start late and could run into November, a mid-September election seems to be the most reasonable proposition.
I heard the premier speak just days before the election and he outlined what I am sure will be the party platform: the government’s record, jobs, education, health care, rural life and safe communities, in that order.
The most interesting facet of the campaign will be how the NDP does in rural Saskatchewan.
It has been a generally accepted fact in certain circles that the government strength is in the cities and the Saskatchewan Party strength is in the country.
Many say the government has turned its back on rural Saskatchewan, citing health care, high education costs, cutting of services and potholed roads as examples of neglect.
Enter the agriculture crisis. AIDA and poor grain prices, coupled with disastrous weather in parts of the province, prevented many farmers from getting a crop in the ground in 1999.
AIDA is a flawed program that the provincial government didn’t like from the get-go but that it had to accept or get nothing for its farmers.
The weather it couldn’t control.
Low grain prices are largely caused by the large subsidies which the United States and the European Union are paying their producers and which the Canadian government is by no means coming near to matching.
Thinking farmers know their problems are largely out of the hands of provincial politicians and in the hands of the feds.
The question then is which leader, Roy Romanow, Elwin Hermanson or Jim Melenchuk, can get the most out of the feds for Saskatchewan farmers.
For many, their vote may depend more on their perception of the leaders’ abilities and influence than on party loyalty.
