Saskatchewan election Nov 2 2020

And furthermore, people don't have to have previous ties to Saskatchewan to move to Saskatchewan. They don't have to have family that they want to be closer to. People move to Saskatchewan for many different reasons.
 

And yes, people with no previous ties to Saskatchewan can and do sell their property at top dollar on the BC coast and move to Saskatchewan because real estate prices are cheaper and the cost of living is more affordable. That isn't rocket science.

Misfit wrote:

Btw, it took me six weeks to recover from the 2016 US election results and I'm not even an American. I think I need to settle down a little. 
 

Krop and Jerry, I do plan on getting my sense of humour back...just not today and so close after an election.

i'll try to be nicer. Honest. Just not today.

I think we've all been there, Misfit.  Bad results like that are a wound.  It's easy to take things you'd take as a harmless joke at any other time as cheap shots, as getting kicked when down, at a time like this.

I am talking about a twenty year period. The sp has been in power for 13 years so the real estate issue would have been strongest twenty years ago. Whether it is in decline or not the trend is/was real. So now, real estate has been driven up to where it is more in line with other provinces so the financial incentive to switch to Saskatchewan today for that reason is much much less than it was twenty years ago. 

Many young people who graduate from school generally do not want to stay in the province. The fun and exciting places that young people want to live at are not in our two main urban centres. Common fun places are Calgary, Edmonton, the B.C. coast, and to a lesser extent, Winnipeg and Toronto. We lose young people from both rural and urban centres. Older people who move back to Saskatchewan generally relocate to the cities. So our cities can continue to grow and our rural areas depopulate due to young people leaving. None of this is a new phenomenon. This has been going on for as long as white settlers have settled in this province.

Regina finds it hard to retain talented football players. Many make their start in Regina but then want to relocate to the larger centres where there is more fun for them and a larger limelight. Our youth are the very same.

Retired people no longer want the discoteques and the downhill ski slopes. They want a smaller urban centre where they are close to their medical specialists and closer to their children and grandchildren. And since many are on a fixed income they want to live where it is cheaper for them live. 
 

And if the rate of young people leaving is greater than the people moving to the cities, OBVIOUSLY you will get a net loss in the provincial population. The Saskatchewan Party and Brad Wall bragged about the population boom because they were the ones who made people want to come back to the province unlike the NDP who our youth wanted to flee from. Ryan Mieli even mentioned your quote about the reversing population trend during the election debate that the rate of people leaving is greater than the people moving back. However, people are still moving back to Saskatchewan from out of province including the coast.

Krop, your stats are useless and meaningless. You have not contradicted anything that I have said at any point. I don't  care if the population now is growing or shrinking. Our urban centres are ballooning and the urban demographics are shifting. That partially explains why the NDP is struggling to make gains in the cities.

Having claimed to live in Saskatoon at one time does not make you an expert on our provincial demographics. But this is what we discuss in the province all the time because this isn't a BC issue, it's a Saskatchewan issue. 
 

No, I don't think that you liked living in Saskatchewan, and I think that you have a  very negative attitude about this province. That is why you reacted and why your remarks were not, apparently, any joke or dry humour.
 

I grew up with a friend in a small town whose mother and sister moved to Nanaimo about forty five years ago. She divorced her husband and my friend was adopted but related to her father's side of the family and so stayed with her father. Her sister still lives on the island but her mother moved back to Saskatchewan when she was 65. My friend went to university in Saskatoon and got a job in Winnipeg. Her mother obviously didn't move to be close to her children and she was originally from Ontario but she moved back to the province anyways. 

People do move to places that you personally do not like and firmly believe are inferior locations for anyone to live for any reason. Get used to it.

Misfit wrote:

BC is a beautiful province. Saskatchewan is beautiful as well. 

Having been to more parts of BC than parts where I haven't been, and also to several parts of Saskatchewan, I'll concur that both provinces are beautiful. As a born and bred British Columbian I'm partial to our oceans and mountains and trees here in BC, but that doesn't take away at all from the beauty of Saskatchewan.

Enough already about housing prices in SK.  

The real question is...is there any reason for the SNDP to even stay in existence if they've managed to lose vote share and gain no seats AGAIN?

If they made no recovery this year...will they ever recover?  Will they ever come remotely close to winning again?

If they do what the party pros want and move even further to the right, will it matter if they ever DO win-in many respects, it was worse than losing for Sask to have Romanow's policies as an alleged "NDP" government in the Nineties.

Why not just dissolve the SNDP and replace it with something else?  Something more grassroots, something that is not obsessed with "respectability" to the exclusion of all else?

Nothing is working for the SNDP.  It doesn't look as if anything ever will work for it again.

So why keep it going in its current form?

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/report-on-business/unyielding-fiscal-policies-are-romanows-greatest-legacy/article770096/

This is an article about Roy Romanow's austerity. The article mentions 52 hospitals and not 55 as I mentioned in the previous post.

Ken Burch wrote:

In this era, nobody but the rich put "balanced budgets" above all other concerns.  

This critique seems valid to me:

https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2020/10/saskatchewan-nd...

It does seem valid and it doesn't. He posted an article in Rabble about a month ago that was filled with numerous inaccuracies. I rebutted that piece then.

It would have been political suicide to discuss energy like Harding claims. The Federal NDP and Rachael Knotley supported the carbon tax and that issue has poisoned the majority of people away from the NDP and led to the rise of Western separatism again. People HATE Justin Trudeau. They HATE the NDP for supporting Justin Trudeau and for propping up his minority government. These are very serious issues out here and that hatred definitely spilled off into this election. That is most likely why Ryan Mieli avoided the issue like the plague.

The Saskatchewan government IS slowly investing in renewable energy. My anger is that the government should be investing heavily in it with Sask Power revenues. However, Brad Wall set up all green energy projects to be privately funded only. Therefore the province is not receiving the revenues from the power generation. I consider this to be blatantly assenine. They are dismantling our crowns and sabotaging the future of our province. This was not discussed during the election and it should have been. Every time I see a wind generator I seethe with anger. Wind power is good and I welcome it but it needs to be done properly and that isn't happening.

The final Regina Walsh Acres votes haven't been tabulated yet. My suspicion is that had Sandra Morin represented the NDP, she may not have won either once the final mail-in votes are finally tabulated.

The Saskatchewan government wants to invest more heavily into potash mines. I am against this. Potash mines require large stores of water that the province does not realistically have in order to extract the resource from the ground. This creates an unnecessary environmental catastrophe that hasn't been properly addressed. The government plans to invest in an irrigation agricultural project that will cost 4 billion dollars to build. The environmental devastation will be environmentally incalculable. I believe that the real reason for this is to provide these proposed potash mines with the needed water that they require to function.

Here is the problem. I highly doubt that the NDP supports this. That is likely why they tried to run a Conservstive as their candidate in the constituency. If they outright speak out on this then they are attacked for being anti-jobs and against progress. We have been down all these issues before.
 

There is a finite amount of potash in the province. Once it is gone, it is never coming back. It is non-renewable.

The NDP has always been about maximizing royalties and planning for tomorrow. These right wing governments are about destroying the environment, and selling out for immediate gain with absolutely no concern for the future. So no, I cannot speak for the NDP but I am confident that they are very worried about what is happening. I also believe that had they spoken out about mining expansion that they would have been attacked harshly for their efforts.

Yes, green energy would have been good to talk about but it should have been discussed in conjunction with the status of the crown corporations.

Here is a Globe and Mail article discussing the Saskatchewan government's fiscal reality in the early 1990s:

"Premier reveals Saskatchewan flirted with bankruptcy 

Undisclosed federal bailout averted crisis in 1993 

Saturday, March 22, 1997
By David Roberts 
The Globe and Mail

Saskatchewan was on the brink of declaring bankruptcy in early 1993 and might have done so if the prime minister, Brian Mulroney, had not stepped in with emergency financial assistance, Premier Roy Romanow revealed yesterday.

One day after his New Democratic government tabled its fourth consecutive surplus budget, Mr. Romanow disclosed just how precipitously close the province came in early 1993 to being unable to pay creditors during the debt crisis that then faced the nation's most impecunious provinces.

"I think The Globe and Mail ran a story on the front page of one of its editions around that time about an unnamed province being rumoured to be on the verge of bankruptcy," Mr. Romanow said in an interview.

"The Bank of Canada was very chilled by this, as was the federal government. At that time it was Mr. Mulroney's government. We had one budget in which we just simply--and this is going to be in my memoirs if I ever write my memoirs--where the cabinet and caucus [were] gridlocked in ideology and coming to the cliff in making some of these decisions.

"And I must pay a little tribute to Mr. Mulroney here, because he was able, through his minister of finance, to grease some payment from the federal government to the Province of Saskatchewan."

Mr. Romanow said Saskatchewan Finance Minister Janice MacKinnon met secretly in Ottawa with her federal counterpart, Donald Mazankowski, to try to explain the province's dangerous fiscal position and how the province was close to defaulting on its debt payments on more than $15-billion.

"She was able to meet with Mazankowski to help us put the [1993] budget together and help us get over this little crisis.

"It would have been quite an embarrassment for Canada--let alone Saskatchewan--had that ever taken place. It's just a little inside story about how grave it was."

Mr. Romanow did not reveal the terms of the federal bailout, but in March of 1993, The Globe published a story disclosing that federal officials were quietly canvassing the country's financial community to draw up contingency plans in the event some provinces were no longer able to raise money in foreign bond markets. 

A plan was discussed whereby the Bank of Canada would arrange emergency borrowings for unnamed hard-pressed provinces which, as a result of their indebtedness, might be shut out of international capital markets.

The federal government was preparing to step in to manage on an emergency basis the financial affairs of any province requiring such help--a form of trusteeship--while its borrowings would be provided by the central bank. Both Mr. Romanow and federal officials denied the reports at the time.

"It's just not going to happen in Saskatchewan," the Premier said then.

But this was at a time when the International Monetary Fund had issued sharp warnings to Ottawa and the provinces about the level of public indebtedness, which had reached unprecedented levels.

"It was a crisis for us in 1993," said Mr. Romanow, who discovered when he took office late in 1991 that his government had inherited a financial strait jacket after a decade of deficit spending by the previous Tory government of Grant Devine.

"Statistically, I think it was a race between Newfoundland and ourselves as to which of the provincial governments had a more critical fiscal picture on their hands," Mr. Romanow said. "I really think it was Saskatchewan. Our per-capita deficit was the highest of any province, as was our per-capita debt. And our lending sources had shrunk from over 100 to about 20 or 22, based on a series of bond-rating downgrades."

Meantime, in something akin to another untold story, Saskatchewan has managed significantly to reverse its fiscal fortunes this week with a two-percentage-point sales-tax cut and a $370-million 1996-97 budgetary surplus, thanks to a buoyant economy, sharp program cuts and taxation hikes. Newfoundland remains in very difficult fiscal shape.

The two provinces, fiscal basket cases just four years ago, delivered very different budget forecasts on Thursday.

While Saskatchewan's medium-term outlook appears reasonably healthy, with talk of further surpluses and possible tax reductions, Newfoundlanders are still biting the bullet with the announcement of more deficit spending, strict government cutbacks and civil-service layoffs."
 

From the previous article:

"The Bank of Canada was very chilled by this, as was the federal government. At that time it was Mr. Mulroney's government. We had one budget in which we just simply--and this is going to be in my memoirs if I ever write my memoirs--where the cabinet and caucus [were] gridlocked in ideology and coming to the cliff in making some of these decisions."

The austerity measures were not easy decisions to make for anyone at the time. The ideological issues were all addressed  thoroughly.

The article says:

"And I must pay a little tribute to Mr. Mulroney here, because he was able, through his minister of finance, to grease some payment from the federal government to the Province of Saskatchewan."

Mr. Romanow said Saskatchewan Finance Minister Janice MacKinnon met secretly in Ottawa with her federal counterpart, Donald Mazankowski, to try to explain the province's dangerous fiscal position and how the province was close to defaulting on its debt payments on more than $15-billion.

"She was able to meet with Mazankowski to help us put the [1993] budget together and help us get over this little crisis."

From this segment we learn three things:

1. The province was on the verge of defaulting on its loan payments. It was close to bankruptcy.

2. The Federal government had to lend the province money to pay creditors.

3. In return for helping Saskatchewan, the Federal government defined how the money was going to be spent.

It is always easy to blame Roy Romanow and the NDP for the austerity. Once you owe money to foreign creditors and once you get to the position where you require the help of the Federal government, those decisions are no longer yours. This is reality.

Tommy Douglas took over a province that was heavily in debt. He was the very first socialist government in North America and on a continent that was extremely hostile to socialism. Something happened in that climate which motivated him to really want to pay down that debt as quickly as he could and to never wish to go into debt ever again. He was the most fiscally prudent premier in our nation's history. 

If you want to build a socialist dream in an environment that is extremely hostile to socialism then you have to find that money to finance your social programs all by yourself.

The article says:

"A plan was discussed whereby the Bank of Canada would arrange emergency borrowings for unnamed hard-pressed provinces which, as a result of their indebtedness, might be shut out of international capital markets.

The federal government was preparing to step in to manage on an emergency basis the financial affairs of any province requiring such help--a form of trusteeship--while its borrowings would be provided by the central bank. Both Mr. Romanow and federal officials denied the reports at the time."

We learn from this:

1. Provinces can actually be shut out of international capital markets.

2. The Bank of Canada can offer assistance but if they do, the Federal government steps in and takes over the financial affairs of your province.

I will repeat that the Saskatchewan government did have to accept a bailout package from the Federal government. This means that the Federal government imposed austerity measures on the province that the Saskatchewan government was legally bound to comply with.

From the article:

"I really think it was Saskatchewan. Our per-capita deficit was the highest of any province, as was our per-capita debt. And our lending sources had shrunk from over 100 to about 20 or 22, based on a series of bond-rating downgrades.""

1. Saskatchewan had the worst international bond rating possible. More than 80% of foreign creditors had refused to offer the province credit. Our provincial bonds were perilously close to junk bond status.

I've discussed these very same issues numerous times in the past and for some reason, nothing that I write about ever seems to sink in but provinces do not have an unlimited expense account. Once foreign creditors lose confidence in your ability to meet your payments and you have to request the assistance of the Federal government and the Bank of Canada you forfeit your own control over your own affairs.

Around the same time that the Federal government imposed those austerity measures on Saskatchewan, Norway had started investing 100% of its annual oil royalties in a trust fund, in Canada we call these heritage funds. It was clearly stipulated that no future governments could tap into the fund for 25 years. After that 25 years, no government could withdrawal any more than 4%  annually from that fund. Norway had less oil than Alberta. The Alberta oil industry started in the 1950s. Norway's oil industry didn't start until the late 80s or early 90s. By 2015, Norway had a trillion dollars saved up. Every year they have 40 billion dollars that they can spend on infrastructure and government programs. Alberta has nothing to show for their royalties from their oil.
 

If you want to build a utopian society with abundant social programs then you are further ahead to do it all by yourself and not by borrowing large sums of money. You have to erase and redefine fifty years of Saskatchewan lived history in order to argue otherwise.

Misfit wrote:

The NDP in Saskatchewan did govern this province for more than 50 years. I think that they know more about Saskatchewan government finance than either you or I do. These are the very same people who brought in human rights, government funded healthcare, dental care, pharmacsre, the highest minimum wage in the country, the best labour legislation, pay equity, and much much more and all with a province that had very little to work with.

Before Romanow, they balanced the books by taxing the rich.  Romanow did it almost entirely through cuts.

I am not as pessimistic as some about the Saskatchewan NDP. They are still the number #2 in popular support and the #3 party, the Buffalo party who want independence, are unlikely to ever surpass them. The Greens are still microscopic in voting power.

Governments usually defeat themselves as the population becomes weary of their mistakes, as well as their growing arrogance and corruption. Often times they are able to renew themselves by picking a new leader, as the Saskatchewan Party did when Brad Wall's popularity started to fall and the NDP rose in the polls. However, that eventually wears thin, and often only works through one leadership change in terms of winning elections, as was the case in BC with the Liberals, the NDP in Manitoba, and the federal Liberals under Chretien and Martin. When the collapse comes it is often quite quick but unforseen because the problems have been building for years while the people continue to vote for the dominant party creating a weariness under the large victories that suddenly causes a collapse like someone breaking through thin ice. 

However, the biggest opportunity I think the NDP has over time is due to climate change which is already starting to impact a global investment shift from fossil fuels to renewables. There is growing evidence every year that the economic, let alone environmental, impacts of global warming are speeding up at an exponential rate. This means that the Saskatchewan oil boom, which is already in trouble, is unlikely to ever fully recover and is likely to further greatly decline over time, thereby creating problems for the Saskatchewan Party electorally, as its record of victories is tied to the boom and its fossil fuel policies. The NDP cannot outdo the Saskatchewan Party in this area.

The NDP needs to be ready to start moving toward a renewable energy strategy before the failure of the fossil fuel economy causes major problems for the Saskatchewan Party. With its many times larger base than the Green Party it should then be able to take advantage of the situation in elections. On the other hand, if it does not carry out this shift over time, it will eventually be challenged by the Greens or some new party in the long run. 

Saskatchewan has some natural advantages when it comes to renewable energy. Estevan is the "sunshine capital of Canada" getting more sunlight than any other community in Canad annually. (https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/estevan). I remember having to ride my motorcycle on a straight highway in Saskatchewan for hundreds of miles at a 60 degree angle because of the wind. So there are opportunities to be had there. 

If I do remember correctly, he did cut income taxes and reduced corporate tax rates. I cannot remember which year but around the turn of the century which I had considered to be highly regressive and unnecessary. However, I also remember that he was in a minority situation then and had formed a coalition with the Liberal MLA's at the time and there were strings attached to the agreement.

Nobody should ever take me personally. It's me. You can listen to Republicans across the border and shake your head. Well, they're here too. In Saskatchewan. Masses of them. All over the place. It's an infestation of obnoxious stupidity. I am just settling down from having one month with them because they open their mouths during elections and voice their opinions. Yes they do. They certainly do.

Misfit wrote:

I am not university educated. I am not dumb either. I don't appreciate the patronizing attitude that I get from some on this board who feel that my words have no value. When I have the very same argument four times with the same person who spews the very same factoids back at me as though the three previous discussions about the topic never happened, my words therefore mean absolutely nothing. They have no value on this board.

I absolutely agree, and I think many on the left (especially those with more formal education and who identify with the professional, rather than the working class) forget. It wasn't university-educated academics who elected the first socialist government in North America. It was average, everyday farmers, soldiers, and labourers. The woke left that looks down on people without formal education forgets this. And speaking of woke:

It's very trendy among educated professionals go on about "human rights," as if there's an inherent, natural connection between formal education and support for human rights. But you're absolutely correct about Saskatchewan being a pioneer in the area of human rights. Not many people realize that the Saskatchewan Bill of Rights actually predates the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Not bad for average, everyday people I say.

Furthermore, on the question of leadership, let's go back to something I said earlier. Remember the issue with the GTH and other corrupt Saskatchewan Party dealings, particlarly in the city of Regina? Where was Meili on that? He basically farmed that out to his Regina-area MLAs and let them to the heavy lifting on that. It's true that you want to give your MLAs some room to shine in their critic roles and a chance to go after the government on their specific areas of expertise. But something that big has to be dealt with by the leader directly. Let's move eastward to Manitoba. Wab Kinew is doing his job as an Opposition leader, he actually led the NDP to an increase in seats here (something the NDP in Saskatchewan has never achieved in a general election since 2003) and the gap between the NDP and PCs in Manitoba is much smaller than the gap between the NDP and the Saskatchewan Party. If Pallister was dealing with the same kind of scandals that the Saskatchewan Party is, you can bet that Kinew himself would be all over that.

The Saskatchewan NDP needs to reassess its campaign strategy for the future, including how to shift to renewable resources as global warming increasing hits home. 

As in previous elections, the NDP "strategists" chose to take the low, so-called "safe" road and discourage discussion of the climate crisis or Saskatchewan having the country's highest per-capita carbon emissions. The leaders' debate, with no mention of climate, was in stark contrast to the B.C. one, which rationally discussed carbon pricing.

The Saskatchewan debate was also in sharp contrast to the last U.S. presidential debate where Democrat Joe Biden was forthright that the climate crisis was "an existential threat" and that there had to be a quick transition away from fossil fuels.  ...

There were no nuances when NDP Leader Ryan Meili stated provincial party policy: the NDP supported energy workers and getting our resources to market, period! ...

Meili won the leadership largely by recruiting young members. Saskatchewan has more millennials than baby boomers, so appealing to this upcoming generation would seem a good long-term coalition-building strategy. 

Millennials, however, are deeply concerned about both climate and inequality -- the realities staring them in the face. Yet the Sask. NDP consistently turns its head from the challenges that the climate crisis poses for the resource dependent Saskatchewan economy, which past NDP governments, along with the Sask. party, helped to build.

The wider public may end up a little perplexed about the election outcome. An Angus Reid poll taken just before October 26 showed that "half of voters are looking for a third option." And also, that "almost half also feel the Sask. party majorities have been too large." ...

Meili's performance debating Premier Scott Moe, who sometimes stumbles on his words, was above expectation. He was passionate about the minimum wage and about the suicide crisis among northern Indigenous youth. 

There was, however, no drilling down on any realities. No mention that Saskatchewan has the highest domestic homicide and Indigenous incarceration rate of any province, and Canada's highest per-capita carbon footprint.

Meili had several chances to push back on the Sask. party's neo-liberal, self-regulation, COVID "strategy." Saskatchewan's infection rate is steadily rising.  ...

If the Democrats take back the White House, the Keystone pipeline will again go on the chopping block. I suspect that, with his serious carbon addiction, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney privately hopes for a Trump victory. What do the Sask. NDP stalwarts really want? ...

The Western "separatists" got nearly three per cent of the vote, but they received as much as 20 per cent in some of the 17 ridings where they ran. In his victory speech, Scott Moe appealed to them as he defended pipelines and railed against the carbon tax. 

The Greens received below three per cent but had slightly higher support in a few ridings. If you compare their three per cent to the B.C. Greens getting 15 per cent, and the Saskatchewan NDP losing so badly while the B.C. NDP had such a huge victory, you can see what is occurring in carbon-blind Saskatchewan. ...

Polling today shows shifting public opinion on energy and climate, on which the NDP could build. A Vote Compass survey of Saskatchewan residents just prior to the election found that not only did 70 per cent want more renewable energy, but 58 per cent wanted more action to reduce greenhouse gases. 

Yet climate was never really discussed. The politicians and mainstream media, including Postmedia and the CBC, have mirrored each other in this neglect.

The Sask. NDP clearly does not yet know how to message about these grave matters. Their timid policies on renewable energy, energy efficiency and wetland protection were one-dimensional and not framed within the broader context of the global climate crisis. 

Were there a stronger Green party that threatened to take votes from the NDP, you might see more in-depth policy and more insight about our collective interdependence with the health of the natural world. ...

The Saskatchewan NDP has had the opportunity to press the restart button and commit to building a progressive coalition. ...

The party might have been able to start building back some solid support, had it been ready with a coherent alternative vision that honestly faced the challenges of the climate crisis for our carbon-intensive economy, and laid out a just transition for working people.  ...

The only way to build a progressive coalition big enough to outvote the united right is to do it. Even in this wasteland of conservative, fossil-fuel politics, which at times seems to be in a different country, the future is not going to look like the past.

No one says this will be easy. When the Sask. party held its 2018 leadership convention to replace Brad Wall, it had just over 27,000 members. This wasn't close to the more than 60,000 members in the NDP during the 1962 Medicare crisis. Or even to the 46,000 NDP members still reported in 1991. But it was much larger than the 8,000 NDP members left in 2012. 

If the NDP ever wants to govern Saskatchewan again it will have to start to take the "high road," and to honestly and assertively build a new coalition that can embrace the future. Putting "people first" isn't going to ring true without confronting the deeper crisis head on. 

Perhaps by keeping the party from slipping into complete oblivion, Meili and his supporters may have provided an interlude to allow the party to embark on this new path before it is too late. Based on all the lost opportunities, and the conditioned political habits over recent decades, I would not hold my breath.

https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2020/10/saskatchewan-nd...

This part of the article above is why the Sask NDP is not running elections that are in touch with the people they need to reach. The NDP wins seats on the ground and you can't do that if you can't even recruit members.

No one says this will be easy. When the Sask. party held its 2018 leadership convention to replace Brad Wall, it had just over 27,000 members. This wasn't close to the more than 60,000 members in the NDP during the 1962 Medicare crisis. Or even to the 46,000 NDP members still reported in 1991. But it was much larger than the 8,000 NDP members left in 2012. 

The NDP needs to spend a couple of years trying to build an active membership. But to do that they need to present themselves as a viable option by attracting people with the potential to be quality candidates in most if not all ridings and having them out in the community openly preaching NDP policies. Elections can be won on the ground but it takes people power. The fact that the party membership has declined to under 9,000 is the problem not a symptom. The BC NDP had over 12,000 people donate to them from July to the end of September and they out fund raised the BC Liberal's. I wonder how many people sent money into the Sask NDP leading up to the election?

Ryan Meili continues to prove his uselessness:

Quote:

Saskatchewan's premier and health minister say it would be inappropriate for them to tour intensive care units in Regina hospitals after the Opposition requested they witness first-hand the pressures health-care workers are facing in treating a surge of patients infected with COVID-19.

Late last week, the Saskatchewan Health Authority said it was doubling up COVID-19 patients in rooms and adding more beds as Regina ICUs exceeded their initial capacity.

On Monday in the legislative assembly, Saskatchewan NDP Leader Ryan Meili invited Premier Scott Moe to don some personal protective equipment so they could "tour our struggling ICUs together."

Meili, who has been inside an ICU for personal reasons, said health-care workers feel frustrated and unheard by the government.

"It's easy to make decisions from an ivory tower when you have no idea what's happening on the front lines," Meili said.

So what would a tour of the ICUs accomplish anyways? We already know that they have covid patients in them. As for sympathy for front line workers? They need to be able to do their jobs, and having politicians and media parade around the rooms interferes with that.

Finally, to have politicians and media walk around the ICUs is an insult to people who have been denied the ability to be close to their loved ones who have suffered from covid, or who have been denied access to any of their close relatives for bullshit reasons.

Not that Moe is my cup of tea, but the people of Saskatchewan made the right call by not giving Meili or his party any more influence than they already have. Please, stick a fork in the Saskatchewan NDP. It is done.