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Daniel Westlake, assistant political studies professor at the University of Saskatchewan, talked to Evan Bray about Saskatchewan’s upcoming election and the state of federal politics on Thursday.
Bray: What do you think will unfold provincially when it comes to campaigning and what are some of the platform positions that we’re seeing?
Westlake: There is a fundamental pushing in a couple of different directions. Saskatchewan is a province that tends to lead Conservative, both because its a more rural province and also a little bit better off in a resource economy. But, at the same time, it’s a government that’s in power for quite some time, and that tends to give the Opposition a bit of an advantage.
I think the way the candidates are campaigning follows this, in that you see the NDP trying to hit on issues around affordability, and the teacher’s strike, while the Sask. Party is hitting on things like the carbon tax that speaks to the resource nature of the Saskatchewan economy.
Bray: How much importance is placed on fiscal responsibility heading into election because we’re seeing lots of of funding and spending announcements on on all sides?
Westlake: I think for fiscal responsibility to matter you really have to have a party pushing those types of issues and making it an important part of the campaign. I think what we’re seeing now is that there are issues that parties don’t have a lot of control over that parties want be seen responding to.
Things like cost of living are going matter to voters regardless of what party’s going to talk about them. The pressure’s on parties to talk about spending in ways that will affect cost of living, and when they face those kinds of pressures, I think it’s harder to talk about fiscal responsibility and it tends to fall from the agenda.
Bray: How often do you think voters consider whether or not we can afford to do things when announcements are made about spending?
Westlake: Under current conditions, not very much. If the media is telling stories or writing stories on things like
debt and deficit, then I think it does come into the voters’ minds, but this hasn’t been the case recently. If you go back to the 1990s, there were debates going on at the federal and provincial level about debt and financial sustainability and it was getting a lot of media coverage.
I don’t think that’s the case in this environment, so I wouldn’t expect voters to be thinking about it as much as housing costs or inflation, things voters are going to see in their daily lives regardless of whether they’re paying a lot of attention to political debate.
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Bray: How much do you think the emotional impact from federal politics will play into our provincial election?
Westlake: It will play into it to some degree. There’s a long history, not just in Saskatchewan but in Western Canada, of incumbent premiers running against the federal government, or trying to pretend to run against the federal government, when there’s a Liberal government that’s unpopular here. I expect this would be the case in Saskatchewan in this election.
However, voters can distinguish between federal and provincial politics, and the best evidence of this is the NDP almost always does better in provincial elections in provinces west of Quebec than it does federally. There’s clearly a set of voters here who don’t like the NDP, maybe even don’t like the Liberals federally, but would be comfortable with the NDP provincially. Probably not enough for that on its own to make the NDP win an election
Bray: If you talk to the Sask. Party and the NDP they would consider that it is a two-party race but we have the Sask. United Party which has enough members running in constituencies that they could form government if they were successful in the election and win enough vote. Then you’ve got the Progressive Conservatives and the Buffalo Party. How do those parties factor into this province’s next election?
Westlake: I think at current polling levels, the chance of the Sask United Party winning is quite low and they face the additional hurdle that they’re going to be strongest in places where the Sask Party wins by fairly comfortable margins. We’ve seen, not just in Saskatchewan but really around wealthy democracies, that far-right parties can scare centre-right parties into moving to the right. And I think there’s a good chance that we’ll see that happen, that the Sask. Party, in order to avoid losing votes to Sask United, may shift the platform further to the right than they would have otherwise. I’m not seeing a lot of evidence that Sask. United is going to make an impact in terms of winning seats, but they could shift the nature of party competition and change the way that the Sask. Party campaigns.
Bray: Turning to federal politics. The Conservatives want a snap election because it would likely be quite favourable for them. What do you think the Liberals need to focus on if they have any chance of salvaging seats?
Westlake: I think the main problem for the Liberals is the fundamentals are not in their favour and there’s nothing they can do about it. One of the big issues is the cost of living and housing prices. There’s no way the Liberals can build enough houses to address this issue by the time the next election happens. As best I can tell, the Liberal strategy is hold on for as long as you can and hope something changes, hope an issue pops up or inflation drops enough or cost of living goes down enough that they’re not campaigning in such an unfriendly environment.
This is kind of the reality sometimes in politics. Sometimes there isn’t a strategy that a party can pursue that really outweighs the electoral environment they’re competing in. I think, unfortunately, for the Liberal Party, they’re in a situation where they’ve been in power for quite some time and we’re in a kind of economic environment that is not particularly favourable to incumbents. It’s just a tough spot for them to be in and not much they can do about it.
Bray: The federal NDP tied themselves very closely to the Liberals with the supply and confidence agreement, now ended. Do you expect to see distance the party distance itself further from government?
Westlake: This is the classic problem for a junior partner in the coalition — if you like what the government has done, you reward the larger party. If you don’t like what the government has done, you’re not going to vote for the junior partner in the coalition that kept that government in power.
It’s remarkable that when they broke off the supply and confidence agreement, they didn’t have an issue that they broke it over. I think they’ve got to try to find an issue, find something they can say to voters “we’re going to do this differently,” to make themselves look different. This is going to be a real challenge for the NDP.
Bray: Often, certainly in western Canada, we talk about the Conservatives, the NDP, and the Liberals on a national level but it looks as though the Bloc Québécois are going to play a very important part. What would it look like for western Canada if the bloc was the official opposition?
Westlake: I’m not sure the Bloc is going to be the official Opposition, the Liberals have to drop quite a bit for that to happen. When the Bloc was the official opposition in the early ’90s, in western Canada it was still essentially a Liberal versus Conservative debate. Western issues will remain on the agenda and will still be debated in parliament. For both the Liberals and the NDP, there’s not really a path to government without substantial peace in Quebec so both of those parties are going to have to think carefully about how they keep from losing votes to the Bloc, and also how they might appeal to what we might call soft nationalist voters —voters who are sympathetic to the Bloc but are federalist enough that they could consider voting Liberal or NDP.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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