When you paint yourself into a financial corner which leaves you having to issue one of the most mean-spirited provincial budgets in recent memory, you have some rebuilding to do to gain the confidence of the electorate you once had.
That is clearly the situation the Saskatchewan Party is in, and they are at least making a run at cosmetically refreshing their party.
The biggest move of course is giving the party what they hope will be an eye-catching new hat.
Premier, and party leader Brad Wall has decided not to carry the party colours into another election, an election where victory will be harder to achieve based on an increasingly tarnished resume.
Any long serving government tends to have its share of warts and wrinkles starting to show, but in the case of the Saskatchewan Party there are a couple of doozies.
You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who wasn’t left at least slightly miffed after the last budget, whether it was users of the STC bus lines, anyone going to pay their insurance premiums and finding the provincial sales tax added (so much for the family budget), and of course anyone property owner in a Saskatchewan city paying their taxes. Those taxes climbed in large part due to losses in funding from the province.
Then there is the swirl of controversy whipping around MLS Bill Boyd, ranging from him facing three charges under the Environmental Management and Protection Act, 2010 and another under the Wildlife Habitat Protection Act, to the dealings surrounding the Global Transportation Hub (GTH).
So the Saskatchewan Party will hope a new leader provides a blush of freshness.
But the field are all party of the current government at its highest levels, so the freshness may be limited.
The effort of renewal is also including the Saskatchewan Party trying to show some humility if you take the positive view, or are in retreat of bad decisions if you take a different view on things.
The change of direction included some funding cuts made in the budget, the money for Saskatchewan libraries coming to mind, and most recently a seeming step back on legislation to allow a significant sell-off of some of the province’s Crowns.
Recently, Wall said the government is reconsidering legislation that would allow up to 49 per cent of a Crown corporation to be sold without that being considered privatization.
The Premier cited public feedback for the reconsideration of the legislation, which again can be seen as a positive because they listened, or as a negative in the sense they were so out-of-touch with the people’s wishes to even go down that road.
In the end, one is left with a sense it’s a Saskatchewan Party which has looked in the mirror, seen the impact of age on its visage, and is now busy applying whatever creams they can find to make their smile look better for the next provincial election.
