To compare Premier Brad Wall’s Saskatchewan Party government with that of Premier Grant Devine’s Progressive Conservatives is damning, largely politically motivated and mostly inaccurate.
While both were right-wing, benefited from a rural base and even enjoyed some of the same characters and supporters, there are dramatic differences.
The Devine government is firmly established as one of the worst in Canadian history.
Democratically speaking, the PCs allowed voters in Souris-Cannington, Indian Head-Wolseley, Turtleford and Qu’Appelle-Lumsden to go without representation for longer than any others in Canadian in history. They stretched their last mandate past the five-year mark and didn’t even pass a budget in the last year of that mandate.
It was a government plagued with scandals, including cushy government jobs to partisans (even sending out notices to party supporters that their kids would be hired for summer jobs) and Sedco loans to supporters, ministers and even their children.
Controversial ministerial resignations/firings were common, including Colin Thatcher’s in the wake of his ex-wife’s murder. Thatcher would later be charged and convicted.
And then there was the great caucus communication allowance scandal that produced 19 charges (16 against MLAs; three against caucus employees) that resulted in 14 criminal convictions (12 MLAs and two caucus staff).
Short of Serge LeClerc — who resigned in the wake of controversy for allegedly using marijuana and cocaine — Wall has avoided scandals. No ministers have resigned in shame and we now have set election dates.
Wall’s government has engaged in patronage, but nothing close to the Devine year.
In fact, one might argue that Wall’s administration has a better moral record than the previous NDP government.
However, the ever-lasting impact of the Devine PCs was its fiscal incompetence — 10 consecutive deficit budgets that increased provincial public debt by roughly a billion dollars a year.
It is this legacy from which Wall and his former PC counterparts in the Sask. Party have most tried to distance themselves from.
And with record revenue in its first full year of government in 2008-09, it looked like Wall and company were going to put more distance between themselves and the financial incompetence legacy than they had between themselves and the old PCs reputation of corruption.
But there are now big problems for Wall in making the case that Sask. Party is completely unlike the old Tory government when it comes to running up deficits.
At the annual Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) gathering in Regina last week, Wall announced both the current 2015-16 budget and the 2016-17 budget (the one the Sask. Party will present, presuming it wins the April 4 vote) will be deficit budgets.
Admittedly, we are nowhere close to the 1980s and early 1990s when Saskatchewan had 12 straight deficits from 1982 to 1994 — 10 representing every year of the PC administration and two by the Roy Romanow NDP government while cleaning up the mess.
Nor is it even yet as bad as six deficits we had in 21 years between the end of 12-year deficit streak and Wall’s announcement of the 2015-16 deficit.
Those deficits came in three-year streaks. Under Lorne Calvert’s NDP government there were consecutive deficits in 2001-02 ($483 million), 2002-03 ($654 million) and 2003-04 ($147 million).
And Wall’s Sask. Party ran up consecutive deficits in 2009-10 ($409 million), 2010-11 ($13 million) and 2011-12 ($105 million).
So here’s what disconcerting about Wall’s deficit announcement:
Deficits are habit-forming, usually coming in bunches.
It took the PC and NDP governments 12 years to break the deficit cycle. And we continue to pay those for those deficits via interest payments.
Second, presuming Wall’s government does run up a deficit in 2016-17, it will represent five deficit budgets in nine years of governing.
It’s not as Devine’s record, but it’s not one to be proud of.
Murray Mandryk has been covering provincial politics for over 22 years.
