I don’t believe in making new year’s resolutions.
It’s not that I believe I don’t need to change. I do. While I’m a perfectionist (on the list of faults to have, perfectionism is probably one of the better ones), I’m not going to lie and tell you that I’m perfect.
I want to be perfect, and I aim to be perfect, even though I’ll never get there.
But the reason I don’t believe in new year’s resolutions is because people set out to make a change on New Year’s Day, and they follow through on that change for a few weeks, but they have a couple of slip-ups, or the hectic pace of life gets in the way, and the resolution quickly becomes a fading memory.
For me, I don’t need it to be Jan. 1 to set out for that change. It can happen on April 14, July 10 or Oct. 28. And I’ve never heard of an Oct. 28 resolution that someone is eager to keep.
But there are some people who do need to make new year’s resolutions.
U.S. President Donald Trump, for example, could resolve to use Twitter less, or to stop insulting people, or to stop lying. Those would top the list of self-improvement initiatives for the U.S. commander in chief. But asking Trump to be honest, to not be a bully, or to drop Twitter, would be like asking a diehard Saskatchewan Roughriders fan to don a Winnipeg Blue Bombers jersey on Labour Day at Mosaic Stadium.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau could resolve to be the leader that Canadians need him to be. Act like the prime minister of one of the most powerful, respected nations on the planet, and leave the Mr. Dressup antics to someone else. Strive to balance the budget, work to rebuild relationships with disenchanted Western Canadians, and rediscover the magic of the 2015 election campaign, when he was nearly flawless, and won a majority government that seemed beyond his grasp just a few weeks earlier.
Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer needs to resolve to come up with the right strategy to defeat Trudeau this October. He has a realistic shot of becoming prime minister in the next election. When Scheer was elected Tory leader in May 2017, it didn’t seem realistic. Trudeau’s still the one to beat, but if he continues to bungle his way through running the country, and if Scheer can find the message and the platform that resonates with Canadians, he might find himself residing in the prime minister’s quarters before the end of this year.
For federal New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh, he can only have one resolution: get elected to the House of Commons before the next federal election. The party has quickly become a diminishing return under his leadership, in large part because he’s not an MP. It’s been more than a year since he became the NDP leader; he should have been elected as an MP in 2018, not early in 2019.
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe should be pretty happy with where he’s at, with a 57 per cent approval rating that’s tied for the best in the country. That’s impressive when you consider he’s at the helm of a government that’s been in power since 2007.
What I’d like to see for him is more of a wish than a resolution: greater attention to Saskatchewan when it comes to the energy issues facing this country. If you listen to a lot of people talk, you’d swear that the country’s oil and gas reserves ended at the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. They don’t. We’re facing many of the same issues as Alberta, but much of the attention is usually dedicated to our neighbours to the west.
A balanced budget in 2019-20 would also be nice. The premier has vowed to do just that; we’ll see if it happens.
For those in the energy sector, they need to resolve to keep fighting. They need to keep fighting for pipelines, keep fighting against the carbon tax, and keep trying to educate people about the realities of the energy sector, even though their needs will fall of deaf ears.
As for our community, and other communities surrounding Estevan, the resolution needs to be to completely rethink the Estevan area. Units 4 and 5 at the Boundary Dam are going to close, likely sooner rather than later. When they shut down, jobs will be lost.
SaskPower says they won’t be cutting jobs, but SaskPower employees might have to leave the city. And you can expect there will be jobs lost at the local coal mines, and jobs lost in the community due to the indirect spinoff.
We’re all going to lose in this situation. The next few years are not going to be an easy time for our city.
Hopefully economic development co-ordinator Dwight “Fitz” Bramble is up to the challenge, because he’s going to be a very important person moving forward.
