It's hard not to notice the countless occasions in my 30-plus years of covering politics in this province when Saskatchewan people were a little overly sensitive about how others view them.
Perhaps it has been fostered by the decades of people leaving here for greener pastures elsewhere. But Saskatchewan people truly bristle at the notion that somehow they can't or shouldn't compete on the national or world stage.
It is for that reason that a recent story in the Toronto Star about Premier Brad Wall spending some $3 million in the last five years on a Washington-based law firm to lobby on behalf of the province received the reaction it has.
Admittedly, much in the Toronto Star was valid examination of this policy although, there was also a lot in the story that wasn't all that valid as well.
One valid point is questioning the wisdom of hiring the largely Republican-supporting Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough that employs former U.S. ambassador to Canada David Wilkins to make Saskatchewan's case to the very Democratic Barack Obama White House.
The NDP Opposition was quick to jump on this, demanding to know what taxpayers were getting for this "massive price tag" when it seems the law firm has actually done "very little."
NDP leader Cam Broten pointed to five months in 2013 when there was no record of work done to maintain the law firm's $400,000-a-year retainer. And the NDP was also quick to repeat accusations in the Star story that politicians who met with Wall happened to receive political donations from the law firm.
But Wilkins was equally quick to issue a statement after the Toronto Star story, stating political contributions made by his firm were determined "solely by the timing of a fundraising event and have nothing whatsoever to do with any meetings in Washington."
The former ambassador further explained that any contributions made by his firm "must be approved by a five-person committee" and are "attached to a specific fundraising event."
Contributions do not exceed $1,000 unless the in-house committee approves a larger sum, he added.
Yes, the U.S. governance system can be a messy one - especially when it comes to things like donations and access to the movers and shakers in Washington.
And it`s pretty easy to find people to agree that Saskatchewan tax dollars are better spent on things like roads, schools and hospitals.
But while that is all well and good to say, what happens in Washington and the U.S. often does have a big impact on our life here - be it approval of the Keystone XL pipeline or lobbying against country of origin labelling on beef.
Certainly, the previous NDP government had no qualms about lobbying Washington and elsewhere when rural Saskatchewan saw the U.S. border shut down because of a couple of remote cases of BSE where the product didn`t even make it to the shelves. And given that much of the BSE issue was really about American ranchers not wanting Canadian beef competition, the NDP had a legitimate reason to lobby Washington.
So would that lobbying money have been better spent on roads, schools and hospitals back home? Or had the NDP had better contacts in the U.S., could we have ended the BSE boycott sooner?
But while one might expect such gamesmanship in opposition politics, what might be even more irksome today is the tone of the Toronto Star story that talks of a premier from a place "most Americans have never heard of" rubbing shoulders in Washington.
Essentially, what the article seems to suggest is that it's laughable that little ol' Saskatchewan should be spending money to lobby for its oil and trade interests.
At the risk of sounding as overly sensitive as well, it's all a little insulting.
Maybe we're not quite the backwater that Toronto seems to think we are.
