Cooperative effort

It's no great surprise, but Jack Layton is on side with Saskatchewan's Raise a Flag campaign:

Federal NDP leader Jack Layton is backing Saskatchewan's push for an equalization side-deal from Ottawa.

Premier Lorne Calvert is currently running an ad campaign that urges the federal government to exclude Saskatchewan's skyrocketing resource revenues from the equalization formula...

In a campaign-style speech at the Saskatchewan NDP convention today, Layton praised Calvert's campaign.

He says the equalization formula needs to be fixed and, in the interim, Saskatchewan should be given some sort of deal out of fairness.

Now this campaign has turned into one involving both good politics and good policy. It would be all the better if the campaign seemed likely to lead to real change before the upcoming election. But at the very least, the failure of the Liberals (and Goodale in particular) to respond to Saskatchewan's reasonable claim to keep its resource revenue should help to push a few more votes from the Libs to the NDP. And that could work wonders in the seats that went narrowly to the Cons last time out.