Politics & principles

Yesterday, I discussed how the Sask Party's platform on Crown corporations would lead to negative consequences for both the Crowns and the province even if Wall and company stuck to their word. But let's discuss why there's serious reason to doubt the Sask Party's commitment to keeping the Crowns public at all.

Part of the problem lies in the Sask Party's obvious ideological distaste for public-sector economic activity, which is readily visible both in their members' past statements on the subject, and in their desire to eliminate any Crown functions which could seemingly impact the private sector. And that undertone has been the main focus of the NDP's attacks so far.

That said, my suspicion is that the biggest problem is a lack of principle rather than an excess of it.

While Wall's answers may be getting even more abrupt within the campaign, the Sask Party's general comments on keeping Crowns public have been notable for their lack of a principled explanation. Instead of developing any particular reasoning as to the value of public ownership in the limited scope contemplated by their platform, the Sask Party has at best offered vague wording about how Crowns "work for Saskatchewan", and more frequently merely offered a flat denial in order to change the subject.

All of this signals that when it comes to the Crowns, the Sask Party has decided that politics will trump principle. Which seems well and good to the extent that it means denying any intent to privatize the Crowns in order to appear acceptable to voters.

But what happens to that political calculation if the Sask Party then forms government?

It seems to be a foregone conclusion that the Starship Enterprise Saskatchewan would chart a course to privatize what no man has privatized before. And if the Sask Party sees a track record of losing in 2003 in a Crown-based election and winning in 2007 only by changing the subject, then it surely won't want to seek an electoral mandate for privatization (or have to defend the group's conclusions) in 2011.

Moreover, as I noted yesterday, even the Sask Party's existing platform figures to substantially weaken the Crowns. And if a lot of Crown employees recognize that the Sask Party's chains are likely to lead to future decay and job losses, then the issue will once again figure to be a serious source of trouble for Wall down the road.

Faced with those choices, the Sask Party's political nerve centre figures to see at least one more option. Namely, they could privatize as much as they can as quickly as they can, accept the "broken promises" tag that comes with that action (and which will likely attach itself to a new government in any event), shatter one of the NDP's most reliable voting blocs, and hope that by 2011 the issue is far enough in the past to avoid any further harm to the Sask Party.

Note that this third option doesn't even have to be based on a principled dislike of the Crowns (though the Sask Party's stronger ideologues would surely be happy with it). Instead, it only seems logical that a party which treats the Crowns as a damaging issue to be dealt with based on political convenience will want to take a serious look at how to take that issue out of play. And there's certainly no reason to believe that anybody in the Sask Party holds any strong principles which would stop that course of action.

Of course, there's always the chance that a Sask Party government would retreat from the issue. But it seems beyond question that the party's stance on Crowns will continue to be based on what's best for the party's interests, not on any principled view of what's best for the province. And there's serious reason to doubt that the Crowns will survive the Sask Party's calculations.