On public goods

While the Sowing the Seeds campaign looks to encourage a broader dialogue about the role of government in the Saskatchewan NDP leadership campaign, Dwain Lingenfelter has unveiled what looks to be one of his more interesting policy planks which may raise many of the same issues.

Not that "restoring the mandate of SaskEnergy" sounds particularly novel on its face - and indeed Lingenfelter seems to go out of his way to tie the measure to past practice as much as to future planning. But the question of how Crown resources can best be used for the public good is undoubtedly an important one:

SaskEnergy doesn’t own any natural gas reserves. It buys all of its supplies on the open market at the going price. The Devine government’s privatization of these natural gas reserves was driven more by right-wing ideology than common sense. They left our province forced to buy back our own natural gas at the going world price in order to supply our homes, businesses, and institutions with the fuel needed for heating, power generation, and industrial processes.

A province with abundant reserves of natural gas should be able to use that natural bounty as a strategic advantage in economic development and to shield its people from frequent spikes in the world market price. We can’t do that in Saskatchewan today, because we no longer own any natural gas reserves.
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Each year, a portion of the utility’s budget could be set aside for the purchase of natural gas rights from the Crown, putting this public company on the same footing as any other private sector company when searching for and developing natural gas reserves. If the opportunity presented itself, SaskEnergy could even pursue the purchase of existing reserves on the open market. The public utility could pursue these opportunities on its own or in partnership with other companies. The Wall government and some of its supporters in the media have denounced this concept as “socialism”. I call it competition; something I thought the Wall government and its friends in the large energy companies believed in. Perhaps the Wall government chooses not to believe in competition when it might actually benefit the public?
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If the people of Saskatchewan own the natural resource, why can’t the people of Saskatchewan benefit from that ownership with lower prices? If energy pricing will be a significant determinant of future economic growth and prosperity, why can’t the people of Saskatchewan use their ownership of this resource to encourage economic growth and prosperity through lower energy costs?

It's particularly positive to see Lingenfelter taking up a message which I've thought has been woefully underused. While the Sask Party has pretended for years that the public sector should flee from any sector of the economy where it might compete with any private actors, it makes all the sense in the world to recognize that competition between public and private can be an entirely appropriate option in some areas to determine which actually is more efficient. And the fact that Lingenfelter is raising that prospect in the energy sector would seem to open the door to a far more wide-ranging discussion.

Mind you, Lingenfelter himself seems to be hesitant to take that conversation beyond the natural resource sector. But there's no reason why similar principles can't be applied to other areas. And indeed some compelling arguments can probably made that there are even greater competitive opportunities to provide a counterweight in areas where current private-sector practices tend to produce anti-competitive results. (Ryan Meili has already highlighted one of those with his SaskPharm proposal, while my suspicion is that agricultural research may hold equal potential for government investment to both lower costs within the province and create profit opportunities abroad.)

Whatever one's preferred area for public-sector development, though, it's a necessary first step to start breaking the current taboo against any such proposals. And if even the candidate branded as the most business-friendly in the leadership race is willing to speak up for public investment, then the chances of making progress look far better than they would have otherwise.