On political investments

Yes, there's plenty of reason for snark in response to the news that the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce will be (a) pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into this fall's provincial election campaign, and (b) pretending not to be doing so on behalf of the Saskatchewan Party. But let's focus instead on a couple of more substantive points we can take from the intervention.

To start with: despite what some commentators may be spouting, the corporate sector doesn't believe for a second that the election results are a foregone conclusion. And on that point, we should be eager to prove it right.

But at the same time, it's only looking to take in embarrassingly small amounts of money into the campaign compared to the freebies handed out by the Wall government. Never mind the larger-scale goodies ranging from the hundreds of millions of dollars (head office tax incentives, private power generation contracts) to potentially the billions (resource revenues); even the highest suggested donation level instead looks to be for a tiny fraction of the money Wall has handed out in the past just to have selected industries write their wish lists.

In other words, Saskatchewan's business sector is apparently under the impression that the province's voters can be bought off for a pittance. And there, it's well worth working to prove it wrong.