Belabouring the obvious

Speaking of this fall's Saskatchewan election, let's note a remarkable feat of punditry by Murray Mandryk in his latest paean to the Sask Party. Of course it's always the goal of any prognosticator to identify what's inevitably around the corner so as to be able to take credit for predicting it. But Mandryk goes a step further in tying the content which will obviously form part of the NDP's platform into his overarching Always Bad News For Dwain Lingenfelter theme:

It's a task made easier by the utter failure of the Lingenfelter-led NDP to tell us what it is about. For example, if potash mine-expansion credits was such a bad idea, why did its own government implement them? And what would it do with the added revenue?

Failing to define what you stand for in politics simply allows your opponent to do so.

Let's leave aside for the moment the entirely tangential point about the difference in the state of the potash industry and the price of the resource when the current rates were set - which the NDP has indeed pointed to every time they've faced exactly the question he claims has never been answered.

Mandryk presumably knows that the NDP has spent plenty of time discussing its policy and values over the past year. And I highly doubt he's under any illusion that the NDP would forget to highlight its already-documented ideas as to what to do with added resource revenue during the course of the campaign.

Which means that his issue as to the NDP's willingness to define itself seems to be purely a matter of format and timing.

At worst, the NDP has thus far chosen to challenge the Sask Party's general assertion that the province can't even discuss whether resource gains might be shared with the population at large and point to areas demanding improvement, rather than setting out in detail what it will do instead. And there's certainly a strategic debate to be had as to whether that's the ideal strategy.

But it takes far more than a flippant dismissal to determine conclusively that the NDP should have publicized a platform at the earliest opportunity and made the debate one about details long before the election campaign starts. And that's doubly so given the alternative of letting Saskatchewan's citizens imagine and discuss for themselves some of the opportunities which might be available under a fairer royalty system, then incorporating the strongest ideas into its platform to be released for the campaign. Which, needless to say, is a possibility omitted entirely from Mandryk's discussion.

Fortunately, the NDP's position isn't anywhere near as dire as Mandryk's argument by omission would seem to suggest.

Indeed, even the Sask Party's own definition of the debate feeds fairly nicely into a direct clash between Wall's business focus, and the NDP's desire to make sure a fair share of Saskatchewan's resource wealth finds its way to both the province's current citizens and future generations. And since there doesn't seem to be much doubt that the NDP will provide the only viable alternative to the Sask Party on that front, there's still every opportunity to sway voters with that contest of ideas and values this fall.