New column day

Here, on Brad Wall's choice to bring the Southern Strategy north with a dog-whistle appeal to prejudice against First Nations.

For further reading...
- Rick Perlstein puts the Southern Strategy (and Lee Atwater's description of it) in context here. 
- The Saskatchewan Party ad in question is here.
- The NDP's 2011 platform costing is here (PDF), featuring significant investments in housing, health care, child care, full-day kindergarten, tuition relief and other social causes. For those keeping score: total mentions of the beneficiaries of those proposed policies in the Sask Party's 30-second attack ad, zero; total mentions of First Nations, three.
- Meanwhile, the Saskatchewan Party has proudly highlighted its willingness to funnel royalty revenue to Mosaic and PCS. And it's also readily taken credit for general funding streams to municipalities and school boards. Which raises all the more reason to question why First Nations alone are singled out not to receive any share of royalties or other provincial revenues.
- Finally, I'll point back to my earlier post as to why a resource-sharing agreement with First Nations would help to ensure that all levels of government receive a fair return on resources rather than having their royalty rates ground down by extractors threatening to operate in a different jurisdictional structure within Saskatchewan. (Which again figures to be part of Wall's reason for attacking the idea.)