How bizarre

A tweet responding to this week's column post raises a point worth plenty more discussion. So let's go into a bit more detail about how the Sask Party's response to should indeed be considered utterly bizarre - even if it may reflect standard operating procedure for right-wing political parties.

By any reasonable account, the most important development in the decision released Monday was the finding that the Sask Party's entire essential services bill was unconstitutional and thus had to be struck down. And after a couple of days of criticism from enough media outlets, even Brad Wall had to acknowledge that the decision reflected real failings on the part of his government.

Unfortunately, though, anybody reading the Saskatchewan Party's press release in hopes of figuring out what was happening in the province would completely miss that point.

Instead, the finding that the Sask Party's actual bill was found to be unconstitutional is mentioned once, then buried under an avalanche of "commitment to essential services". A passage from Mr. Justice Ball suggesting that essential services legislation could be valid if (unlike the Sask Party's bill) it involved some reasonable proportionality and dispute mechanism is treated as supporting the position of the same government which was found to have exceeded its authority. And even the one-year delay in implementation of the decision (standard in cases striking down significant legislation) and the fact that another bill met the bare standard of being found constitutionally permissible are somehow presented as victories for the Sask Party.

Now, I don't dispute that such a distortion is standard political operating procedure for parties who combine top-down messaging strategies with utter contempt for their audience. And indeed the Harper Cons do much worse on a daily basis.

But those of us who think public policy should be grounded in reality should indeed consider it bizarre (or worse) whenever we see such ridiculous spin from any government - as we'll never be able to keep our leaders honest in dealing with the public if we come to think it's normal for them to be self-delusional.