Tank: Saskatchewan served poorly by all in election campaign

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Regardless of which party or candidates won in Monday’s federal election, you would be challenged to see any way that Saskatchewan emerged as a winner.

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Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre became the last of the three main party leaders to visit the province with a rally Thursday night in Saskatoon and an alleged Friday morning news conference, his last of the campaign.

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Poilievre, whose campaign was marked by his notoriously strictlycontrolled media interactions, failed to field a single question from a Saskatoon news outlet — although he did accept a softball by phone from right-wing Calgary Sun columnist Rick Bell.

Two questions were asked and answered in French, a nod, presumably, to the one per cent of Saskatchewan’s population that speaks the language, the second-lowest in Canada.

At least Poilievre put on a bit of a show; Liberal Leader Mark Carney did not even bother with a performative news conference. Carney bolted Saskatoon after a 14-minute speech on April 9.

Poilievre treated his rally crowd to a 48-minute speech which repeated so many campaign themes that attendees answered his rhetorical questions because they had heard it before.

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Poilievre, Carney and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who did take questions from local reporters during his visit, all visited Saskatoon during the campaign. None bothered with a stop in Regina, even though one of the Queen City ridings is expected to be competitive.

You might have expected campaign events in a city suffering from a staggering drug crisis like Saskatoon — with the fire department alone responding to more than 900 overdoses so far this year — to at least mention the tragedy and promise to do more.

That fits perfectly into Poilievre’s pitch that the Liberals have led Canada into a dire dystopia and simple solutions exist for every complex problem.

But Poilievre made no direct mention of the Saskatoon crisis, only his promises for more addiction treatment beds and life sentences for fentanyl traffickers and producers.

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And Poilievre was too scared of the apparently ravenous Saskatoon media horde to take a question on the tragedy. (Unlike the Liberal and NDP events, none of the Conservative candidates took questions either.)

Even visiting musical acts peruse the local news and try to bond with the crowd, but not these carefully scripted and repetitive campaigns.

Perhaps, though, Poilievre wanted to avoid treading on the toes of his political ally, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, who made the rare move of endorsing the Conservatives in a social media post. So did former Saskatchewan Party premier Brad Wall in a folksy video with soft guitar music in the background.

Poilievre, in turn, praised the “great Scott Moe” and Wall for their fierce opposition to the federal carbon tax. Neither Moe nor Wall attended the rally, but former Saskatchewan premier Grant Devine sat in the second row.

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“We know that Saskatchewan is always ahead of the game,” Poilievre told the cheering crowd. “We should listen to Saskatchewan a little more often in Canada.”

That’s probably not the message Poilievre delivered in Ontario and Quebec.

The Conservative Party estimates 3,500 attended their rally in a warehouse located in as remote a spot in northwest Saskatoon as you can get. That exceeds the 1,250 estimated by the Liberals for the Carney event and the 300 claimed by the NDP for a rally by Singh.

If you care about rally sizes, mark a win for Poilievre, although hundreds raised their hands when he asked if they had already voted. So much for changing minds with a late-campaign stop.

Plus Poilievre handled more deftly the same pro-America twerps that disrupted Carney’s event by screaming “51st state” and brandishing an American flag, when they showed up at Thursday’s rally and yelled “Stop the immigration invasion.”

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Poilievre cleverly, but incorrectly, labelled the disruption “another Liberal stunt” and continued with his speech, while Carney was discombobulated by the interruption.

The Middle East conflict also emerged at Poilievre’s rally, just as it did at Carney’s, with someone screaming and only the word Palestinian was distinguishable.

These disturbances injected at least a little local flavour into highly-staged campaign events designed to play on a national stage while using a Saskatchewan setting as mere background.

Saskatchewan lost long before a single ballot was cast.

Phil Tank is the digital opinion editor at the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

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