Mandryk: Pre-campaign has lots of thunder but no big lightning strike

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There was a bit more pre-election thunder in Saskatchewan last week, but still no eye-popping lightning strikes.

Seemingly lost on the parties is the value of landing that first big bolt.

Sure, Leader Carla Beck’s NDP has made some noise with her party strategy of daily announcing a few broad-based promises with a few social-program-based ones.

Beck ended the week on Friday with a bit of a rumble in health care, revealing results from Opposition freedom of information requests showing “more than 200,000 hours, or 8,613 days, of health-care blackouts between Aug. 1, 2019, and May 10, 2024 at 58 hospitals and health centres across the province.”

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It’s good opposition fodder, but it doesn’t tell voters much that they didn’t already know, or — more importantly — offer many ways the NDP would fix this mess.

However, the NDP have offered some fixes for other things ailing the province: $2 billion more in the education budget in the next four years; a new high school for White City; a new elementary school in Moose Jaw; a new healthy school food program that will start with $10 million a year and ramp up to $55.5 million in the fourth year of an NDP government; a new Landlord and Tenants Protection Act to guard against excessive rent hikes; make all vacant provincial housing units available within four years by reversing the $40 million cut to the renovation budget, with a a target of 500 units ready for occupancy in the first year of an NDP government.

And then there’s the more broad-based promises that may have generic appeal to a wider swath of Saskatchewan: taking the provincial sales tax off groceries (we mostly don’t pay PST on non-junk food, but we do for some weird things like table-ready rotisserie chicken or pre-made sandwiches you’d buy in a grocery store); an immediate lifting of the provincial tax for six months, allegedly saving families $350, and repealing the PST on children’s clothing, which would be a $20-million annual hit to budget coffers.

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Beck also now supports ending the federal carbon tax — now that federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh also advocates this. It’s unknown how that’s going over with those in her party (a few candidates included) who have seen carbon pricing as the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

It also might not go over big with lower-income families and poorer singles (traditionally, also NDP supporters) who get more from the federal carbon rebate than they spend in gas tax.

That said, there’s no denying that the NDP has already promised a lot — just not anything that’s either surprising (most NDP promises stem from its criticism of the Sask. Party government these past four years) or capable of creating the kind of buzz a trailing opposition party needs.

Then again, neither has the Premier Scott Moe’s Sask. Party.

We were also awash in governing party commitments — albeit, in the form of a daily barrage of press releases ranging from the 80-per-cent complete parkade at the Regina General Hospital to the 25-per-cent complete new foyer at St. Paul’s Hospital in Saskatoon.

It’s safe to say Moe’s announcements are a mere fraction of Beck’s … albeit they include a new high school in east Regina, a policing announcement in Weyburn, a private-company forestry announcement in Prince Albert and a hospital announcement in Rosthern, which all seem to be about shoring up the vote where the Sask. Party believes it needs to do so.

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But as with the NDP, none of these are the kind of thunder claps that knock you out of bed at night. Someone surely needs to be the first to make some real noise.

Rather unbelievably, both Moe and Beck have made cost of living an issue, but neither is yet willing to make some real noise by reducing the six-per-cent PST.

We are now just two weeks away from the election call.

And the longer either major party goes without grabbing the public’s attention, the easier it will be to eventually steal all the thunder.

Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

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