It's the New Year, and as is typical of the news business, a lot of media pundits are busy offering their predictions of what 2011 will bring.
Fortunately, those of us who follow politics in Saskatchewan know what 2011 will bring. Thanks to legislation, we have fixed election dates for provincial elections. We're looking at the calendar, and holy smokes! The next provincial election is set for Nov.7, 2011! Has it been four years already?
The provincial election should be interesting - but then again, it might not. There's a big question about whether voters will be interested in a late fall campaign, given that November is playoff time in the Canadian Football League.
Heck, I remember what happened in 2007. That election happened in the middle of the Saskatchewan Roughriders' run to the Grey Cup. More people cared about whether the Riders would win the cup than about whether Brad Wall would become premier.
The 2011 election promises to be interesting in at least one respect. At least one Saskatchewan Roughrider player, Gene Makowsky, is likely to be juggling running for the Saskatchewan Party with competing down the stretch of the CFL season. You can bet the sitting incumbent in Regina Dewdney, the NDP's Kevin Yates, will try to throw the kitchen sink at him during the election.
The tough thing for Makowsky is that he'll have to skip out on door-to-door campaigning on Roughrider game days. But it's every bit a disadvantage to Yates as it is to Makowsky. Imagine the reaction Yates will get at the door on game days. The likely response he'll get is: "Not now, you fool! I'm watching the Rider game!"
Guess who they'll see on TV? Why, you guessed it: Gene Makowsky! And he didn't even need to pay for the ad.
At the moment Makowsky's involvement is the main source of excitement with the 2011 provincial election. The polls have the Saskatchewan Party riding high in public opinion at the moment. By-election results in the province since 2007 bear out this trend. The Saskatchewan Party has gained ground in every riding where they contested a by-election. Even in seats the NDP has won, the results have been much closer than during the last general election.
If the trend continues, we could be in store for a dull election night this fall, with a lot of familiar names going back to the legislature and a lot of New Democrats sporting some long faces.
Things could change, but right now the premier is just too popular - whether it's on the PotashCorp takeover fight, or MS treatment, or other issues. From the looks of things, Brad Wall likes being popular. He hasn't shown much inclination towards bringing in policies that might incite outrage from the masses. For that reason, it looks like tough sledding ahead for opposition parties looking for headway leading up to the election.
Now, here's another consideration. We know we are in for a provincial election. Several candidates are already in place and the "political machines" are all gearing up for the big provincial vote in the Battlefords, in Cut Knife-Turtleford, and elsewhere.
It may not be the only election in 2011. Our local MP Gerry Ritz could well hit the hustings, too. In fact, that federal vote could happen sooner than the provincial one.
The last federal election was in October 2008. At the time, Stephen Harper's Conservative government had been in office roughly two years and nine months, an extremely long tenure for a minority Parliament. The current minority Parliament has lasted nearly two years and three months, also a long time. So the end could be closer than we realize.
The federal budget is coming this spring and the expectation is finance minister Jim Flaherty is going to deliver a restrained "bad news" budget to get the deficit under control.
Such a budget surely will provoke howls again from the NDP and Bloc Quebecois, but that's nothing new. The question is whether the opposition Liberals will back down on an election and let Harper off the hook yet again.
You have to think at some point the pressure will be on Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff to stand his ground and pull the trigger on Harper. The Liberals' tendency towards backing down at budget time is getting to be an image problem for them. Besides, rank-and-file Liberals surely are fed up with propping up Harper's government. You can only hold your nose for so long.
If the Liberals chicken out again on forcing an election, and the government survives beyond the spring, all bets are off about the political scene in Ottawa. The door could be wide open for a big shocker: the prime minister could choose the summer to pack it in.
It makes sense, given the number of contemporary Canadian politicians including premiers like Gordon Campbell, Gary Doer and Danny Williams, who have left the scene in recent months. There have been more rumors circulating this past year - coming mainly from political pundits - about Harper possibly departing politics so he can finally write a book about the history of hockey.
He's bound to leave one of these days. Whether it is this year remains to be seen. It seems the more likely scenario is for Harper to be forced into an early election, and who knows what could result from that. We could see some other party leaders leaving instead.
You want a prediction on what will happen in 2011? Here's my forecast: the Riders will win the Grey Cup.
There, I wiggled my way out of that one.
