SASKATOON - We are now a couple of weeks into this 2025 Federal election campaign, and the difference from last fall’s provincial and municipal election campaigning has been stark.
Last fall by this point in the provincial election, there was plenty of campaign activity happening. Candidates were all in place, media availabilities were happening every day in the province, and there were lots of signs up. Even at the municipal level, there were several declared candidates for Mayor, council and school boards, several all-candidates meetings were planned, and lots of signs were up in the major cities. Those even included billboards from third-party organizations looking to influence the election.
But if you looked around Saskatchewan, the sense one got was of a federal election campaign that has barely even started. There was plenty of talk about the Trump tariffs and the impacts on China's tariffs on canola, and several campaign offices are now open and door-to-door canvassing is on. But there isn't yet the abundance of signs up compared to the glut seen in the major cities last fall.
Parties were still scrambling to get all their candidates in place and even now there are parts in the province where voters are still in the dark on who might be challenging the local incumbents.
What’s more, none of the federal party leaders have yet made it to Saskatchewan during the federal campaign.
Mark Carney had visited the province during his Liberal leadership campaign, but has concentrated on eastern Canada for the most part since the writ drop with only occasional trips out West. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has concentrated on huge rallies in targeted swing ridings in southern Ontario as well as in BC, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.
The closest either of them have been to Saskatchewan this election cycle has been to Winnipeg, one province over, where a number of seats are expected to be in play.
This is indicative of what is going on in the larger election race. At the moment Saskatchewan doesn’t appear to be a major battleground area compared to the rest of the country.
At this moment, the Conservatives appear poised to once again dominate the seat count out of Saskatchewan as they have for years. Since 2004, the party’s seat count has ranged from a low of 10 in 2015, to highs of a clean-sweep 14 seats in 2019 and 2021.
The betting is that the Conservatives will once again dominate the rural areas, but as usual their main challenges will come in the North and in the urban seats in Regina and Saskatoon that have typically produced the province’s tightest races at the federal level.
In this election, the Liberals are looking to crack through and win a seat, or seats, for the first time in 2015. The best Liberal hope in the province appears to be the northern riding of Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River, where Liberal Buckley Belanger is expected to be in a battle with Conservative candidate and former Sask Party MLA Jim Lemaigre.
Their other main target is Regina-Wascana where former provincial Liberal leader Jeffrey Walters is trying to upset Conservative incumbent Michael Kram. That seat was held for years by former Liberal cabinet minister Ralph Goodale before Kram won it in 2019.
The Liberals appear to have high hopes of a strong showing especially in the major cities of Regina and Saskatoon. Whether that translates to seats remains to be seen, as the Conservatives remain the favorites to hold onto the seats in the larger centres in Saskatchewan.
The other story to watch is the New Democrats. Unlike the provincial campaign which saw Carla Beck and the provincial NDP pull off a sweep of Regina and near-sweep of Saskatoon, things seem less promising for the NDP federally after two elections in a row in which the party has been shut out.
During the provincial race, the NDP had all their candidates in place before the writ even dropped. But the snap election call left the federal NDP scrambling in the province to nominate candidates. Even in traditionally strong areas such as Regina, the NDP has been late in getting candidates in place.
At the national level, the New Democrats have faced money and organizational challenges and polling numbers have been in the single digits. Party leader Jagmeet Singh has so far been concentrating his efforts on the party’s traditional areas of support in southern Ontario and BC.
One might expect Singh, who has been no stranger to Saskatchewan, to put in an appearance as he did twice during the 2021 campaign. Local Conservatives and Liberals also are eagerly awaiting appearances by their leaders, but there is no word on when that might happen.
One question is whether Maxime Bernier, leader of the PPC, might venture into Saskatchewan as he had during the 2021 campaign. During that COVID-era campaign Bernier notoriously held his election night event in Saskatoon with widespread reports of COVID-19 restrictions being flouted.
It does not seem likely that Bernier will be in Saskatoon again on Election Night, but we shall watch to see if he does pay a return visit during the campaign with a large number of PPC candidates set to be on the ballot in the province.
