The sad reality for those who enjoy Saskatchewan politics is that it’s often not really all that enjoyable.
It’s often all about divisive fighting that tears people apart. Maybe some people like that. But that doesn’t seem to be what many of us would characterize as a Saskatchewan value.
Even the topic of Saskatchewan values can be a divisive issue, as we found out in the recent Saskatchewan leadership races.
Just an hour before his leadership win in Regina, new Saskatchewan NDP leader Ryan Meili declared: “New Democratic values, friends, those are Saskatchewan values.”
Really?
Maybe one can attribute some party policies to the collective beliefs of those who support them. But is that really the same as owning the values of a province? Can political parties then claim they have exclusivity to the values of the people they hope to represent?
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In fairness, let’s not just pick on Meili because most every politician has made the same grandiose claim about themselves or their party at one time or the other.
Certainly, the Saskatchewan Party – brazen enough to take the province’s name when four former Progressive Conservative members and four former Liberal MLAs formed this party 20 years ago – has never been shy about claiming to represent the heart and soul of the province.
Perhaps the Sask. Party would like to think that it’s Saskatchewan’s free-enterprise, independent spirit that it purports to represent or maybe the NDP would have us believe it lays claim to caring, sharing and co-operative nature of so many of us.
But the truth be told, people and their value systems are more complex than that.
You can be a generous, giving person who happens to believe in free-enterprise and independence as much as you believe in your community and the need to work together to get things done.
Go anywhere in rural Saskatchewan and you are destined to find people who share all these values that really somehow don’t seem to conflict much at all.
Some of them may even be active in politics … or at least, seem to have strongly held political beliefs.
And there are some people – you and l likely know a few of them – who seem to have no discernible values, but are sure active in one political party or another.
Go most anywhere in this country – or this world – and you will find people with similar good values.
They didn’t arrive at these values because they grew up in a place with vast horizons and long, cold winters … although maybe the nature of this place does afford you more time to think about who you are and what you believe in.
So maybe what we all should instead strive for – whether we actively believe in a political party or not – is to respect the strong beliefs and values others have that we might not necessarily share.
Saskatchewan has witnessed a lot of that as of late and it seems to have divided us.
Certainly, the recent Gerald Stanley not guilty verdict has divided people along all too many lines.
Maybe it would be good for those on both sides of the divide to look deep into our own beliefs and respect that there are big, legitimate concerns about both public safety and race that need to be heard.
After all, the very motto of our province is, from many peoples, strength.
What we don’t need, however, is to have our political beliefs divide us any more than we already are.
Saskatchewan is already a province that’s too divided between urban and rural and right and left.
So maybe politicians should stop proclaiming that they represent our values and instead listen to what our values are.
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