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Leader-Star News Service January 1997 Archive |
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Leader-Star News Service January 1997 Archive |
The re-election of the Thatcher Liberal government on October 11, 1967 offered remarkably few positives for New Democrats -- who, mostly, still called themselves CCFers back then.
The province was still marching to the beat of Bobby Gimby's Ca-na-da song, and not even Saskatchewan premier Ross Thatcher's persistent feuding with the federal Liberals could dampen the infectious optimism brimming from every small prairie town in the nation's centennial year.
Still stinging from the medicare debate of 1962 that had cost them government in 1964, the NDP found itself caught somewhere between wanting to capitalize on the North American explosion of baby-boomers becoming politically active and clinging to the remnants of the Douglas years.
As could be expected, the election results for the NDP were equally mixed.
The 24-member NDP caucus that emerged contained many vestiges of the Douglas era, like leader Woodrow Lloyd and former CCF health minister Allan Blakeney.
But there were also a handful of young political upstarts -- not the least of which was a brash, 28-year-old lawyer from Saskatoon Riversdale named Roy Romanow.
1997 marks Romanow's 30th anniversary of his first election to public life. All but 41Ž2 years after the Grant Devine landslide in 1982 have been spent in the Saskatchewan legislature.
Any similarities between that brazen pup barely fresh out of law school in 1967 and today's cautious Saskatchewan leader would seem coincidental.
A mere three years after first being elected, Romanow announced in 1970 he would vie for Lloyd's job as NDP leader. (The news reports of the day pegged his age at 32 or 34 years. He was 31 years old then, but thought it best to leave the impression he was a bit older. To this day, the soon-to-be-58-year-old guards his age and does not submit his birth date to the Parliamentary Guide.)
Aided by a number of the younger caucus colleagues -- including a cocky young farmer from Tisdale named Jack Messer who was also first elected in 1967 -- Romanow came within 100 convention votes of knocking off the establishment candidate Blakeney.
It's 1997 and Romanow has now been the party establishment longer than most of us care to remember.
He is not the Roy Romanow of 1967.
But, come to think of it, Saskatchewan's premier in 1997 is not the same guy who helped broker the constitutional deal in 1980-81, or lost by a mere 19 votes to a 23-year-old student in 1982, or re-emerged to succeed Blakeney in 1987, or even the same guy elected premier in 1991.
The political landscape has also changed.
We are no longer the young province and nation beaming with the optimism of Expo '67. The nation has been aged by two Quebec referendums.
And while Romanow would likely dearly love to play a bigger role in the national unity debate, the political backlash in 1982 following the Constitutional talks and in 1992 following the Charlottetown Accord referendum have taught him romantic notions of saving the country come at a political price.
"A lot of people in this part of the world, including me, are just fed up with the never-ending struggle of trying to put this behind," Romanow said in a recent interview.
As Thatcher found out within months of his re-election 30 years, Romanow, too, has come to realize much of governing is about far less pleasant tasks like closing hospitals, paying teachers less then they want and hiking fees and taxes.
And today's Roy Romanow also has a decidedly different view about impetuous political newcomers coming in with all the answers without paying their dues. (See his criticisms of new Liberal leader Jim Melenchuk.)
In fact, what may be most interesting about Roy Romanow in 1997 is how he seems less like Romanow in 1967 and more like Woodrow Lloyd or Ross Thatcher or Allan Blakeney by the time they were completing their tenure in public life.
This, shouldn't surprise us.
Lloyd, Thatcher and Blakeney were 53, 57 and 64 years old, respectively, when their political careers ended. They had careers in public life that spanned 26, 25 and 29 years.
If not wisdom, no one can doubt that years in politics provides perspective.
This year, Roy Romanow will have 30 years of that perspective.
News item: SaskTel has acquired the services of an aggressive American telemarketing firm to win back former customers who have opted for private long distance carriers.
Saskatchewan's Crown telephone utility tried to keep the firm a secret because a deal is in the works to move part of its operation from the warmth of the southern U.S. to Regina in January. (Although you will soon discover the vast majority of this column is completely fictitious, the subsequent sentence - believe it or not - is true.)
However, the media has now learned the company is California-based Zacson Corporation that may be bringing 100 jobs to Regina with the next six months.
And now Leader-Star Services is taking this story a step further.
Through the use of super-duper bugging devices only available to giant newspaper monopolies, Leader-Star has been able to intercept one of the calls from a Zacson solicitor to a Saskatchewan citizen.
The following account must be read to be believed:
Ringggg.
"Hello."
"Howdy, ya'll. I'm phoning on behalf of Sa-skatch-E-won Telecommunications and would like to speak to Ms. Carol Trikabob to discuss . . . "
"Teichrob! Carol Teichrob! I'm a very important Saskatchewan cabinet minister in charge of SaskTel. I was the one who decided we could bump off the former SaskTel president and put him on a phoney-baloney one-year contract equivalent to one year's annual salary so it didn't look like we were paying him severance. That way, we could hire the premier's former law partner and current roommate to run SaskTel, so he wouldn't sue us for $600,000 because he didn't get a job in England that never did really exist . . . "
"Excuse me, Ms. Treemob, but the reason I'm phoning ya'll is . . . "
"Teichrob! Teichrob! The name is Teichrob! Surely, you've heard of me. Where are you phoning from, anyway? You sound as if you have a bit of a southern accent. Are you phoning from down south?"
"Ah . . . why yes . . . I am phoning from down south."
"Where?"
"Ah . . . Radville."
"Oh, I thought so."
"Look Ms. Corncob, I don't mean to be taking so much of your time, but I'd like to discuss the decision y'all made to switch your long-distance service to AT & T . . . "
"Teichrob. The name is Teichrob! And what do you mean 'switch my long-distance services to AT & T?' I did not do that. I would never do that. I'm interested in protecting the jobs of 4,000 SaskTel employees, some of whom aren't even political appointments. Do you realize how tragic it would be if SaskTel was forced to close its doors and its executives were forced to go back to their old jobs of making peanut buster parfaits?"
"Now, calm down Ms. Headthrob, I've been told not to take no for an answer and our records clearly show ya'll switched to AT & T. There are a couple things ya'll should know about those private telecos. Were you not aware the Zapruder film clearly show a blonde-haired figured strikingly similar to Candice Bergen standing on the grassy knoll outside the Texas Book Depository? Did ya'll not know that AT & T is about to be purchased by a fundamentalist, right-wing despot financed by his massive oil holdings?"
"You mean the Saudia Arabians?"
"No, Ralph Klein of Alberta. And I'm telling ya'll right here and now, Ms. Pineknob, we Sa-skatch-E-won-e-wons have duties. It is the duty of every living person in this province to buy seasons tickets to 5-13 football teams even if that Cable Guy won't dump Al Ford, to pay the full nine-per-cent PST and squeal to the finance department on any of our neighbors we see bringing TVs and VCRs back from Medicine Hat, to save, save and save all our lives so we have something to give to our grandchildren that have moved to Kelowna and to support the right of the Crown utilities to charge whatever they want and hire however many people it takes to get the NDP re-elected every four years."
"Say, I recognize that script. You're not from Radville. You're one of our Phoenix solicitors from Zacson. Hey, I don't know where you got silly idea I switched to AT & T, but you guys do a great job. With work like yours, we'll regain control of our resources. We'll drive the American multinationals from our province. We'll . . . "
"Oh brother." Click.
"Hello? Hello? Hello?"
Sitting across the table from a trio of reporters in the restaurant of a downtown Regina hotel, Cutknife-Lloydminster MLA Michael Hopfner furrowed his brow and offered the following suggestion:
"Just give us four of five years," he told the reporters who had joined him for a Saturday morning breakfast prior to the PC party's annual convention -- a convention being held just weeks after the Tories' convincing 1986 re-election where MLAs like Hopfner took 33 of 36 rural constituencies.
"Just don't write about us and let us straighten everything out without you guys criticizing us."
This was not a joke. Hopfner was dead serious.
And the incredulous reporters were left to wonder what was more amazing: A politician stupid enough to believe reporters would agree to not doing their jobs for the benefit of one particular party or a politician who sincerely believed a lack of scrutiny of politicians would make for a better world.
If being stupid or naive were his only crime, as Michael Hopfner often claimed during his trial, he would not be in jail today. In fact, it's quite likely he would have been long ago forgiven.
But Hopfner was also guilty of greed and corruption of the worst order.
And Justice Ross Wimmer was perfectly right in raising the issue of whether MLAs who are convicting of stealing thousands of dollars -- $56,000 in Hopfner's case -- should enjoy taxpayer-funded MLAs' pensions for the rest of their lives. (Later this month, the two-term PC MLA will turn 50 years and be eligible for a $900-a-month pension.)
In one ironic way, we do likely owe Hopfner some debt of gratitude.
Acting in his own defense (Hopfner pled indigence and applied for a court-appointed lawyer, but another judge noted he had $34,000 in disposable income) Hopfner paraded a series of former PC MLAs and caucus workers to the witness stand that forced many of them to be accountable for the first time.
We heard of more allegations of fraud and corruption that went right to the top and -- more importantly -- were given actual accounts of some of the wrong-doing. The first was a dirty tricks squad who's job, it seemed, was to fabricate untruths about then Opposition Leader Roy Romanow's record as a lawyer.
Even more significantly, we learned of a $455,000 that was transferred in 1985 from the PC caucus account to a personal bank account in Martensville under the control of former PC MLA Ralph Katzman. (What money that was left in that account that hadn't gone to party polling -- $69,139 -- has since been returned to the Saskatchewan taxpayers.)
For the first time, former premier Grant Devine was asked on the witness stand to account, as was Senator Eric Berntson.
Hopfner's defense -- albeit largely irrelevant to the charges he faced -- is the closest thing we've come to a public inquiry.
But the old legal adage that a person who defends himself has a fool for a lawyer was never more apropos than it was in Hopfner's case.
As informative and thoroughly entertaining as Hopfner's defense was, it had virtually nothing to do with the fact that meticulous RCMP evidence showed Hopfner had deposited into his bank account $57,348 in bogus expense claims including a series of thousand dollar bills the former MLA could not account for.
"I understand that maybe the cash thing is the weakest part of my defense," Hopfner told reporters as his trial neared its conclusion in December.
No kidding, Mike? You really think so?
Yet, somehow, Hopfner seemed to be under some misguided notion that as long as something good came out of his trial -- like all the other corruption issues -- he should be forgiven for his own indiscretions.
Sadly, this also seemed to be the re-occurring theme of so many of those PC witnesses that Hopfner called to the stand: Whether it was making up lies about Romanow or setting up secret bank accounts, they believed it was OK to do whatever they wanted, providing they had a good reason for doing it.
It was not unlike what Hopfner suggested to the reporters 10 years ago: "Just leave us alone.
"Let us do whatever we want.
"And don't embarrass us with the details of whether what we did was right."
And his fraud defense was really no different -- don't ask me to explain what I did. Just take a look at what else was going on.
Sadly, Michael Hopfner was both very stupid and very guilty.
Some may consider Gerry Schmidt -- middle manager in the Saskatchewan civil service turned union organizer -- an exceedingly paranoid man.
But to borrow an often-used quote from Schmidt's ultimate boss, Premier Roy Romanow: "I may be paranoid, but even the paranoid have enemies."
For middle managers in the Saskatchewan civil service like Schmidt, that paranoia seems to coming from both directions.
On one side is the Saskatchewan Government Employees Union (SGEU) which many middle managers believe only wants one of two things: (a) to see "management" jobs reclassified as in-scope or union jobs so managers would be forced to rejoin the union and pay dues to SGEU; or failing that, (b) see that the middle managers take the brunt of the layoffs in the next budget so unionized workers would be spared.
On the other side is the NDP government itself, which took square aim at the middle managers when it downsized in the 1996-97 budget.
There were 544 civil servants caught in last year's budget-day "down-sizing" -- 302 of whom were offered early retirement packages (189 in-scope and 113 out-of-scope workers who tend to be more senior employees.)
That left 242 employees facing actual lay-offs -- 177 of which were in-scope unionize workers and 65 out-of-scope workers.
But with 700 vacant jobs in government (even after the NDP government eliminated 125 vacant positions in this downsizing) virtually all of the "fired" unionized workers were able to bump into these vacant positions.
The bottom line? After the last budget, 65 out-of-scope managers found themselves out on the street.
So perhaps there was some justification to Schmidt's paranoid reaction this week to a leaked memo obtained by Leader-Star News where deputy finance minister Bill Jones encourages all department heads to seek "creative solutions" to better deliver services to the public prior to the upcoming spring budget.
Heading the list of options for the department heads is "management savings" and "administrative savings" -- the polite euphemism for job cuts.
Both Jones and his boss Finance Minister Janice MacKinnon downplayed the leak by correctly noting the memo did not contain the ominous language of a document calling for big job cuts. (In fact, when asked about the memo MacKinnon said: "I would not anticipate there will be any significant job losses in the budget.")
"They are again going to be targeting out-of-scope positions," said Schmidt when asked to react to the memo.
Paranoia?
Again, maybe not.
Middle managers in the Saskatchewan civil service have long viewed themselves as the meat in the middle of the sandwich. To take the analogy a step further, they also believe much of the NDP government and the SGEU are cut from the same loaf.
Or at least, they share slices of bread with a mutual interest.
The NDP government wants to be seen as running a lean, mean, efficient administration. SGEU does not want that to happen at its expense. The solution? Axe the middle managers long seen by the public as excessive and redundant, anyway.
Add to the mix the current "scope review" that could see hundreds of out-of-scope middle managers reclassified as in-scope union members -- something SGEU has been clamoring for since the Devine government days when the percentage of the non-unionized government employees rose to a 22 per cent.
Given the hit middle-managers took in the last budget compared with SGEU members -- plus SGEU's interest in forcing middle managers to pay union dues even for years the managers weren't in the union if they wanted to keep their seniority -- the last thing many middle managers want is to wind up as SGEU members. This led to the creation of the Saskatchewan Government Managers Association (SGMA).
In November, SGMA was asked to join the Professional Institute of Public Service of Canada (PIPSC).
But now Schmidt may have one more reason to be paranoid.
Since the PIPSC organizing drive, several government middle-managers like Schmidt have received letters outlining their responsibilities.
In these definitions, there are new managerial responsibilities that Schmidt says may keep them out-of-scope altogether, thus out of either PIPSC or SGEU. It would also make them more vulnerable to the next round of budget cuts.
Paranoia?
Perhaps.
But even the paranoid have enemies.
It was the fall of 1992 and Economic Development Minister Dwain Lingenfelter had just been handed a draft copy of the private-sector/government's joint strategic plan for the Saskatchewan economy.
After years of dancing with the Tories, getting the business sector on side was quite a coup for the NDP government.
Even its insistence of committing the NDP government to "adding a total of 30,000 new jobs by the year 2000," was not a big deal, Lingenfelter thought.
The NDP government's first year had been a disastrous one when it came to the job front -- down 8,000 to an average 450,000 Saskatchewan people employed in 1992 from the 1991 average Saskatchewan workforce of 458,000.
But Lingenfelter reasoned the Grant Devine government's job-creation success was due to his megaproject boom.
Creating 30,000 new jobs in eight years -- less than 4,000 new jobs a year -- was a modest goal, Lingenfelter would tell us.
This historical recitation has been included not so much to enlighten you but to prevent our economic development minister from attempting to re-write history.
In fact, the time has come for Dwain Lingenfelter to try a novel approach -- being truthful -- and admit his job-creation project has been the single biggest failure of his NDP government.
Or at the very least, Lingenfelter should publicly acknowledge that government cannot impose a high level of taxation and government job cutbacks and still expect significant job growth.
Saskatchewan's workforce in 1996 was 461,000 -- a meagre increase of 0.2-per-cent growth or 1,000 more jobs than in 1995 and 3,000 fewer jobs than the 464,000 workforce the NDP government had projected for 1996.
In a word: stagnation.
Ten years ago the average workforce in Saskatchewan was 466,000 -- five thousand more people working than after five years of Lingenfelter's job-growth plan.
From 1978 to 1981 -- the years of the last Allan Blakeney administration -- the workforce averaged 420,000 people. From 1982 to 1986 -- Grant Devine's first term -- it increased by 30,000 to 450,000. In Devine's second term -- from 1986-1991 -- the average workforce was 461,000.
But in the first four years of the Romanow government, the average workforce actually fell to 456,000.
The 461,000-person workforce in 1996 -- the peak for this NDP government -- is now the average workforce in the last four years of the Devine government.
Lingenfelter now argues we should be satisfied if our government only achieves 24,000 new jobs because "that's as much as the economy generated in the 10 previous years when billions of dollars of taxpayers' money were injected in so-called job creation."
Based on the 2,000 or so jobs a year the NDP government has been creating since 1993, we won't even come close to 24,000 jobs.
And while Lingenfelter is fond of downplaying Devine's enviable record as nothing more than megaproject construction, he neglects to mention the thousands of full-time and related jobs at Weyerhaeuser, the two upgraders, Saskferco and Crown Life -- which weren't around during most of Devine's term -- and now pad the NDP workforce statistics.
Furthermore, Lingenfelter's "24,000 new jobs in the previous 10 years" under Devine is patently untrue.
The workforce grew by at least 33,000 jobs to 458,000 in Devine's last year (1991) from the 425,000 workforce peak (in 1981) under the Blakeney government. (More accurately, we had an average 41,000 more working people in Devine's last term than we had in Blakeney's last term 10 years earlier.)
And Saskatchewan's record is particularly abysmal when you compare it with other jurisdictions.
While Saskatchewan was creating a measly 1,000 new jobs last year, next door in Alberta they were creating 40,000 new jobs. (Now Alberta Premier Ralph Klein is promising 155,000 new jobs in the next three years.)
Finally, we simply cannot accept Lingenfelter's explanation that Saskatchewan's job-creation performance is an anomaly in an otherwise booming economy.
What's really booming in Saskatchewan?
Well, the business of young Saskatchewan people moving to Alberta and B.C. to find jobs remains a booming one.
So is the business of handing out food bank hampers. It increased in Saskatoon to 42,493 in 1996 from 39,358 in 1995.
And at the Regina Food Bank, director Ed Bloos said the number of users in 1996 increased to 9,000 from 8,000 in 1995.
A thousand new jobs. A thousand more people using the food bank in Regina.
If that isn't stagnation, what is?
So the provincial government may be about to put up the ol' For Sale sign on Casino Regina's front lawn, says Gaming Minister Joanne Crofford.
That may be a better deal for the NDP government than it is for we taxpayers.
We'll explore why in a moment, but let's first examine why much of the glitz from Casino Regina has worn off as it prepares to celebrate its first anniversary.
Amidst all the glamor the upper echelon in down-home Regina could muster, Casino Regina opened its doors Jan. 25, 1996 (it was supposed to open in time for Regina's 1995 Grey Cup, but legal challenges from an anti-gambling lobby ensured that didn't happen) to 1,000 specially invited guests.
Four months earlier, we had already learned the casino was going to cost much more than first thought -- $37 million and not $25 million. (Evidently, the Gaming Corp. neglected to include $12 million for furnishings.)
And while the costs were on the rise, we found out profitability was headed in the other direction. Less than two months before the opening, the anticipated $20-million-a-year profit was being reduced to $8- to $10-million-a-year. Later in 1996, we found out it would be reduced to around $4.4 million (only half or $2.2 million of which will make its way back to government coffers.)
Casino Regina has not only fallen well short of the public's expectations created by the NDP government -- it's also been a disappointment to the NDP government itself.
Besides the lack of profitability, the casino has been the source of allegations of racism (stemming from the quota of native staff hired), unfair labor practices (related to unionization of the restaurant employees) and questions about the operating practices of Mr. Canada Touring Network -- all huge political headaches for a government.
Add to this the endless, internal nagging the government faces from loyal New Democrats uncomfortable with the notion of their government promoting gambling in the first place.
It's little wonder that Crofford and cabinet are now at least entertaining the notion of possibly selling the casino.
The problem for the government is, who would want to buy it?
And there is an even bigger worry for we taxpayers -- the ones on the hook for this $37-million investment. A year after the gambling and casinos were to be the province's economic salvation, how can we be sure we will be getting the best deal from a government that may be in a hurry to unload a political problem?
A number of outside interests -- most notably, Memphis based Harrah's Casino Hotels, Las Vegas' Sahara Gaming Corp. and Holland Casinos --which already has a five-year management consultant contract -- would all have some interest in running or managing Casino Regina.
But consider the contracts any prospective buyer would be locked into.
First, 25 per cent of all profits go to the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations -- arrangements that the FSIN would insist remain in place.
Then there is the Gaming Corp.'s signed five-year, $11-million contract with Holland Casinos that also pays the Dutch Crown corporation1.5 per cent of all Casino Regina's profits and 1.5 per cent of net revenues plus the expense cost for Holland employees. (Because the Gaming Corp. does not fall under Freedom of Information, we do not know what the total figure is.)
And let's not forget the deal with Mr. Canada Touring Network where the Gaming Corp. supplies $100 a head (cash, not even chips) to anyone they bring in from out of province on the bus tours.
Would a new buyer want to take on these deals? Could the government get out of them without paying a hefty price? And how would the NDP government explain why it was selling to U.S. or foreign interests, anyway?
Perhaps, then, the most likely buyer becomes the FSIN itself.
But the four Indian-run casinos already seem to be making tidy nice little profits.
The Indian-run casinos don't have to shell out a quarter of their profits to someone else.
They don't have similar costly deal with Holland Casinos or their exclusive touring company. And they only borrowed $5.6 million to build their casinos -- not $37 million.
If the FSIN -- or anyone else, for that matter -- were to purchase Casino Regina with the current conditions in place, it would have to be a great deal for them.
That means selling Casino Regina may not be such a great deal for we taxpayers.
Few things are more ludicrous than anyone thinking a lowly provincial government refusing to do business with a foreign nation will have any impact on its domestic policies, human rights record or labor strife ...
Unless it is premiers from lowly provinces wining and dining their way through such foreign nations seemingly oblivious to local domestic policies, human rights records or labor strife.
For recognizing that labor strife and human rights issues -- specifically, child labor -- should be raised by democratically elected politicians travelling in such foreign lands, Premier Roy Romanow should be commended.
Unfortunately, pointing out the painful inequalities in a world far away is about all a lowly Saskatchewan premier can do.
It is legitimate to ask how well Romanow's presence on the current trade mission through southeast Asia has served the Saskatchewan people.
As Canada's trade caravan winds its way through the Far East, Saskatchewan's wagon has been at the back of the train, hoping to gather up whatever coins fall off the overloaded front cars.
Sure, there's been the opportunity for the Saskatchewan premier to exchange a few brief words with South Korean President Kim Young-sam about Saskatchewan agriculture and its growth and bio-technology or even raise concerns over the country's agriculture tariff structure. There was a similar fleeting opportunity to raise Saskatchewan's mining and telecommunications technology with Philippine President Fidel Ramos.
Slightly more productive sessions have seen Romanow meet with the vice-president of the Korea Electric Power Corp. on the possibility of it increasing trade and investment opportunities in Saskatchewan's north and have also seen SaskTel International sign on to a deal that grabs a $4-million piece of a $30-million contract to develop rural telephones in the Philippines.
But if anything, the lack of impact Saskatchewan has -- as evident in the lack of major economic initiatives emerging from this trip that they have to announce -- only underscores the reality that small provinces from small nations do not have much influence in faraway lands.
Such reality should serve as a reminder to the rest of Saskatchewan's NDP cabinet who -- in frighteningly similar fashion to their self-important Tory predecessors -- leap at every available foreign junket under the notion that foreign trade would completely collapse without the intervention of lowly provincial politicians.
Logically, then, one might argue small-time provincial premiers have even less chance of affecting local domestic issues like Korean workers who face new labor laws that see them replaced by cheaper workers, or children who labor in the Philippines' garment industry.
But those who think it was somehow inappropriate for Romanow, Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard and Alberta Premier Ralph Klein (strange bedfellows, indeed) to address the issue of child labor in Southeast Asia with Philippine President Ramos, should consider the issue from the other vantage.
What does it say about any Canadian politician who can wander into -- or even negotiate with -- these countries and turn a blind eye to fundamental human rights abuses?
Some of the most embarrassing spectacles in Canadian politics that come to mind have involved Canadian politicians obtusely ignoring their trade partners' abuses.
One such Saskatchewan incident that comes to mind occurred in 1990 when then-premier Grant Devine courted China's third most powerful politician mere days before the Tiananmen Square massacre.
And last year we watched 12-year-old Craig Kielburger dogging Prime Minister Jean Chretien on every step of Team Canada's mission to India (the one Romanow did not join) until Chretien was finally forced to address the child labor issue.
Millions of children work in factories throughout Southeast Asia -- an estimated 11 million between four and 14 years in Pakistan alone -- making everything from bricks to surgical equipment to carpets. Many are enslaved or indentured. Some are the only income-earners in their families (making the issue difficult for those Westerners who call for complete bans of the practice.)
In fact, about the only contribution Western politicians -- particularly small-time Western politicians -- can make is to raise awareness of the human rights issues or offer encouragement to governments in these nations when they do make advances.
That's precisely what Romanow has been doing on this trade mission.
In those cramped quarters where you often find politicians either grandstanding or shutting out the rest of the world, Romanow and a few other premiers have found themselves a place to be heard in the best way they could.
As an Austrian-born Canadian, Dr. Volker Rininsland was often taken aback by how many of his patients in the Hayden Park-Coeur d'Alene, Idaho area had racist tendencies.
But for the University of Saskatchewan medical school graduate who had spent 111Ž2 years practicing medicine in Moose Jaw before moving to the U.S. in 1994, the real eye-opener was what U.S. doctors face that you often don't hear about in Canada.
Certainly, his Hayden Park practice of 2,000- to 3,000-patients was less than he was seeing in Moose Jaw. The fee-for-service nature of Canadian medicare that pressures doctors here into seeing an assembly line of patients each day was why Rininsland moved to the States in first place.
A top-notch hospital at Coeur d'Alene, only eight kilometres from his Hayden Park clinic, was also a bonus.
Coeur d'Alene, a town of 24,600, has its own CT scan. There is presently only one CT scan in all of Saskatchewan. Before he can prescribe blood thinner for stroke victims in Moose Jaw, Rininsland wastes three to four precious hours shipping patients for CT scan tests at Saskatoon's University Hospital.
But what doctors abandoning Canada for the riches of U.S. medicine don't realize, Rininsland now says, is that other pressures south of the border are actually worse than the problems in Canada doctors are trying to escape.
"People didn't come in until they were very ill," Rininsland said of the foremost problem of U.S. health care -- patients always having to pay at least some of the costs every visit. "They came in with problems that were advanced and very complicated."
In more than 11 years of practicing in Moose Jaw, Rininsland only recalls one occasion where a leg had to be amputated because of complications with diabetes. It happened four times while he was in Idaho.
"I was handing out five to 10 prescriptions for Prozac a day," Rininsland said. "I've written two anti-depressant prescriptions in two weeks."
After less than two years, Rininsland had enough. The Canadian doctor decided to move back to Canada.
"I think, frankly, I'm going to be the first of a bunch," he said.
Northwest Idaho's well-earned reputation as a haven for racists was one factor.
The overwhelmingly white community now attracts Californians escaping urban racial tensions -- the best known of which is former Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman, of O.J. Simpson trial infamy.
Militias thrive in the area. Nearby Hayden Lake had been the home of Aryan Nations. And the infamous Ruby Ridge where the FBI shot it out with white supremacist Randy Weaver is not far away.
Whether it was listening to the views of a few of his patients or wandering down the streets of the Idaho town pass the God and Country Book Store, Rininsland and his wife began to question whether this was the place they wanted to raise their six- and 10-year-old children.
"Here (in Saskatchewan) I'm likely 60 per cent right of centre," said Rininsland, who says he is contemplating voting Reform next federal election. "There, I was 25 to 30 per cent left of centre without changing one opinion."
But the Moose Jaw doctor said the political climate was only about 10 per cent of his decision to come home.
Profit and fear of malpractice -- another intense pressure he felt -- drive U.S. medicine, he said.
"I wasn't making any more money," he said. "My overhead was so much higher."
While he has one and half staff now working at his Moose Jaw office, he had to hire three and half staff shipping out 3,000 bills a month. Rininsland also found out U.S. doctors aren't guaranteed they will be paid.
And malpractice insurance is only costing him $4,300 now. It was $9,700 a year in the U.S. and only covered him to $2-million liability.
According to fee schedule information from the Saskatchewan Department of Health, the average Moose Jaw area general practitioner made $164,000 in 1994-95 -- more than the average rate for a colleague in Regina ($144,600) or Saskatoon ($134,600), but less than Estevan ($208,700) or Yorkton ($201,300).
After expenses, it will be close to what Rininsland made in Idaho.
Unless the provincial government "does something really wild", Saskatchewan is where he now intends to stay.
"My expectations coming back were really low," Rininsland said. "I'm pleasantly surprised.
"The NDP (government) has risen a lot in my estimation. They've handled a difficult situation really well."
Neither Leo LaChance nor Pamela George were murdered because they were Indian.
But being Indian was a significant factor in both of their murders.
And until police, courts, judges, politicians, and the province in general accept the latter statement, we won't make any headway in the battle against racism in Saskatchewan.
Yes, there is racism in Saskatchewan.
We spend an absurd amount of time trying to convince ourselves racism doesn't exist here. On those occasions when we grudgingly acknowledge a racism problem, we smugly take comfort that it's nowhere near as systemic as it is in the United States.
We did not have a history of slavery. Sure, the Ku Klux Klan once existed -- even thrived -- in Saskatchewan in the 1930s, but we view this as some odd anomaly of our otherwise tolerant culture. Minority leaders fighting for equality and civil rights in Canada were not gunned by white racists in 1960s.
Racism in the U.S. is simply not comparable, we think. Or is it?
In the U.S., where blacks comprise only 12 per cent of the population, they account for an astonishing 49 per cent of the murder victims. (Inner-city gang violence accounts skew the numbers).
In Canada, the native population of about one million is less than four per cent the total population. Yet of the 3,300 murders in Canada in the last five years (an average 660 per year), at least 410 of victims (an average 82 a year) are known to be of aboriginal heritage, according to the Canadian Centre for Judicial Statistics. (Specific Saskatchewan statistics were unavailable, but the numbers are believed to be equal or higher.)
Since 1991, a segment of our society that represents about 3.8 per cent of the population accounted for 12.4 per cent of the murder victims -- figures not much worse than the U.S. murder rates among Afro-Americans in a country that doesn't have the gang violence.
Since five out of six murder victims in Canada -- including murdered Indians -- are killed by friends or strangers, some will argue that this is not a race issue.
But both Leo LaChance and Pamela George were murdered by strangers -- white strangers who, according to court testimony, valued their victims less because of their native ancestry.
On January 28, 1991, LaChance, a trapper from the Big River Reserve, wandered into a gun and pawn shop on Prince Albert's River Street owned by Carney Nerland -- a known white supremacist with a penchant for parading about in Nazi regalia. The details of what happened next remain unclear, but we do know Nerland fired two rifle shots into the floor of his store, causing LaChance to flee. Nerland then fired a third shot through the door that struck and killed Leo LaChance.
We also know that Nerland is alleged to have told police: "If I'm convicted of shooting that Indian, you'll have to pin a medal on me. I've done you a favor." Nerland was sentenced to four years to be served in the Prince Albert Correctional Centre.
On April 18, 1995, the body of Pamela George, 28, was found face down in a muddy ditch on Regina's outskirts. Her beating was so severe, it was a closed casket funeral.
Within a month, two white teenagers from a privileged Regina middle-class upbringing -- Steven Kummerfield and Alex Ternowetsky, both 19 -- were arrested for picking up a prostitute that night, taking her to a remote area for oral sex and beating her to death. "She deserved to die. She was an Indian," testified friend Tyler Stuart, quoting comments Ternowetsky allegedly made shortly after the murder.
At then end of a six-week trial last month, a jury found Kummerfield and Ternowetsky guilty of not first or second degree murder, but manslaughter. Sentencing is next week. The Crown is appealing the manslaughter conviction.
No, neither LaChance nor George were hunted down and murdered because of their race.
But the combination of convictions on the lesser charges and racial hatred evidence heard in the court, show both natives were touched by racism during -- and maybe even after -- their lives.
Hopefully, this is partly what has inspired Premier Roy Romanow to ask Justice Minister John Nilson to ensure the recommendations designed at improving race relations emerging from the inquiry into LaChance's death will be implemented.
It's a small step towards combating racism here.
The first big step will be to acknowledge that racism exists.
There are many reasons why Agriculture Minister Eric Upshall, Crown Investment Corp. Minister Berny Wiens and others in Romanow's NDP government have vehemently opposed changes to the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB).
Ultimately, though, you get the feeling all their vitriol comes down to one thing.
Finally, here is something they can rant about on a purely philosophical basis.
It must feel so good.
Particularly when it may be their last chance.
Amusing to watch is the way NDP politicians have had to come squarely on side with the way an old nemesis, federal Agriculture Minister Ralph Goodale, has handled the much-ballyhooed barley vote.
Starting today, 80,000 ballots will go out to all Western Canadian barley producers. Farmers have until February 28 to fill them out.
The ballot offers farmers two blunt choices: "Open Market Option; Remove all barley (both feed and malting/food) from the Canadian Wheat Board and place it entirely on the open market for all domestic and export sales. Single-seller Option; Maintain the Canadian Wheat Board as the single seller for all barley (both feed and malting/food) with the continuing exception of feed barley sold domestically."
It is a plebiscite question that in no way reflects the issue at hand.
Absent from the ballot is any option for the compromise favored by a significant number of farmers of dual marketing.
Goodale -- presumably at the behest of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, which tends to really run the affairs of the province -- has discounted the idea that the open market and the single-desk seller could simultaneously exist.
The CWB did survive open-market competition that did exist briefly in the 1940s. National grain-marketing agencies do survive in countries like Australia that also happen to permit open-market selling.
Yet by virtue of the wording of his question, Goodale has already determined any farmer who believes he or she should have more marketing options isn't making a legitimate request.
Virtually no farmer -- not even many of the most radical ones willing to run the U.S. border with truckloads of wheat -- have called for the complete elimination of the CWB.
By offering the all-or-nothing choice, Goodale has played upon the fears of the majority -- a cynical, political game that forces farmers to abandon the concept of dual marketing and cast a ballot that only supports the CWB.
Goodale has played a disconcerting and divisive game of brinksmanship -- a game that might normally come under heavy fire from the provincial NDP whether they agreed with the position or not.
After all, a November 1995 poll by the provincial NDP government -- a government that lives and dies by polls -- shows 58 per cent of Saskatchewan farmers agree participation in the CWB should be voluntary.
But quite the opposite has happened.
The NDP is not only squarely on side with Goodale. They've taken his campaign a step further.
Already we've seen "open letter" advertisements from Upshall defending the CWB. And we'll see another one from the Saskatchewan agriculture minister early next week as part of the provincial government's $41,000 campaign urging farmers to vote, and to vote for the single-seller option.
Of course, we can't be surprised by the NDP's position -- even if comes at the expense of supporting Goodale and passing up what could have been a few cheap and easy shots at federal Liberals.
The concept of CWB is so fundamental to CCF/NDP philosophy, for them to take any other position would have been amazing.
What has been surprising, though, is how aggressive and uncompromising NDP politicians have been.
The language Upshall and Wiens have used to criticize farmers who support dual marketing -- calling them everything from selfish to whiners to worse -- has been most extreme.
It's as if they are going out of their way to offend whomever doesn't share their view -- something the NDP has desperately tried to avoid doing since coming to power.
Why? Given the wording of Goodale's question, it's not as if the barley vote could be in doubt anyway.
Well, after watching the Wheat Pool appear on the Toronto Stock Exchange and having to sell Cameco shares, there are fewer and fewer of the ol' institutions left for the left to defend.
The CWB is among the last ones.
It may be the last chance where the NDP can safely engage in one of its good ol'-fashion political rants.
Watch the next couple weeks.
Rant, they shall.
Us media folk -- always liberal with our superlatives -- have been calling the charges and convictions stemming from the PC caucus communication allowance cases the "biggest political scandal in Saskatchewan history" for some time now.
It was a description that always seemed a tad overblown.
Or at least, that may have been the case until this week.
Until now, the "biggest political scandal in Saskatchewan history" basically involved two inept fraud artists, a few greedy politicians and a few others mostly guilty of bending the rules slightly beyond what Canada's Criminal Code permits.
The bulk of the case revolved around former PC caucus communications director John Scraba and former cabinet minister and PC caucus chairman Lorne McLaren charged with defrauding the taxpayers of $838,000.
It was Scraba's fingerprints -- figuratively and literally -- all over the money, including 240 $1,000 bills found in two safety deposit boxes. Scraba pleaded guilty and received two years less a day for his troubles. He served four months in jail.
McLaren also pleaded guilty to his role in the $838,000 fraud, theft of $114,200 (an alleged loan from the caucus) and breach of trust related to $125,000 diverted to the PC party bank account. He was sentenced to 31Ž2 years and served eight months in jail.
Some of the other five MLAs that have been convicted in this scam to date had gone down for crimes as petty as using false invoices to buy $3,645 in software or $5,800 for a computer and video equipment all the way up to -- in the case of Michael Hopfner -- theft in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Also caught up in the net of illegally obtaining property with false invoices were: Lorne Kopelchuk, accused of buying a podium, (he had donated it to the Boy Scouts long before the charges); John Britton, accused of buying a video camera, and; Bill Neudorf accused of falsifying claims to buy T-shirts and ball caps (not among the list of "approved items" for communication allowance expenses.) After long, embarrassing and costly trials, all three were found not guilty.
The biggest political scandal in Saskatchewan history?
Even after Hopfner's 18-month sentence early this month, it was still questionable whether the scandal was much beyond McLaren, Scraba, a couple of greedy backbenchers lining their pockets and few other naive politicians on either the right side or the wrong side of the law because they followed Scraba's lead.
That perception, however, changed Thursday.
It changed when the name Senator Eric Berntson was included in the latest six Tories to be charged.
It cannot be stressed enough that we in no way can assume Berntson has done anything wrong before he has had his day in court.
To do so would be a breach of the fundamental right that a person is innocent until proven guilty. That would be a breach of trust every bit as serious as breaches of trusts other courts have found in this affair.
But by the very mention of the name Eric Berntson along with those others charged, the affair -- in the public's mind -- takes on a whole new dimension.
No longer is this two scam artists and a few greedy and disgruntled backbenchers.
Eric Berntson had been the core of the Saskatchewan government. He recruited virtually every PC candidate from the mid-1970s until the early 1990s -- including Grant Devine, himself. Berntson was the man that built the PC party, rebuilt it from the ashes left by Dick Collver and put it in power in 1982.
Berntson was the deputy premier -- not just Devine's right-hand man but the man, many believed, who had his hand on all the levers.
If Eric Berntson is found guilty of the offenses with which he is charged, the names of Scraba, McLaren and Hopfner will be forgotten. If Berntson is found guilty, we may never again separate the terms "PC administration" and "corruption."
His guilt or innocence now means that much to Saskatchewan's history.
The man who built the PC legacy may very well be -- depending on the outcome of his charges -- the man who forever destroys it.
Fairly or unfairly, the charges against Berntson mean the public will now associate him with the biggest political scandal in Saskatchewan history.
There would seem little point now in calling it anything else.
There is an ominous silence at the Saskatchewan legislature these days.
The geese are gone.
No one has heard a honk or seen a plop of poop since December 10.
Wascana Park naturalists say it's the first time the geese have left in the winter since the mid 1950s. They cite the abnormally cold and snowy winter.
Of course, such reasonable and plausible explanations only fuel the suspicions the they are covering up something.
This is a government town, after all. No explanation of anything going on at or near the legislature can ever taken at face value.
Have the birds flown south to avoid the ever-widening net in the PC fraud scandal?
Was it because B.C. labor mediator Jim Dorsey and Labor Minister Bob Mitchell have conspired to force all the geese -- in violation of the province's Trade Union Act -- to automatically become ducks?
Don't be silly.
The explanation is likely far more basic than that.
It's reassessment.
The geese left have because City of Regina assessors were about to reclassified them all as swans. Right now, they're all building nests in Balgonie and White City because they simply can't afford to live in the capital any more.
Who can?
Preposterous, you say? Utterly ridiculous.
Well, perhaps no more so than anything else we've seen related to the reassessment issue this past year.
And certainly no more bizarre than the developments emerging this week out of the legislature and out of the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) annual convention in Saskatoon. (Incidentally, there are no geese in Saskatoon this winter, either. Coincidence? I think not.)
Far more fantastic than anything that could possibility be conjured up in this columnist's mind is what sometimes emerges from two levels of politicians with very specific election timetables.
Especially, when neither level of politician wants to be held accountable for huge tax hikes that will be on the minds of their voters the next time they head for the polls.
The problem for civil politicians seeking re-election this October is the three-year phase-in period means many property owners face huge tax bill hikes sooner than later.
Civic politicians spent most of last year lobbying Municipal Government Minister Carol Teichrob for the "tax tools" -- anything that would alleviate reassessment increases until after the October 1997 civic vote.
Three months ago, Teichrob told Saskatoon Mayor Henry Dayday there was no reason to extend the phase-in beyond three years. (And when the battle got rather heated at public meetings last fall, Premier Roy Romanow chastised Dayday for not showing some leadership by getting on with reassessment.)
Yet the province seemed unwilling to budge on anything that would delay or alleviate the impact of reassessment.
Then out of the blue sky Monday, Romanow descends down upon the SUMA convention and announces communities can suddenly have a six-year phase-in. (The news came mere days after Saskatoon sent out its property tax bills based on the three-year phase in.)
So why the sudden change of heart?
Well, based on the public meetings held on reassessment held last fall, it appears that civic politicians aren't the only ones taking some of the heat. Some taxpayers were accepting the notion the province has not done enough to ease the reassessment burden.
Worse yet, the last phase of the tax-increase phase who be hitting taxpayers in about June 1999 -- about the time NDP politicians are likely on the doorsteps soliciting support. And some of the areas hardest hit by reassessment happen to be inner city and suburban Regina and Saskatoon riding where the NDP currently hold all the seats.
But with Romanow's announcement Monday, June 1999 NDP candidates will be able to say: "Hey, don't blame us. The premier told SUMA back in 1997 it was OK to phase-in your tax increases over five years. We gave the cities all the tools they asked for."
Sadly, almost lost in this is squabbling is us.
Regardless of whether you are on the winning or losing side of reassessment, you will be still be paying some of the highest property taxes in Canada in relation to the value of our property.
Regardless who out-maneuvers whom on reassessment, our goose is cooked.
And we property taxpayers don't have the luxury of moving south to avoid it.
Maybe it shouldn't be this way, but one of the hardest things for a cabinet minister to do is admit he and his government have been wrong.
Part of it is human nature.
How many of us would willingly admit we made a mistake, if every time we did we were blasted in the newspapers as an idiot undeserving of our job? (I mean, besides me.)
For this reason alone, Labor Minister Bob Mitchell's mea culpa this week on the babysitting issue was an intriguing one.
"I guess nobody's perfect. Everybody makes mistakes and we make them along with everybody else," Mitchell told reporters Tuesday after emerging from cabinet to announce his government was repealing the part of the Labor Standards Act requiring parents to pay in-house babysitters the minimum $5.60 wage.
It would be a tad unkind to suggest that Mitchell comes to terms with his mistakes more easily than most politicians because he's made so many.
It would also be somewhat true.
His ministerial career has been plagued with misadventures: the provincial court judges' salary issue where he overruled an independent arbitrator's recommendations; the fallout from the Martensville case (where he not only apologized, but temporarily had to resign from the justice portfolio after inadvertently identifying the young offender involved), and most recently the Dorsey report on health unions' reorganization and the babysitters' minimum wage issue.
Also, an apology from Mitchell does seem in order given his defensiveness and somewhat belligerent attitude when problems with the law were first brought to his attention. ("It's hard to understand why somebody that's pumping gas in a service station would be entitled to more money than someone who's looking after your kids," Mitchell told reporters Dec. 17.)
But for a few reasons, both Mitchell and his NDP government deserve a bit of credit for both the apology and reversal of policy.
First -- as stated earlier -- apologizing is never an easy thing for a government minister to do.
Second, this is actually a problem Mitchell inherited because changes to the act go back two years to when Ned Shillington was minister.
Third, and most importantly, modifying the policy was simply the right thing to do.
What shouldn't be lost in this debate is that this wasn't some horrific government policy -- just one in need of a bit of refinement.
Driving the February 1995 change was a need to get at those people with live-in babysitters (often, immigrant women), who could afford to pay them minimum wage but chose not to because there was no law requiring "babysitters" be paid minimum wage.
But caught up in all-encompassing amendments were people who could not afford to pay minimum wage (often, single mothers) but were now forced to pay their babysitters minimum wage. (In one example, a woman working at an airport car rental agency had to have an in-home babysitter because no day care was available when she went to work. When she learned she was forced to pay her sitter minimum wage, she had to quit her job and go back on welfare.)
With the emphasis we are now seeing from the federal government and province's social services minister on finding ways to help the working poor through the $600-million federal child tax benefit, it would be somewhat ludicrous to have a policy where Saskatchewan's working poor were being forced to pay their babysitters minimum wage.
There are those who argue no job is more important than caring for children, and minimum wage is the minimum we should expect to pay for this service. Poor single mothers, they argue, could be subsidized by government.
Perhaps, but where would that take us?
Where do you draw the subsidy line? $6 an hour? $10? $12? Would grandmothers looking after grandchildren now be applying for the government's minimum-wage subsidies? Would the system be any fairer when you could take your kid across the street to the babysitter and pay less than minimum wage, but have to pay minimum wage if that babysitter walked across the street into your home?
The simple realities are, no decent parent is going to leave their child with someone who is not a decent and responsible person. There are decent and responsible people willing to sit for less than minimum wage because that is the value they place on the job.
Mitchell listened to these realities from both parents and babysitters.
He then did the right thing.
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