Leader-Star News Service June 1996 Archive

There are some people who say the recent SaskTel strike could be a turning point in the relationship between organized labor and the NDP in this province.

Their argument is that the strike was kind of the "final insult" that demonstrated why labor should end its formal affiliation with the NDP and declare political independence.

This idea of labor breaking free from the NDP is not new. The debate has been around from the moment labor and the CCF officially came together in 1961 to create the NDP. But seldom, if ever in this province, has the tension between labor and an NDP government been as evident as now.

The SaskTel strike was pivotal in some minds because it demonstrated, yet again, how labor's affiliation with the NDP is often a one-way street. Many members of the SaskTel union believe the government's public-sector bargaining mandate was imposed on SaskTel. That resulted in the union having to accept a wage settlement it believes was unfair, given the financial success of SaskTel.

Thus, the SaskTel strike was seen as an act of betrayal and the latest in a long list of grievances that labor has with the Romanow government. There is still frustration in labor ranks with the way the Romanow government diluted labor legislation when it faced a strong business backlash.

The general attitude among many labor leaders is that the Romanow government, and specifically the premier, is far too cosy with the business community. There is nothing surprising about any of this. Labor sees politics as a forum for class conflict, with the interests of business and labor almost always incompatible.

The underlying belief in labor's affiliation with the NDP was that it would provide labor with the political leverage it needed to counterbalance the economic interests of business. By being a clearly identified constituency within the NDP, labor could expect the party to be its political voice and protector.

On Thursday and Friday of this week, the issue of labor's relationship to the NDP and the Romanow government was up for discussion at a meeting of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labor (SFL) executive at Kenosee Lake. As SFL president Barb Byers explains, there is deep-seated unhappiness with the Romanow government.

The problem this creates for organized labor in the province should not be underestimated. By having a formalized relationship with the NDP, labor often finds itself torn internally by conflicting loyalties. What happens is that, at times like this, individuals must choose between support for an NDP government or the interests of labor as a group.

This is no easy dilemma. Labor is mired in a kind of self-imposed Catch 22, trapped by its affiliation with the NDP. There is nowhere to turn. Unhappy with its treatment by the NDP government, there is no political alternative because other parties see labor as merely the captive of the NDP and therefore an adversary.

The question for labor is what to do. Should it remain faithful to the NDP and take what it can get from NDP governments, or declare its political independence? Should it rid itself of the split personality that comes with having to choose between loyalty to the NDP and its own specific interests?

Byers makes the argument that people should not overstate the close link between labor and the NDP.

"It's not as if we're joined at the hip," she says.

Only 11 per cent of the SFL membership in Saskatchewan is affiliated with the NDP through local unions. While some unions have selective support of the NDP, she points out many others have constitutions that don't allow them any formal association with the NDP.

"There is this great myth of the labor movement being in support of the party. It's just not that way. Labor has grown up a lot over the last 20 years. I don't know whether the labor movement is willing to let (the Romanow) government tear it apart. At some point, we have to say that we stand shoulder-to-shoulder," Byers says.

What this tension between labor and the Romanow government demonstrates is the fundamental difference between the politics that leads to power, and the exercise of power itself.

Out of power, the NDP can comfortably espouse the interests of organized labor; it is all part of the process to defeat a government. But once in government, the party must balance all social and economic interests for what it perceives as the common, public good.

Inevitably, that leads to the kind of tension we see today between the labor movement and the government. The simple fact remains that the private interests of labor, as with business, do not always coincide with the public interest.

The choice for labor, then, is clear. Having sold its soul to the NDP, it accepts the consequences; or it can become an independent force unto itself.

It's amazing how so many former high-ranking Tories in Saskatchewan plead ignorance when asked about this secret $2.5-million fund at the party's disposal. Fund? What fund? Don't know a thing about it. Never heard of it, they all say.

Then again, maybe it's not so surprising. The party is still reeling from the crime and corruption that surrounded the former Devine government caucus. News of a huge, hidden trust fund the party had access to, but never revealed, merely adds to the bad odor that permeates this party.

Technically speaking, the PCs might properly argue there was nothing illegal about what they did. But all that does is illustrate the weakness of the Saskatchewan Elections Act and the Tories inability to differentiate between what is technically legal and what is ethically proper.

Tory Leader Bill Boyd, who time and again has said the new Tory party has cut the ties to its questionable past, falls into the old mind-set where he can't tell the difference between doing what's right and what's legal.

"What we've done is in accordance with the electoral act. The money the party receives from the Metro Council has been reported and that's why we don't see a problem," Boyd said Monday.

But he misses the point. What could be the purpose of this "private" trust fund, other than so the Tories could hide what they were doing? Instead of raising money and giving it directly to the party, where it would be fully reported, they created a separate fund outside the party. That way, the amount and names of donors to the PC Metro Fund were never publicly revealed. All the Elections Act required was that the lump sum paid to the party by the fund be reported. Where the money actually came from remained a secret.

As a result, individuals, corporations, unincorporated groups or anyone else could make a donation to the trust fund and never have their name publicly reported. It created a kind of political money-laundering system that was potentially open to abuse.

Admittedly, there is no evidence to suggest any such abuse occurred. Doug Emsley, who spoke on behalf of the private trust Monday, said "every nickel" in the fund was legally collected as well as "completely and properly accounted for".

One of those who worked in the Devine government at the political level says he watched the fund-raising system unfold, but was not directly involved in bagging money. Until now, he did not know the trust fund existed, but, in retrospect, admits it all makes sense.

"The premier used to travel across the country to dinners that some very influential people would set up," says the political official, who asked to remain anonymous.

"For example, he'd whip into Vancouver for a dinner sponsored by a major company. Then, three or four party dudes would roll into town and stay for a week to raise money from those who were at the dinner. This is exactly how money was raised time and again."

The problem with this system is obvious. We don't know if a company or individual making a significant donation to the trust fund later received a large government contract. Who is to say that donations weren't paid to the trust fund after contracts were received from the Devine government? If a company made a large cash donation to the fund, did it help in landing a contract for government work?

The point is, we don't know and can never know because the fund was kept separate from the party. We know that, at one point, $2.75 million was in the fund, but we don't know where one cent of it came from because they were private, not public donations.

But don't waste all your outrage on the Tories. Both the New Democrats and Liberals receive money that is funnelled (some say laundered) through their federal parties, which makes it virtually impossible to determine who has made donations.

The NDP's financial reporting is particularly pathetic. For example, last year the Saskatchewan NDP received almost $1.3 million from the federal NDP. There is no breakdown of the money, just the indications of a lump-sum payment. As well, the NDP received a donation of $70,000 from a corporate entity called Tommy Douglas House, which is the name of the party's headquarters. But there is no explanation of who, or what, gave the money to Tommy Douglas House.

Similarly, the provincial Liberals got $686,556 from a society listed as the Federal Liberal Agency of Canada. There is no explanation of the source beyond saying it came through the federal party.

What all this indicates is the need to overhaul the system for political donations in this province. What the PC Metro Fund case does is demonstrate the lack of transparency in the system used to finance political parties.

The idea that money, in effect, can be raised privately outside the political system and then channeled into it, without ever being properly identified, surely is unacceptable.

For a government always talking about made-in-Saskatchewan solutions, one might think this NDP administration would leap at a creative proposal like a four-day rural school week.

Why this government is balking at even a pilot project - like the one now being proposed by the Scenic Valley School Division - may be partly due to the education department's legitimate concern over the ongoing decline in classroom instruction time.

But a big part of it also has to do with the way any government decision gets bogged down in bureaucracy.

The pilot project proposed by the six-town, 1,200- student school division east of the Qu'Appelle Valley calls for a four-day week next year, with Fridays off.

To make up for Fridays off, each of the remaining four days would increase to 5.4 hours of instruction - 24 minutes longer.

The decrease in classroom instruction time is a legitimate problem with the Scenic Valley proposal.

While its school year is supposed to be 197 days, Scenic Valley teachers are really only in the classrooms for about 180 days a year now, because of annual teachers' conventions, planning days, professional development days, parent-teacher interviews, track-and-field meets, etc. (Slightly below the provincial average of 185 classroom days.)

The current Scenic Valley proposal would result in a 173-day school week, the education department claims, even if all the teachers' conferences and track meets are on Fridays. (The department wants classes held on at least nine Fridays.)

Surely, though, one would think a reasonable compromise could be reached between the education department and the school board.

Particularly when the proposal coming from Scenic Valley is one of those "made-in Saskatchewan solutions" that does make some economic sense and does have local support.

Scenic Valley, which has mulled over the idea of the four-day week for a year now, has found out 92 per cent of its parents and 98 per cent of its teachers support the proposal.

Since it also may mean only a two-mill increase next year instead of a six-mill increase, you can likely add local ratepayers to the support list.

Each day, the board spends $4,000 on bus transportation. Cut just 10 per cent from that busing cost alone and Scenic Valley could hire two extra teachers.

Consider those numbers on a provincewide basis.

Each year, the province spends $56 million to subsidize rural student busing.

If that 10-per-cent saving in busing costs could be found by sending all rural Saskatchewan kids to school for four days a week, there is close to a $6-million saving annually. (Next year, the education department will have to shell out an extra $8 million to pay for the one-per-cent raise all Saskatchewan teachers will receive in its recently signed teachers' contract.)

In fact, with a massive re-organization and possible amalgamation of school districts expected as early as next year, now would seem the ideal time to try Scenic Valley's pilot project to help cope with the change this NDP government says is inevitable.

But why approval of this - or most anything in government, for that matter - has taken so long says much about the snail-like pace of implementing any change.

One government-appointed committee is already examining the length of the school year and won't report back until the fall.

And despite all the talk of the immediacy of change in education, the government's strong preference would be to ensure Scenic Valley's proposal now receives the okay of the teachers' federation, the universities, the school trustees' associations and the education department.

Of course, political pressure does tend to speed up the bureaucracy.

The government faces the threat from Scenic Valley and now other boards to go ahead with their cost-cutting, four-day week - with or without government approval.

But without that political pressure from the local boards, and now the PC opposition, it would be doubtful we'd see even a pilot project for another year.

Sadly, the natural pace of such Made-in-Saskatchewan solutions tends to be painfully slow.

For weeks, the two sides have been getting their ammunition ready for the battle. When public hearings begin Monday on the future of Saskatchewan's Crown corporations, you can count on the usual suspects showing up to have their say.

If political history has told us anything about public enterprise in this province, it's that you can't have a debate about Crown corporations without it degenerating into ideological warfare. It turns into a debate of the righteous versus the virtuous.

The truth of Saskatchewan is that nothing reflects our political divide more than Crown corporations. It goes to the heart of how we see economic development and the role government should play in shaping the economy.

The advocates of public enterprise will talk about how Crown corporations have a long and proud tradition that spans all political parties. In that sense, the argument will be that Crown corporations reflect common public values rather than partisan or ideological perspectives.

There's some truth to that, but as with most things on both sides of the political debate over public enterprise, it's also exaggerated.

While public enterprise has a long history in the province, I'm not sure you can call it a history we can take unequivocal pride in espousing. There have been as many failures as successes. Other than where government has held commercial monopolies, the record of public enterprise - in terms of return on investment and cost to the taxpayers - is less than impressive.

In spite of what has become our political mythology, the early Tommy Douglas government years were not an era of great public enterprise success. The business misadventures in the initial years of the Douglas government are well known and part of the anti-CCF/NDP folklore. Joe Phelps, the renegade minister in charge of public enterprise in those years, put good public money into questionable ventures such as a woolen mill, a shoe factory and a box-making plant. There were other questionable investments, from a northern fish marketing agency established even though most fishermen did not support the idea, to a leather tannery.

Other, less-visible government enterprise initiatives, mostly in the form of grants or direct investment in joint ventures with private-sector partners, have largely been flops.

To get a view of how government enterprise has failed, your best bet is to look at public money wasted over many years by the Saskatchewan Economic Development Corp.

While the Allan Blakeney government did not preside over any huge failures in public enterprise, it's return-on-investment record with its major resource-sector investments was not great for the inflationary 1970s. Moreover, instead of creating new wealth and jobs, the public investment tended to merely move ownership from the private to public sector.

Then, of course, there were the spectacular failures of public enterprise during the Devine government years. Everything from huge losses on two heavy-oil upgraders, to hare-brained investments in things like plastic shopping cart manufacturing and computer language translation helped to give public enterprise a bad name.

In retrospect, the success stories have been the large monopolies such as SaskPower, SaskTel and SGI. What we've discovered over the decades is that when a Crown corporation has a legislated monopoly, it tends to be profitable. But that is hardly an endorsement of public enterprise.

The real test for the Crowns is whether they can survive in a competitive market, which brings us to where we are today with the Crown review process. It's long overdue.

The Romanow government says it wants to take a long, hard look at the role of Crown corporations and have some tough questions answered. What role should the Crowns play in the economy? Should they look at expanding business beyond their traditional Saskatchewan market? What ownership options exist for Crowns? How should Crowns be governed to remain healthy in the face of new competitive pressures?

These are all important, even critical, questions.

The fact is, the fat days of comfortable monopolies for our Crowns are over, or ending soon. Large government enterprises must face competition and inevitably that means changing their corporate cultures and the way they do business.

More to the point, the advent of competition raises questions whether Crowns can remain the instruments of politics and politicians and still remain viable. We need to ask if we can expect Crowns that must compete with private companies to engage in social policy goals dictated by politics? And if the answer is yes, what extra cost are we willing to bear as taxpayers and shareholders?

In short, it's time for a debate about public enterprise that we've never had.

Are you the one in eight Saskatchewan residents that actually paid more to governments than got back from governments in either wages, pensions, pogey or welfare?

On behalf of our ever optimistic Economic Development Dwain Lingenfelter, a heartfelt thanks for the cornucopia of entrepreneurial optimism you're providing.

You are the hope.

You are the way.

You are that free-market spirit a beamish Lingenfelter tells us is sweeping this province.

You are the wind beneath Dwain's wings.

Of course, the notion a mere one out of eight of us - 120,910, to be exact, according to 1992 statistics compiled by the Canadian Financial Planners' Association - gave more to government than got would be a mortal stab wound to the entrepreneurial heart of a lesser economic development minister.

Down-right depressing, some would consider it.

Not Lingenfelter.

There again, Link has more reason for optimism than most.

For one thing, he'll be our premier as soon as he convinces Roy Romanow he's too old for the job.

Failing that, he's the NDP MLA for Regina Elphinstone - technically, a job for life. (The most astute investment the entrepreneurial Lingenfelter ever made was whatever his campaign paid for some NDP memberships in 1988 when he was running for the nomination in the NDP fortress seat.)

And should he miraculously lose his $94,744 deputy premier's salary (as of July 1) next election, he'll still enjoy a $60,000-plus-a-year MLA's pension.

This might partially explain why Lingenfelter has a hard time hearing the cries of anguish (real anguish: not Doug) from the private sector somewhere outside the walls of his 7,000-square-foot Condie mansion.

But it might be worth Lingenfelter's time to review the 1992 financial planners' numbers - the most recent - that strongly suggest his free-enterprise optimism is sadly misplaced.

First made public last fall in a column by Paul Martin, Star-Phoenix business writer, the financial planners' numbers show, 658,550 Saskatchewan people filed income tax returns in 1992. Basically, that's everyone except children under 18 years (there were 281,200 such Saskatchewan children in 1994) and a few non-income spouses.

Of those, 212,460 had no taxable returns (mostly, students, low-income farmers or businesses and non-working spouses), leaving 443,890 actual Saskatchewan taxpayers in 1992.

Another 232,490 received the bulk of their income from some social assistance programs. (That 1992 number may even be low. Consider today there are 147,200 Saskatchewanians 65 years and older receiving Canada Pension Plan. There were 37,000 unemployed in April eligible for U.I.

And March social assistance numbers showed, 82,070 on welfare, not including the 40,000 on-reserve status Indians.)

That left just 211,490 - less than one in five - with net taxable income that wasn't from government programs.

But of those, 90,480 earned their income from a government (town, city, provincial, federal) job or a taxpayer-funded non-governmental agency.

A scant 120,910 - one in eight - that made money in the private sector in 1992.

Add every Saskatchewan miner, construction worker, farmer, realtor, grocery store employee, contractor, salesperson and even reporter (non-CBC, of course) that made money in 1992 . . . 120,910.

It's frighteningly few.

Of course, Lingenfelter can argue it's not his fault 42 per cent of the population isn't of workforce age. Nor should this imply the nine per cent of the population - teachers, nurses and civil servants - don't contribute to society or the economy just because they get a cheque from government.

Lingenfelter would even have a point if he argued 1996 numbers would be significantly better because 1992 was one of the worst for farms and businesses.

But for Lingenfelter to suggest, as he has lately, this province has suddenly developed a booming entrepreneurial sector under the NDP is myth.

Seven out eight get more from government than give.

For someone trying to create growth through the private sector, it should be a frightening statistic.

The idea of identifying people as members of a specific group in society, whether related to race or ethnic background, is often counter-productive. It might be motivated by the best of intentions, but it can still create problems.

What it does is create divisions. People are separated, based on who they are, their background, the color of their skin, or their traditions. That can lead to the very social stereotyping that group rights theoretically are supposed to eliminate.

But we do not live in an ideal world. The fact is certain racial and ethnic groups are disadvantaged within society for a complex set of reasons that relate to their background and attitudes others have toward them.

Accepting that we identify people as members of differing groups and believe the group rights of some differ from others, it's possible to reach some general conclusions. One is that aboriginal people are, by far, the most disadvantaged group in Saskatchewan.

But you can take it one step further. Of the aboriginal people, those who face the greatest social and economic problems are the Metis.

Unlike status Indians, they lack the protection of treaties or the land base that comes with them. We recognize and have closely outlined the historical rights Indian people have with the federal government. But when it comes to the Metis, we have done little more than recognize that aboriginal rights also extend to them. Exactly what those group rights entail is still unclear -- and because public responsibility for Metis issues rests with provincial governments, the situation varies from province to province.

One way to measure how the Metis are a disadvantaged group within a disadvantaged group is in terms of public expenditure. As of Dec. 31, 1995, there were 92,325 registered Indian people in Saskatchewan. The federal Department of Indian and Northern Affairs budget in Saskatchewan for 1995-96 was $523.7 million, which doesn't include spending on Indian people that comes from other federal departments such as health, industry and heritage.

The provincial government's budget for its Indian and Metis affairs secretariat for 1996-97 is $25.1 million. Although no clear enumeration has been done, Metis Nation of Saskatchewan (MNS) president Jim Durocher claims there are at least 70,000 Metis people in Saskatchewan; others say there are far fewer.

One other example of how the Metis are treated unequally within the framework of aboriginal rights and government is the handling of the gambling issue. The Romanow government's public policy idea behind expanded casino gambling is as a source of revenue and a tool for aboriginal economic development.

But what's happened is that the Metis have been treated as second-class aboriginal people in terms of profit-sharing and control of the government-run Regina casino.

In a May 14 letter to Durocher, Indian and Metis Affairs Minister Joanne Crofford proposes that the Metis will receive "up to 25 per cent" of gambling revenues that go to what's called the Associated Entities Fund (AEF). The financial breakdown would have 50 per cent of the revenues from Casino Regina going to the government, 25 per cent to the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations and 25 per cent to the AEF, which is made up of various charities and the Metis.

The idea of the Metis being lumped in with charitable organization deeply irks Durocher. "It upsets me they consider us just another charitable organization. I'm very concerned about it because they say that they see the Metis people as a nation, with the right to self-government," Durocher says.

It's true. The government's aboriginal policy framework document entitled "Toward A Shared Destiny" talks about the need for self-government of Metis people. It refers to increasing "Metis control over design and delivery of government programs."

But in the case of getting access to casino gambling proceeds that could be put into economic development projects, the Metis feel they have been marginalized.

You can argue the Metis have no one to blame but themselves. Two years ago, when the gambling deal was being negotiated, the MNS was in a state of utter financial chaos with allegations flying back and forth about missing money and a total lack of financial accountability.

But Durocher, who took over as MNS president in the wake of the controversy, insists those problems have been resolved, the organization is back on its feet and its accounting problems are in the past.

"I'm Roman Catholic. If a commit a sin, I go to confession, do my penance and receive forgiveness. What we need is some recognition from this government, but instead they treat us as just another interest group," Durocher says.

As usual, the Metis find themselves in a kind of aboriginal limbo. They have group rights, but we don't know what they are.

People cheering the acquittal of the farmer near Weyburn, who shot at four young punks stealing his gasoline, need to ask themselves a few questions.

What would they be saying if he had killed, or seriously wounded, one of those fleeing in the car? Would that still be considered use of appropriate force to make what was termed "a citizen's arrest?" Is shooting people for stealing gasoline reasonable? Let's hope not.

Therefore, we can only assume what made Bruce Croal's actions acceptable was that he was lucky enough not to hit anyone when he fired his shotgun. My guess is that had he unintentionally killed one of the thieves he would have been charged with at least manslaughter, if not second-degree murder. In that instance, would the same jury have thought that excessive force was not used if someone ended up dead for stealing gasoline? I doubt it.

Section 494 of the Criminal Code clearly states that individuals can make a citizen's arrest using reasonable force. They can also pursue and arrest someone who they observe committing a crime.

The argument in this case is that Croal never was firing to harm anyone. As the car with the four gasoline thieves was leaving his farmyard, he fired his shotgun at the car's tires. His shots were "carefully aimed" to stop the car. He was able to blow out a tire and apprehend the crooks nearby.

But surely the issue here is not Croal's aim (whether through luck or marksmanship), but the fact he fired a shotgun at a car with four people inside. Was it a reasonable risk for him to take, in proportion with the crime of theft that he was trying to prevent?

If you're among those who think it was, then ask yourself about the legal precedent that has been established here. Apparently it is now acceptable to fire a gun in the direction of thieves, providing you don't shoot to kill. Never mind that shotguns, by design, are inaccurate from other than close range; what matters is the intent of the person pulling the trigger.

So the next time someone comes across thieves on their property making off with something, it is apparently acceptable to shoot first and ask questions later, providing the intent is not to hit anyone. What if the property owner fires a rifle at the tire of the car racing away and happens to hit the gas tank, the car explodes and those inside die? Do we chalk it up to a citizen's arrest gone bad? Is it now acceptable for police to shoot at someone fleeing from the scene after siphoning gas?

Perhaps the best way to appreciate how misguided the jury verdict was in the Croal case is to compare it with another recent and more tragic case.

Paul Zarry, an 88-year-old farmer who lives alone near the town of Alvena, was not even charged after he shot and killed one of three men who broke into his home. On the surface, the Zarry incident seems to underscore the reasonableness of the Croal verdict. If Zarry doesn't get charged when he uses his shotgun to kill someone on his property, why is it that Croal lands in court for merely shooting at a car and never harming anyone?

But the two incidents are not comparable.

For one thing, according to the evidence at his trial, Croal was never in any personal danger. The gas thieves were on his property, but had not entered his home and were trying to get away when Croal fired his shot.

In the Zarry case, reports indicate that three men forced their way into Zarry's home. They ransacked the home, cut the phone cord and the two who were with Leonard Paul John when he was shot by Zarry, have been charged with break and enter, and robbery with violence.

Surely being confronted by violent thieves in your own home, where your personal safety is clearly in immediate peril, is far different from someone stealing gas out of a farmyard tank. The law recognizes the right of individuals to protect themselves from harm, which means that Zarry had the right to use violence to defend himself from violence.

There are some who question the Crown's decision not to charge Zarry. The man he shot, and the other two intruders, were members of the nearby One Arrow First Nation. Blaine Favel, chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, says he's astounded by the decision not to charge Zarry. "If the roles were reversed, if this individual who took the life of this young man were Indian and had his victims been young non-Indians, would anyone believe that the Crown would not prosecute? That would never happen in a million years," Favel argues, rather predictably.

But clearly, if what we've been told is accurate, Zarry had the right to protect himself from immediate danger in his own home. It's not a matter of the racial background of the intruders, but an issue of an individual's inherent right to self defence.

Bruce Croal faced no such danger. The jury's verdict was a mistake.

If one party is guilty of violating the Election Act by not disclosing its anonymous donors, than all parties are equally guilty, explains Post-Secondary Education Minister Bob Mitchell.

Mitchell may be right.

But if so, he is also admitting the NDP has become the biggest villain of this piece.

First, we taxpayers have little cause for solace when we find out the NDP may have laundered its corporate donations through fundraising accounts that are similar to the PCs' secret trust fund.

Is the NDP suggesting it's OK to break the law if all parties - to some degree - are breaking the law?

Especially when - second, and more importantly - the NDP is now government.

The body most responsible for upholding the laws of the land is now refusing to ensure there will be a thorough, independent, unbiased and somewhat public examination of past violations of the act.

Even if the government's proposed amendments to the Election Act did address all future problems (which they clearly don't), it simply would not be good enough for Premier Roy Romanow to say potential past violations somehow don't matter.

Why such anonymous donations through hidden trust funds or surreptitious accounts should be important to you has everything to do with who may have made these donations.

These donors are not likely - as both Romanow and Mitchell have suggested - a lot of harmless, little old ladies who want to contribute to the democratic process, but don't want to be branded as partisan. Nor are they likely smalltown businesspeople that don't want to offend customers.

Let's get realistic here.

Wander into any Saskatchewan small town and they'll tell you exactly what the politics is of the local grocery or hardware owner. And if people do wish to keep their politics private, they can already do so by making donations of less than $100 (soon to be less than $250) that don't require disclosure under the law.

At issue here are anonymous donations in the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars from big businesses and, perhaps, big unions.

Did Gigatext's Guy Montpetit, former PC advertising firms or the umpteen hundreds of businesses who received Sedco loans contribute anonymously to the PC Regina Metro Fund that still has a $2.5-million account?

We don't know, but we certainly should. It might explain a lot of the goings-on in the 1980s.

But it's just as important today that we know what, if any, large corporations donated to Tommy Douglas House Inc. that's provided the NDP with $380,000 the past five years.

Were any of the seven companies that most benefitted from SaskPower's rate "restructuring" last year - the restructuring that resulted in us paying 12 to 14 per cent more for power - contributors to Tommy Douglas House Inc.? Were any of the donors insurance companies that have received guaranteed government loans? Hog processors? Oil companies now being allowed more foreign ownership?

As is the case with the PC Metro Fund, we simply don't know.

And the more questions we ask about this anonymous funding, the more questions there are to be asked.

For example, Tuesday, the Liberals also pointed to the NDP's Lifetime Membership program to "establish a permanent election fund for Saskatchewan New Democrats."

The NDP has big problems here.

It's not good enough for Romanow to say these problems can be fixed by changing the laws for the future.

Nor is it enough for Romanow to say the whole issue should be left to the discretion of chief electoral officer Myron Kuziak - an employee of the premier's office.

No doubt, Kuziak takes his role very seriously.

But Kuziak is the son of a former NDP cabinet minister appointed to a job traditionally reserved for party partisans. His funding and very existence are owed to the premier's office.

The entire issue should be examined by someone outside the existing structure.

It's not good enough for the NDP to say no one is guilty if everyone is guilty.

Doug Anguish always was kind of a renegade, or at least he seemed like one. You had this feeling he was constantly on the verge of doing, or saying, something controversial.

The reputation wasn't undeserved. It went back to his days as an MP in the early 1980s when Anguish was labelled a rebel within the federal NDP caucus. It came at a time when there was real tension between the western wing of the party and the Ontario-dominated federal leadership of Ed Broadbent.

The trouble boiled to the surface at the 1983 national NDP convention held in Regina. As the 50th anniversary of the founding of the CCF and adoption of the Regina Manifesto, the Regina convention was supposed to signal a new era for the NDP. But it turned into a less-than-joyous event.

The party might have come back to its Saskatchewan roots to mark the occasion, but the mood wasn't exactly upbeat. A year before, the provincial NDP government had been routed at the polls by the Grant Devine Tories and a pall still hung over the decimated Saskatchewan party.

There was talk of how some western New Democrats wanted to wrest control of the federal party from the clutches of organized labor. Among those spoiling for a fight was Anguish. He might have been a rookie MP, but that didn't prevent Anguish from openly speculating how he might let his name stand in a leadership challenge to Broadbent.

It never came to that. After saying he was thinking about taking a run at Broadbent, Anguish backed down under pressure from others. But, from that point on, he was seen as a troublemaker.

The reputation followed him when he was elected provincially in 1986 after being defeated two years earlier in a federal re-election bid. In opposition, Anguish, Eldon Lautermilch and Eric Upshall became known as the "Three Amigos", a trio of rebel rousers who were known to spend time shooting pool at the Teachers' Club when the legislature was in session.

When the Roy Romanow government took power, Anguish was bitterly disappointed when he was not named to cabinet. He fumed in the backbenches and, according to some Liberal sources, was on the verge of joining then-Liberal leader Lynda Haverstock around the time that Glen McPherson jumped the NDP ship and became a Liberal. Fearing a second defection could be nearly fatal to his government, Romanow appointed Anguish to cabinet as energy minister and the trouble passed.

Whether Anguish was on the brink of leaving the NDP to join the Liberals remains part of the quiet folklore around the Marble Palace. But given Anguish's mercurial personality, it's not difficult to believe.

He even concedes that his reputation as a rebel is not undeserved, although he prefers to use the term "maverick". He insists, though, that time and experience have changed him.

"I was (a maverick) at one point in time. I used to get frustrated, but I think I'm more skilled now and wouldn't view myself as a renegade or a maverick any longer," Anguish said Wednesday.

Anguish's decision to leave politics comes at what can only be described as a turning point for the Romanow government. What his resignation does is open the door for Romanow to bring new blood into cabinet. The only question is whether Romanow adds one person to replace Anguish - a good guess is Meadow Lake MLA Maynard Sonntag - or plans a major cabinet overhaul. Romanow says he's undecided.

But other significant changes are in the offing for this government.

You can expect there to be an announcement very soon that David Dombowsky will be stepping down as president of the Crown Investments Corp. The timing of Dombowsky's move, coming in the midst of a major review of Crown corporations, is curious. He's been in the job for less than a year and the word is that he prefers the life of a consultant to that of a full-time corporate executive. With homes in Saskatoon and Kelowna, Dombowsky is not comfortable being chained to a desk at CIC headquarters in Regina.

The speculation on who will take over at the helm of CIC has created all kinds of interesting scenarios. The short list of candidates to replace Dombowsky includes SGI president and former finance deputy John Wright; former economic development deputy Frank Hart; Public Service Commission chairman Mike Shaw, who was environment deputy when current CIC minister Berny Wiens was environment minister; and Don Wright, an assistant deputy minister with the B.C. government and a former deputy minister in this province.

Also apparently imminent is the resignation of Romanow's chief of staff and key political adviser Garry Aldridge. If that happens, a good bet to take over from Aldridge is Tony Penikett, the one-time head of an NDP government in Yukon who has been working in Executive Council's policy and planning secretariat.

Anguish is only the first domino to fall.

There are no real people. Or so would seem to be the obvious conclusion, judging by the latest round of public consultations reviewing the future of Saskatchewan Crown corporations.

But you get the feeling the NDP government is not all that disappointed interest groups and political partisans seem to be hijacking its Crown review process.

A cynic might even suggest this was the government's hope all along. The notion of trying to discuss any government policy in this province without attracting partisans or vested interests is ridiculous.

About the only thing more ridiculous would be trying to bar partisans and vested interests from such a process, as the former PC administration proved in 1990 with Consensus Saskatchewan. This 100-person, non-political advisory group had been designed to inject a healthy dose of grassroots, common sense into government policy development.

But after some 108 public meetings costing a million bucks, all Consensus Saskatchewan produced were philosophical nuggets like "economic development must not come at the expense of the environment" and "social programs should serve those who need them." It didn't offer any opinion on issues like privatization, health user fees or government spending levels for agriculture, health, education of social services - advice the Devine government could have certainly used.

Realistically, it would be difficult to expect today's version of Consensus Saskatchewan - the current Crown review process - to accomplish much more.

For one thing, real people can't tell you much about how to make Crown corporations more profitable, what employment levels are appropriate, how much profit Crowns should be making or how much of that profit should subsidize government operations and how much should be retained to deal with a Crown's own debt.

Come to think of it, real people have much better things to do during nice, warm June evenings - such as putting in their crops or backyard gardens. (This is something else Consensus Saskatchewan found out. Attendance at those meetings during the spring/summer of 1990 averaged less than 20.)

So the NDP government went into its Crown review fully aware of two things: Only the most general philosophy would emerge from these sessions and that philosophy would emerge from the partisans and vested interests who were guaranteed to show up at the 12 meetings.

So far, the partisans that have dominated happen to be New Democrats and employees of the Crowns, strongly encouraged to come to the meetings by the Saskatchewan Federation of Labor (SFL) to fight privatization.

This has drawn the ire of both the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) and the PC Opposition, which accused the SFL in Tuesday's question period of hijacking the process.

But Berny Wiens, minister responsible for the Crown Investment Corp., responded by thanking the PCs for the question "because last night (Rosetown, on Monday) was exactly the perfect kind of meeting we had intended to do in setting up this public discussion about Crown corporations." Even some former Tory candidates showed up at the Rosetown meetings and led discussion groups, Wiens noted.

Perfect - from the NDP government's standpoint, it likely was.

With union and party members dominating these meetings, we can safely conclude a call to keep the Crowns publicly owned will emerge.

But with input from other vested interests - PCs, Liberals, the CFIB - the NDP government will point out that "the public" is also demanding Crown corporations become more efficient to survive.

The NDP government will be able to go back to its party membership and say they have proven Saskatchewan people want public ownership.

But they will also note "the public" is demanding the Crowns be more efficient, profitable and competitive with the private sector.

Unfortunately, that may mean more focus on reducing debt and higher dividends which can mean less employees and higher utility rates in the future, the government will tell us. But, after all, this is what the public wants.

It's been more than a month since Roy Romanow launched what he called his "alternative national agenda". Perhaps, "attempted to launch" would be more accurate.

The evidence, such as it exists, suggests this was one launch that never got off the ground. The question now is whether the effort fizzled and died, or has there been a delayed takeoff?

If you base such a judgment on media coverage and reaction to Romanow's ideas, the initiative has been a spectacular flop. When Romanow first outlined his ideas at a conference in Montreal, they received scant attention.

A week later in Ottawa, when Romanow fleshed out the social policy dimension of his agenda to the Canadian Council on Social Development, the reaction of the audience was quite positive. But Romanow's ideas did not seem to ripple beyond the walls of the room where he presented them.

Still, it's premature to suggest Romanow's call for more activist government, a national commitment to social programs and co-ordinated fiscal and investment strategies of governments has fallen flat. The real test of his ideas is less how they play in the media and more how they are judged by his federal-provincial colleagues.

As such, next week's first ministers' conference in Ottawa will tell us if Romanow's agenda has any staying power. Indeed, the plan all along was to explain his ideas in advance of a first ministers' conference and then use the meeting itself as a forum to get them on the national stage.

Judging by the conference agenda, which will focus on social programs and co-operation between governments, Romanow's proposals should comfortably fit into the discussion. But does that mean there will be support around the table for what can probably be described as a "soft-left" national agenda?

Make no mistake about Romanow's intentions. What he is trying to do is shift the national debate to the left.

With fiscal conservatism, smaller government, deregulation and freer markets driving the policies of government, there has been a corresponding lack of debate about political alternatives. The result is a kind of orthodoxy where virtually everyone sings from the same songsheet.

For the most part, the left has no one to blame but itself for being marginalized in the political debate. Very few on the left have produced ideas to address the realities of globalization and technological advances that have fundamentally and permanently changed the economy and our lives. We might long for the more secure economic and social days of our past, but there is no turning back the clock.

Yet what we hear from the faint voices on the left is a kind of wistful nostalgia and a head-in-the-sand conservatism that seeks to hang onto the past. In this province, an example is the Saskatchewan Federation of Labor's position in the public review of Crown corporations.

The SFL fights for the status quo. It wants Crown corporations to remain untouched and protected, preserved like pieces of heritage property.

It's as if time has stood still and the economy of 1996 in which the Crown corporations operate is no different from the economic environment of 1976, when public enterprise could enjoy a relatively sheltered existence.

The question the left needs to ask itself is how its egalitarian values can be preserved and expressed in an era when government has far less ability to effect economic outcomes.

It's not good enough to denounce what's happening, or cling to the past, without offering clear-headed alternatives. The solutions must demonstrate how government can deal with debt while accommodating economic growth and support for common social values.

The extent of the left's forward thinking on these issues can be summed up in one word: taxation. If the rich pay more in taxes, if we realize more revenue from natural resources, there will be no debt problem and we will be able to support our social programs.

The idea makes sense, except for one small problem: we live in an integrated world economy where capital is mobile and we no longer have the luxury of designing a tax system in isolation from others.

But that's not to say there is no room to move politically. The key, as Romanow argues, is to merge the design of social policy with the fiscal reality of government. Instead of the fiscal agenda totally dominating the decision-making process of government, he wants a debate that creates a national consensus on the social values we preserve within the framework of what's affordable.

As someone who has presided over a government dominated by its fiscal agenda, where the Finance Department effectively runs government, Romanow might seem an unlikely voice for the left in Canada.

But all that indicates is how far the national agenda has shifted to the right. The fact remains that Romanow is the closest you get to what can be described as the "responsible left" in Canada today.

If there is one issue that has dominated public debate in this province over the decades, it has been the future of rural Saskatchewan. The question of how to preserve and enhance life on farms and in small communities goes back to the very beginning of our province.

The assumption has always been that rural life was so central to Saskatchewan's character that it needed and deserved special attention. And who could argue with that? The family farm was the social and economic foundation of the province. So we produced and nurtured an infrastructure to support the agricultural society that gave Saskatchewan its meaning and raison d'etre.

Not surprisingly, this commitment to a rural way of life produced its own political culture. We might have our partisan differences, but on the need to support rural Saskatchewan there was a unique political consensus. For decades, the primary purpose of government has been to preserve and protect agriculture and our rural society.

Whether or not this has been a good thing is a matter for debate. Certainly it created the kind of rigid political climate that led to economic distortions. If the purpose of politics is to defend rural Saskatchewan from change, or at least slow the pace of change to avoid social disruption, then these problems slowly but inevitably grow larger.

The only serious study government did on the future of rural Saskatchewan was in the 1950s. The Royal Commission on Agriculture and Rural Life was an exhaustive effort by the Douglas government to look at challenges facing agriculture in the rapidly mechanizing world following the Second World War. While the commission did a great deal of good analysis, it produced little in the way of hard public policy.

Since that time, we have muddled along. Rural issues have been addressed almost entirely within the framework of partisan political debate, which means there has been no real debate at all. The consensus of political conservatism that believes rural Saskatchewan society must be shielded from change has remained largely intact.

At least, that is, until fiscal reality and the Romanow government arrived on the scene in recent years. What we've witnessed over the last five years has been nothing short of a remarkable breakdown in the political consensus that has guided this province. Faced with the fiscal inheritance of political generations that refused to address the truth about rural life, the Romanow government has broken with tradition.

What we find ourselves in the midst of today is a fundamental debate about the sustainability of the rural Saskatchewan that has been central to life in this province. The questions that for decades were never broached for fear of the political consequences are now the stuff of government policy. Consolidation, rationalization and restructuring have become the principles guiding the direction of rural Saskatchewan.

We've seen the wholesale rationalization of rural health care; the amalgamation and consolidation of local government across rural Saskatchewan is inevitable; smaller rural school divisions are destined to disappear into larger units; the future of many towns is in doubt as grain elevators close and rail branchlines are abandoned; and, many secondary rural highways are deteriorating. In effect, the rural Saskatchewan that has been so zealously defended by government for so many years is disappearing before our very eyes.

As you might expect, this is creating much rural angst. The privileged position that rural life has held in Saskatchewan politics is being dissolved by the politics of debt. For the first time, the issue of sustainability has become a part of the political equation for rural Saskatchewan.

No longer can our public decisions be guided by nostalgia for a pastoral way of life in rural areas that we want preserved. Gone are the days when people, like former premier Grant Devine, would say that the provincial treasury will be used to defend farmers and small farm communities.

Reality has finally intruded because we have discovered that we can no longer afford the social and economic rural infrastructures that have been in place for generations. For more than 90 years, the politics of Saskatchewan was organized around the defence of our rural society. We created a system that supported that society and then politicians went about their business of not only defending it, but building upon what was already there.

It was inevitable that economic and fiscal reality some day would become even stronger than the political forces that went into creating rural Saskatchewan. Sooner or later the distortions would be greater than even politics could ignore.

We are now at that stage in the life of Saskatchewan. Make no mistake, it is a turning point in our history as a people and a province.

It was important for acting Liberal leader Ron Osika to apologize for his stupid and unfounded attack last week on conflict of interest commissioner Derril McLeod for more than the obvious reason.

At stake was more than the undeserved slurring of the reputation of an officer of the legislature.

Left unaddressed, it would have stood as the ultimate admission - final, indelible proof - that Liberals simply didn't understand the legislature or their role in it.

As it is, this Liberal-created debacle allowed the NDP government to continue to do what it's been best at this session - fobbing off the responsibility a government has to ensure all laws are being upheld and all people are being treated fairly.

About the only thing accomplished by accusing McLeod of being in conflict as a member of Extendicare's board of directors was to alleviate any pressure the NDP government might have felt over its own party's potential violation of the Election Act.

Now that the focus of the issue has changed from potential breaches of the law by Tories and New Democrats to false accusations, then apologies from the Liberals, it will be that much easier for the NDP government to never bother finding out whether secret and third-party trust funds have violated the existing Election Act.

The Liberals have blown what should have been a glorious issue for them.

You really wonder where their heads were at.

Precisely what Osika and the Liberals thought they could gain by dragging Extendicare into the issue by New Democrats and Tories was beyond comprehension.

Extendicare gleefully contributed to the Liberals, and other parties, in the past. (It gave $2,000 to the provincial Liberals in 1995 and $4,316 to the federal Liberal party in 1994.)

But, in no uncertain terms, Extendicare said it would no longer contribute because of MLA Gerard Aldridge's "irresponsible attack on Crown Life."

Somehow, the Liberals concluded, this made their former political contributor an enemy of the people - a business trying to (gasp) exercise undue influence. (Evidently, Extendicare's influence was only an issue to the Liberals after they stopped giving money to the party.)

Seemingly unsatisfied with besmirching the name of a corporation for complaining about besmirching the name of another business, Osika decided to personalize the attack a bit more.

Upon discovering McLeod was on Extendicare's board, Osika concluded Premier Roy Romanow had to "do the honorable thing and remove Mr. McLeod from this post."

That there was no evidence McLeod had anything to do with either the donation or the letter seemed of little significance to the Liberals.

Never one to pass up an opportunity, Romanow called the Liberal accusations an embarrassment.

Sadly, Romanow had little room to criticize anyone else in the assembly last week for embarrassing behavior.

He spent much of the day's question period joining Deputy Premier Dwain Lingenfelter in heckling Liberal MLA Glen McPherson over his highly personal family dispute.

It was good, old fashion trash talk. Add a few tatoos, color that near-perfect hair the color of the rainbow and grab 20 rebounds a question period and Romanow would have been Dennis Rodman.

This, too, is unacceptable behavior in a legislative assembly - especially coming from the premier. But his own odd behavior aside, Romanow was right about Osika's accusations against McLeod.

Unfortunately, the Liberals' handling of this issue likely allowed the NDP to get away with yet another one.

But maybe, just maybe, Osika's apology shows the Liberals are finally learning.

It will be a year tomorrow that the NDP was re-elected on the promise of better times ahead. Voters were told that after four years of belt-tightening and deficit-fighting, a new day was dawning.

While there was nothing explicit in the NDP platform about tax cuts or more resources for important public needs, implicit was the idea of a change in direction. The message from Roy Romanow was that the worst was behind us.

But in the past year, it's fair to say Saskatchewan people have seen little of the optimism from government promised by the NDP in the election. If anything, it has been more of the same over the last 12 months. The Romanow government remains completely in the clutches of the austere fiscal control of Finance Minister Janice MacKinnon.

It's almost impossible to overstate the influence of the Finance Department on the life of this government. The fiscal agenda Finance set out in the early days of government to eliminate the deficit has become a deeply embedded culture within the psychology of the government. To this day, it permeates every nook and cranny of the administration.

As the chief architect of the fiscal plan and the person who executes it, MacKinnon is a controversial and, in some cases, resented figure in some government circles. There is no question that Treasury Board, the financial committee of cabinet headed by MacKinnon that oversees the financial needs of government, remains the focal point of power.

But, ironically, what has happened is that as the fiscal condition of government improves, the power of Finance becomes greater. A recent credit-rating upgrade has tended to validate the tight fiscal control rather than create an argument that it should be loosened.

In fairness, the government's financial situation has been complicated by external factors over the last year. Cuts in federal transfers for 1996-97 cost the province about $105 million, which added pressure to this year's budget. The money had to be found in other areas, which meant that the Finance Department was able to keep the pressure on department program spending.

Ultimately, the answer to changing the fiscal outlook comes externally from the economy, not within the government. There really can't be better days ahead until the market reflects that in Saskatchewan.

But if you listen to the NDP politicians, and judging by many of the macroeconomic factors, the Saskatchewan economy is in a period of significant growth. Wheat prices are higher than they've been in decades, the resource sector is strong, retail trade is increasing and the housing market - especially in Saskatoon - is particularly strong. Meanwhile, unemployment is down to 6.6 per cent, which is getting close to what is considered full-employment level.

All this raises the question why the Romanow government remains so dominated by its fiscal agenda. With the budget balanced, isn't it time for the government to shift its emphasis from tight fiscal control to economic expansion and restoration of social program funding?

Actually, the answer is in the question. If the economy is strong and unemployment down, there is no need for the government to change its course. When the latter gets its fiscal house in order, the economy takes care of itself, quite independently of government. This merely underscores the argument that the best policy for economic growth is prudent government.

But separate from the economic issue is the matter of government spending in critical program areas. A year ago, the inherent message in the NDP's re-election platform was that there would be more support available for things like health care, education and highways. With the deficit eliminated, the indication was the fiscal priorities of government would shift.

To this point, there is no evidence of such a change. The pressure to contain or cut spending is omnipresent throughout government.

What drives the Romanow government these days is simply a different form of deficit anxiety than we saw in its first term. Back then, the annual budgetary deficit was real. Now that it's eliminated, the fear is that it will return if the government doesn't maintain its fiscal vigilance.

We shouldn't dismiss such fear as unwarranted paranoia. The fact is that even with some strong economic indicators, the government is struggling to maintain a balanced budget. It makes you wonder if another deficit cycle is a certainty when the economy goes into decline, which inevitably will happen.

There is little doubt the deficit-and-debt trauma of the first half of this decade will be with us for a long time. It haunts the NDP government to this day, which is why it seems incapable of delivering on its election promise that relief is at hand.

We shouldn't be all that surprised the NDP government has either lied about having prepared a report on the effect of its union-preference Crown tendering policy or is deliberately withholding what are presumably unflattering results.

The government hasn't really felt much need to be honest about the Crown Construction Tendering Agreement (CCTA) since its inception.

Even the word "agreement" is a prevarication inferring some kind of harmony of opinion that has never existed.

Only the Saskatchewan Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council (representing unionized workers) and the Construction Labor Relations (CLR) Association (representing unionized contractors, only) signed on. The Saskatchewan Construction Association - representing 700 mostly non-union contractors - didn't.

In fact, if we went back to the CCTA's origins, we would find it to be less of a consensus than it was the brainchild of one person - former CIC president and now SaskTel president Don Ching.

In early 1994, Ching ordered CIC vice-president Bill Hyde to examine a union-preference construction tendering policy in the name of good public policy and labor peace.

What emerged was a policy requiring non-union contractors to hire 75 per cent unionized labor and pay all workers union-equivalent rates. It quickly drew the ire of every Crown corporation head. The most vociferous, sources say, was SaskPower President Jack Messer . The Crown heads labeled the policy an administrative nightmare and an unnecessary cost to taxpayers.

But Ching remained adamant.

A quick delve into his former life as a labor lawyer may partially explain why.

One of the many battles between labor and the PC government saw Ching representing the Carpenters Union before the Labor Relations Board in the 1984 case of a contractor accused of "double-breasting" or setting up a spinoff, non-union company as a way around the union.

The board found the company guilty of an unfair labor practice. But it also ruled the collective agreement did not apply to the new company.

Many believe this decision led to a rise in non-union operations. It was not the only loss Ching would suffer before the LRB. It would be unfair to suggest the CCTA is, purely about petty political payback.

But we know from a leaked Nov. 19, 1994 cabinet memo, economic development recommended the CCTA be scrapped because it "in fact is a union preference policy."

We also know Ching had both the will and political support - lest we forget his old law partners were Roy Romanow and Bob Mitchell - to push the CCTA through a cabinet that has never been able to properly explain why the policy was really needed.

And we are also now well aware of the great lengths the government has gone to justify and preserve this policy.

It's denied the CCTA would increase Crown tenders 30 per cent, contradicting the internal memo which suggested just that.

Now, we have a government saying it does not have a report reviewing the costs of the CCTA.

On three occasions this session - May 8, 10 and May 26 - Labor Minister Doug Anguish told the assembly a CCTA review will be completed by the end of May.

"All people in Saskatchewan will be privileged to know what the results of the review have been," Anguish said May 10.

"There was no report," Deputy Premier Dwain Lingenfelter said Wednesday. There was a review, but that "was put on hold" so as not to interfere with delicate negotiations.

Since last November, the government requested input from 50 to 60 stakeholders on the impact of the CCTA. Somehow, we are expected to believe no one in government ever wrote down Word One or that no one ever gave government a written submission.

Of course, "lying" is an unkind word never be used by gentlemen or politicians. A more pleasant euphemism - like 'bludgeoning the truth beyond recognition" - is required.

But you wonder if the NDP government could possibly be all that bothered by the term.

So far, it's been more tolerable to be accused of lying than try to explain why it introduced its CCTA or justify the policy's impact.

Good for Herb Sparrow. The long-time Saskatchewan senator took a stand for democracy when he cast the pivotal vote to help defeat legislation cancelling the controversial Pearson airport privatization deal.

The Senate? Democracy? In the same sentence? I know, it might sound like an oxymoron. But in this case it's true.

The problem with the controversy over the former Mulroney government's plan to lease the operation of terminals 1 and 2 at Canada's busiest and most lucrative airport in Toronto is that it's horribly mired in partisan politics.

It has been virtually impossible to judge this issue with any dispassion or objectivity. If ever there was an example of how raw, electoral politics does more to deceive than enlighten, this is it.

To begin with, the moment the word privatization is used, alarm bells start ringing in certain heads. It's a word that triggers spasms of outrage and indignation in some people. Few words are as ideologically charged as privatization.

To make matters worse, this was a deal authored in the final weeks of a dying and discredited government. With the bad odor of scandal a kind of trademark scent the public associated with the Tories, the Pearson privatization was a target the Liberals could not resist.

So, in the 1993 campaign the deal that would have turned the operation of the terminals over to a consortium became a handy weapon for the Liberals to use against the Tories. Elect a Liberal government, Jean Chretien vowed, and one of his first acts would be to cancel the patronage-ridden Pearson airport privatization.

The fact that some well-known Tories were part of the consortium that cut the $700 million, 37-year deal with the Mulroney government was proof enough of a scam. The fact a few prominent Liberals were also part of the deal was somehow incidental.

But forget whether this was a good deal for the public, or a sweetheart deal for some fat-cat Tories. That's not the issue at hand.

When Sparrow voted against the Chretien government's bill that would have cancelled the Pearson privatization, he was not passing judgment on the deal itself; he was taking a stand against the Liberal government's actions, which he saw as an abuse of its power.

As Sparrow explains, the government has the perfect right to cancel the deal, if it sees fit. But what it doesn't have the right to do is extinguish the legal rights of those in the consortium who are suing the government for breaking the contract.

"I think it's repugnant in any way to have legislation that restricts citizens of this country to have recourse to the court system," Sparrow declares.

"That's the way our society works. Immediately when we start to legislate against these rights, then we're in trouble and that's my stand."

Thus, the crucial issue is not the one clouded by politics that claims this was a bad deal for the Canadian taxpayers. The crux of the matter is whether legislation that nullifies an individual's right to seek legal remedy is something we believe is consistent with Canadian democratic values. Is it acceptable in a democratic society that governments extinguish rights to avoid what they fear might be unfavorable judgments by the courts?

Surely the answer must be no.

Such was the conclusion that Sparrow reached. Cancel the deal, but don't at the same time cancel what have traditionally been the constitutional rights of Canadians to have their legal rights recognized and defended.

There might be no clearly defined rights contained in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that lend themselves to an argument against what the Chretien government attempted. But what might be described as Canada's constitutional common law sees nullification of legal rights by government as a threat to individual liberty and, therefore, fundamentally anti-democratic.

What makes this all the more disturbing is that such abuse of power by government is becoming ever more common. For example, the Romanow government has made a disturbing habit of taking a cavalier attitude towards individual legal rights.

At least four times since taking power in 1991, the NDP government has passed legislation that extinguished the legal rights of a defined, targeted group as a means to pre-empt a legal challenge to retroactive legislation.

The Crown Employment Contracts Act nullified the rights of those who had their contracts with the province terminated. Legislation that cancelled farmers' GRIP contracts also cancelled their rights to sue the government. Federated Co-operatives Ltd. was threatened with having its legal rights eliminated when the NewGrade Upgrader contract was broken, and provincial court judges were told their rights to sue the government over a breach of agreement had been extinguished.

This crude use of legislative power is an abuse of democracy. Herb Sparrow did the right thing.

This is the time of year when groups of elementary school students flock to the hallowed hallways of the provincial legislature to learn about important public issues.

They take a guided tour of the building where they are told about the legislature's storied history, and they see pictures of the politicians who have proudly walked the corridors of the Marble Palace. Hopefully, a bit of the atmosphere rubs off and students begin to develop a healthy appreciation for democracy.

Then, they gather in the public galleries to behold democracy in action. The young students watch as our elected representatives debate and argue the important issues of the day: taxation, rural economic development, health-care funding, wooden penises.

Yes, that's right, wooden penises. Approximately 1,000 five-inch-long penises the Education Department purchased in 1994, to be exact.

The penises, we're told, are part of the health education curriculum. The idea was that they would be used to show students how a condom is properly applied to a wooden penis.

Before we go any further, you should realize what a delicate issue this is for the media. I mean, word selection is crucial when you start talking about wooden penises. The pun potential is unlimited, but this is a family newspaper and you don't want to be needlessly offending people. So understand, each of the following words is selected with the utmost care and caution. You will notice, for example, that not once do I refer to the NDP caucus.

Of course, in government, wooden penises are not called wooden penises. Officially, they're known as "wooden demonstrators", although I hear that some people refer to them as "woodies" for short.

They are part of what's known as "resource-based" education, where students learn though hands-on experience, so to speak, whether it is cubes for geometry, test tubes for science, maps for geography, or wooden penises for condom application. You might call them educational tools.

We know this because deputy minister of education Craig Dotson told us so. He was the unlucky designate who had to field media calls the other day after the Tories' Ben Heppner raised questions about the 1,000 wooden penises. The NDP politicians didn't want to touch the wooden penis issue with a 10-foot pole, if you know what I mean.

Education Minister Pat Atkinson was conveniently not available, which meant that Health Minister Eric Cline had to handle, so to speak, the wooden penis issue in the assembly. Cline reported that the intent, and I quote, was "to make them available to parties" who might be interested in wooden penises. But only 46 were actually sold and the remaining 954 are still available "for anyone who may wish to purchase one".

Peering down at the time from the public galleries, with a rather distressed look on her face, was a teacher and the 16 students in her Grade 4 class from Montmartre. You could kind of sense that the penis issue was not the kind of lesson in democracy she had in mind. But never mind.

For the most part, the penis debate was handled delicately. The one thing students learn when they come to the legislature is that all the politicians are honorable members. In fact, they refer to each other as "the honorable member" or simply just "the member" to demonstrate the respect one member has for another member.

The penis issue was raised by the PC member from Rosthern, Ben Heppner. Once he had Cline, the NDP member from Saskatoon Mount Royal, confirm that indeed the government had purchased 1,000 wooden replicas of penises, the ground for the debate shifted to what should be done with the surplus penises.

Heppner suggested that one option would be to use them for firewood in provincial parks. This might be an option. The only problem is we never found out if these wooden penises are made out of hardwood or softwood lumber.

As any serious camper knows, hardwood is not good for burning. It's hard to ignite and burns very slowly. Not the kind of wood that works well in camp fires at provincial parks.

But softwood penises are a different matter entirely. They could make very good kindling to light camp fires. Of course, the penises would have to be whittled down first.

An accomplished whittler would simply hold the (wooden) penis between his (or her) legs and whittle it into the campfire pit. The whittlings would then make a dandy starter fire.

The bottom line is that the Romanow government obviously has to get a grip of the wooden penis issue. In these days when governments have to count every penny, it is simply unacceptable that government would be wasting money on five-inch wooden penises.

Or, as former member Dick Collver once said, "governments have to get their priorities straight."

The amazing thing about this NDP government is the way it can be both very good and very bad, almost simultaneously.

This may be little more than an offshoot of Premier Roy Romanow's own ultra-conservative style.

Always be cautious. Never take big risks. Trade off interests so as to offend as few as possible. Procrastinate on problems as long as possible. So perhaps it was hardly surprising we often saw the NDP government this session at its best and worst at virtually the same time.

Let's count down the seven best (or worst) examples of each:

Seven: Selling $750 million shares in Cameco to reduce public debt - a move that will incite criticism from both party ideologues and hind-sighters who will surely note how much more the government could have made if Cameco shares continue to rise.

Seven: The otherwise complete lack of innovation in the Crowns, that have become a patronage haven for NDP loyalists from the top down. About $7.7 billion in assets returned a paltry $50-million dividend to government this past year. Meanwhile, the taxpayers still had to contend with 12-per-cent power rate increases.

Six: Opening a no-holds-barred public debate on the future of Saskatchewan Crown corporations - including talk of privatization - to determine how they could be run more efficiently.

Six: The Crown Construction Tendering Agreement (CCTA) - a costly, union-preference policy by the government's own admission in leaked, internal memos - that perfectly illustrates how this NDP government sees the Crowns as just another political tool to appease interest groups.

Five: The Health Facilities Licensing Act that will virtually prohibit privatized medicine - a significant piece of legislation not for what it does (really, not much) but what it symbolizes. Seldom has this NDP government offered such decisive policy direction, directly reflecting its own party's principles.

Five: The on-going assault of health care: Reduced funding for 19 health boards (18, in rural areas); allowing the closure of the Plains Hospital, despite a 70,000-signature petition; allowing the closure of nursing homes, and; force communities to sue for adequate health care towns. The NDP government's failure to take responsibility for any of this.

Four: The Service District Act that focuses on rethinking the need for 849 local governments (including 299 rural municipalities).

Four: A budget that sounded a death knell for rural Saskatchewan. The closure of the Agriculture Credit Corp. in Swift Current, the closure of 26 highways depots along with the aforementioned underfunding of rural hospitals and nursing homes. Add the $20-million reduction in in the municipalities 1997-98 revenue-sharing pool announced in the spring budget.

Three: Long overdue amendments to the Election Act to provide more accountability.

Three: Implementing this reform only after it was an issue that the NDP - like the Tories - benefitted from anonymous third-party donations. Also, refusing to ensure such potential violations were seriously investigated.

Two: Accepting recommendations for MLAs' salary reform that end tax-free "per diems" and give MLAs what amounts to pay cut despite a rise in their basic salary.

Two: Postponing implementation of the 18-month-old recommendations until after July 1 so NDP MLAs could gouge another session of $155 or $94 per diems out of taxpayers. NDP MLAs' stubborn and greedy give back $4,356 as the PCs and Liberals. In reality, it's equivalent to an 11-per-cent raise for New Democrats.

One: A surplus 1996-97 provincial budget that calls for a $230-million spending reduction (including less spending in 18 of 24 line departments) and sets the course for four more years of debt-reducing surplus budgets.

One: A 1996-97 budget that, despite its stay-the-course nature, does nothing to lower taxes or create jobs - the two biggest problems the NDP government has failed to adequately address.

Roger Phillips makes a good point when he argues the Romanow government is guilty of a "gross abdication" of its responsibilities in the way it has handled the public hearings on the future of Crown corporations.

In his submission to the hearings in Saskatoon this week, the president of Ipsco Inc. says the obligation of government should be to clearly present and explain options to the public before the discussion begins.

Everyone agrees the province is at an economic crossroads and the issue of Crown corporations in the economic and social life of the province is complex. Yet, the government is asking for public input without first providing the information people need to make rational, well-thought-out decisions. The result, for the most part, is an uninformed debate.

"To engage the general public in a dialogue of the sort you are embarked upon without a thorough discussion of the options, carefully presented by government, is a travesty," Phillips says.

The need for the public to be armed with accurate information on which to base its opinions is particularly important on an issue as politically charged as the future of Crown corporations. Like it or not, the real subtext to this process is the question of privatization. There can be no serious analysis of public enterprise without measuring it against the option of turning the Crowns, all or in part, into privately held companies.

While much of the public debate has revolved around positions that are more emotionally, rather than rationally, based, there have been worthy attempts to debate the issue on its merits.

Phillips, for one, argues the electrical market has changed to the point that the central economic and social reason for a government-owned utility no longer exists. De-regulation in the U.S. and its inevitable extension into Canada will create an integrated, competitive market for electricity.

"The whole rationale for a government-owned utility was that it constituted a so-called 'natural' monopoly and to prevent private abuse of such a monopoly position it was placed in public hands. With modern transmission technology, electricity is no longer a natural monopoly," Phillips argues.

Others who have attempted to inject economic reason into the debate are the members of a recently created group called the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan to bolster the argument for public enterprise as a pragmatic response to the economic reality of Saskatchewan.

If anything, the ones who lack a sense of economic realism and pragmatism are the proponents of privatization. "It has been a policy driven by ideology and a commitment to the free market, without any serious understanding of the way the market actually operates or why certain companies were in the hands of government in the first place," the ISEA submission says.

Using PCS as an example, the ISEA notes that before it was privatized PCS was a financial success, recording net income of $334 million from 1976 to 1988 and paying dividends of more than $228 million.

"The mere fact it held a dominant position in the world market for a valuable commodity meant the corporation had great long-term potential despite the temporary downturn in the market in the 1980s.

"Quite apart from the debatable merits of privatization as a public policy, there was certainly no business reason to privatize PCS. Indeed, investors' avid interest in the subsequent share offering by the corporation indicates the value that people saw in the corporation."

Another interesting point of view in the debate is Brett Fairbairn's argument of what might be called a third option for Crown corporations. The University of Saskatchewan professor says Crowns face a crisis of legitimacy because people see them as an arm of government, rather than "people of the province in business together" as was once the case.

Part of the solution Fairbairn suggests is what he terms "social ownership". By diversifying ownership away from the exclusive control of government and turning Crowns into "multistakeholder co-operatives", Fairbairn believes support for public enterprise would grow. In effect, what Fairbairn proposes is a return to the original idea of social ownership that Tommy Douglas espoused when the CCF was elected in the 1940s.

It might be a "back to the future" proposition, but he maintains there is still a need for a form of collective approach to economic development in the province. The province's economic fundamentals remain the same today as always: our geography, climate, and demographics dictate the need for us to use every economic tool at our disposal.

These are the kind of arguments that enlighten a debate that too often is merely an excuse for empty political rhetoric.

For those already suspicious that Glen McPherson was a "deep sleeper," events of this session and immediately after will do little to dispel the myth.

A deep sleeper - not to be confused with what we each become after the first three minutes of any Harry Van Mulligen speech - is a term borrowed from the world of espionage.

Spy stories would have us believe the old Soviet Union used to send "defectors" to the United States who would, over decades, blend into American society. After time chipped away all suspicions, these plants - even their children - would begin shipping secrets and/or blue jeans back to the old Communist bloc

When McPherson defected to Lynda Haverstock's Liberals in 1993, there were some who seriously believed he was an NDP "deep sleeper", infiltrating the Opposition-to-be under the guidance of Dwain Lingenfelter.

It says a lot about how paranoid some people in politics really are.

There again, Lingenfelter was the same politician who convinced Barry Dixon in 1982 to run as Shaunavon's Western Canada Concept (WCC) to split the right-wing vote, Dixon says. (It worked. Lingenfelter held his seat amidst the Grant Devine landslide.)

As for McPherson, the only evidence he's been a destructive force in Liberal ranks is the forced resignation of Haverstock and the Liberal's past session dominated by caucus disarray, in-fighting and talk of the Liberals defecting to the Tories.

Hmmmm?

Of course, there are a couple big problems with this theory.

That white-hot, visceral hatred between McPherson and Lingenfelter we saw each day of the session seemed sincere enough.

And to finger McPherson for all the problems in the Liberal caucus would be to omit the fine work of Gerard Aldridge on the "Crown-Life-coverup" fiasco or Harvey McLane's opposition to MLAs salary reform.

Truly, Liberal problems this past session were a collaborative effort.

But if anyone should take responsibility for the Liberals being out-performed and out-manoeuvred during the session, it has to be the Opposition House leader.

How successful an opposition is has less to do with identifying the right issues (the government's quarterly polling will give you that) than in does with developing the issues.

Here was the Liberals' failing.

For example, they'd start each day reading petitions from the thousands who protested the closure of the Plains Hospital in Regina.

Yet they did not seem to make any headway on the issue.

They had a perfect issue dropped in their lap with secret PC trust funds and the suspicious NDP Tommy Douglas House Inc. account, yet blew it when they turned it into an issue of whether Conflict-of-Interest Commissioner Derril McLeod should be fired or not.

And to conclude matters, Lingenfelter and the PCs made McPherson look like a monkey by brokering a deal on the Crown tendering agreement a day after McPherson said it was a dead issue.

An inadequate caucus staff may have been part of the problem. Certainly, the firing of Chief of Staff Bill McDonald the day after the session ended sent out that message.

But while justifying McDonald's dismissal, Wednesday, McPherson said that wasn't the case at all. "Bill's role wasn't to go in and call the shots on the day-to-day operations of the House," McPherson said.

If McDonald didn't have a major role in the day-to-day operations, he'd be the first chief-of-staff in history without such responsibilities.

However, there's likely a lot of truth to McPherson's suggestions that McDonald had little to do with the caucus's operations.

Liberal sources say McDonald was constantly frustrated by caucus's (read: McPherson's) refusal to follow his advice. By session's end, McDonald's job boiled down to tracking the progress of bills, instead of offering much-needed advice on strategy.

So if McPherson's admits it is the MLAs were responsible for the day-to-day operations, it's only logical McPherson, the House leader, would have to responsibility for the day-to-day failings of the Liberal's this session.

Unless, you believe this has been the plan all along.

As a voice for conservatism in Canada, they don't come much better than Hugh Segal. Few people are more skilled at putting into words the values that historically have been at the core of the Progressive Conservative party.

These days Segal has become something of a voice in the wilderness. His recently released book No Surrender is a passionate defence of the Conservative party, its integral role in the life of Canada and the need for it to continue as a viable political force in the future.

The Conservative party that Segal talks about is the one he was drawn to in 1962 as a teenager when he heard then-prime minister John Diefenbaker speak. He calls the Tories "first and foremost a coalition of outsiders, a voice for those who are not part of the establishment".

As chief of staff to Brian Mulroney in the final months of the Tory government, Segal admits mistakes, misjudgments and miscalculations were made throughout the Mulroney years. "But I don't think we had to pay a price that took us down to two seats," he says.

In fact, with the passage of time, Segal believes history will judge the Mulroney government far more favorably than has been the case in the wake of the Tory demise. He reminds people of the ill-will towards Pierre Trudeau in the first few years after his defeat in 1984. Segal talks of how former U.S. president Harry Truman was maligned for years until his image was transformed into a tough-talking, "buck-stops-here" political leader Americans have come to respect.

The strength of the Conservative party and its tradition, Segal says, is it's a party of principle. Unlike the Liberals, who he calls a party of "management consultants" who don't stand for anything, the PCs have always been a party that acts based on a consistent set of beliefs.

While Conservatives recognize the importance of the market and individual responsibility, they see a significant role for government in society. National institutions such as the CBC, Air Canada and a national railway are the building blocks of a nation that Conservative governments helped to create.

"In that sense, we're like the socialists. We fight for what we think is right," Segal says.

To make his point, Segal refers to the decision to implement the GST. He calls it a decision of "principle", where the Mulroney government acted in spite of the obvious political damage the tax would inflict on the government. "We believed it was the right thing to do, that's why we went ahead even though everyone in caucus knew the political consequences."

It's difficult to argue the GST point with Segal. Clearly the Tories did not implement the tax because they believed it would be politically wise.

The only conclusion you can reach is that the Mulroney government was motivated by principle, not political expediency.

The other great example of such principle from the Mulroney years, Segal maintains, was the free trade initiative with the U.S. If the increase in exports to the U.S. over the last five years was factored out of economic measurement, Segal says there would be no growth in the Canadian economy. In other words, free trade has been the one engine of economic growth.

But on the free trade issue it's possible to challenge Segal's argument that the Tories, unlike the Liberals, are a party of principle. If any party reversed its historic position on free trade, it was the Conservatives.

Going back to the days of Sir John A. Macdonald and National Policy, the Conservatives traditionally fought against free trade while the Liberals were proponents of closer economic ties with the U.S. It was Liberal prime minister Wilfrid Laurier who ran for re-election, and lost, on the issue of reciprocity with the U.S. in 1911.

In those days, the Tories were the party of protectionism. They defended the corporate interests of Central Canada's manufacturing industry that had been created behind the tariff walls of National Policy.

In that sense, by embracing the free trade agreement and even expanding on it, the Chretien Liberal government is being consistent with its party's traditional economic values.

Segal's responds to this from a Canadian nationalist's point of view. For one thing, he argues that Macdonald moved to the protectionism of National Policy only after he was unable to secure "pure reciprocity" with the Americans.

"Mulroney was merely adapting to the economic reality of the times. Free trade was a way of protecting Canada, and Canadian jobs, from the growing threat of U.S. protectionism," Segal says.

There are many who see free trade as exactly the opposite - a policy that economically, socially and politically weakens Canada. They're the same ones Hugh Segal believes someday will come to revise their opinion of both Mulroney and the Tories.

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