Leader-Star News Service March 1996 Archive

It's sometimes hard not to sit back and admire this NDP government.

Or, at least, admire what they seem to be able to get away with.

Of course, there are often times when what this government gets away with is far more annoying than admirable.

A prime example this week was Premier Roy Romanow's casual mention that he might not get around to reducing the size of his cabinet for another 18 months.

The promise to reduce the size of cabinet, you may recall, was the linchpin of Romanow's we-all-must-do-our-bit-in-difficult-times address televised 12 days ago.

Actually, it wasn't quite a promise. "I will be looking at reducing the size of the provincial cabinet," were Romanow's specific words.

Upon more careful consideration, Romanow decided there is no way, with his busy agenda, he could find time to cut cabinet for at least another 18 months.

It left many of us wondering why Romanow bothered spending $30,000 of taxpayers' money to tell us we must pitch in when he sees no such immediate obligation for his cabinet. (Wouldn't it be nice if we also could wait a couple years before we had to pitch in when it came to absorbing high taxes and reduced government services?)

But if you don't get bogged down with these daily deceptions, it is sometimes amazing to sit back and watch how well these guys play the game of politics.

And two prime examples of this also came this week in the announcement of a review of the Crown corporations and yesterday's Speech from the Throne.

Based on what we've always been told social democratic governments stand for, it would seem doubtful any could be either popular or electable in the "re-engineered 1990s."

Certainly, the Douglas C.C.F. of the 1950s or the potash-nationalizing Blakeney NDP of the 1970s or even the oppposed-to-privatization Romanow Opposition of the late 1980s would have been too philosophically inflexible for today's political realities. What's different about this Romanow-led government -- in fact, downright fun to watch sometimes -- is its uncanny ability to re-invent itself like no other Saskatchewan government past and perhaps like no other current government in Canada.

Re-inventing itself each day.

Ever so slowly.

Ever so carefully.

The first case in point is Wednesday's announcement by Berny Wiens, minister responsible for the Crown Investment Corp. (CIC), that the government plans a major review of the Crowns where all options are on the table.

All options, including the "p" word.

"I think we have to be prepared to hear whatever the public has to say and act as a government in response to what we hear," said Wiens, although never actually mentioning the word "privatization."

Innocuous enough.

It even pleased the likes of Saskatchewan Federation of Labor (SFL) Barb Byers, who says she's been given assurances this will not lead to privatization. But think for a minute. This is also the same party a short seven years ago that refused to allow anyone to even hear first reading of a privatization bill presented by a duly elected government.

It was time to draw a line in the sand, Romanow said back in 1989.

That line was somewhat filled in Wednesday.

Further sand was kicked over the philosophical line in Thursday's throne speech, which takes a long look at welfare, opens dialogue to talk about some forms of privatized medical services, sees the creation of privately run export agencies and furthers the cause of downsizing government and amalgamation.

"I think all political parties and all governments need some re-invention," Romanow said Thursday.

"The New Democratic Party in Saskatchewan is not exempt of that."

Not inclined to immodesty, Romanow called this "by any yardstick ?one of the most ambitious and dramatic initiatives undertaken by any administration."

A "Quiet Revolution," Romanow dubbed it.

Quiet, indeed.

A near-silent departure from its social-democratic roots to whatever it takes to get re-elected.

But it is sometimes fun to watch.

The story goes that not long after winning re-election last year, Roy Romanow walked into the first caucus meeting of his second-term government carrying a speech by British Labor leader Tony Blair. "Anybody who wants to understand social democracy in the next century should read this," Romanow said, as he dropped a copy of Blair's speech on the table.

This week, the same speech by Blair arrived in the mail for almost 30,000 party members around the province. It came reprinted in the current edition of The Commonwealth, the NDP's monthly newspaper.

For many people, Blair has become the poster boy of what you might call the neo-socialist movement. He has transformed, if not revolutionized, the British Labor party, changing it from a party that was fully in the clutches of old-style industrial trade unionism to one that embraces market economics.

Here's a sample of the things that Blair talks about.

"No more bosses versus workers, but partnership at work. No more public versus private finance. Co-operation to rebuild the nation's road, rail, inner cities and regions. Stability which businesses need to plan for the future.

"Help for small business. A new relationship between public and private sector to rebuild infrastructure. Measures to encourage long-term investment. But above all, today we present our proposals to equip our people and businesses for technological and economic challenges, and to change the basis of this country's thinking of the last 100 years."

In effect, what Blair has done is redefine socialism as the central concept to the Labor party. He talks about it in terms of principles, values and goals, rather than the means used to achieve specific ends. Over time, political ideology often becomes the captive of the programs it creates. What becomes important is preserving programs and institutions, even if they no longer serve the principles upon which they were founded.

What Blair has done is get the Labor party to differentiate between what it seeks and how it achieves its goals. Thus, traditional Labor concepts, such as state ownership and a general bias against the free market, have been discarded as no longer workable in the economy of the 1990s.

"Socialism for me was never about nationalization or the power of the state. Not just about economics or even politics. It's a moral purpose to life. A set of values. A belief in society, in co-operation, in achieving together what we cannot achieve alone," Blair says.

By now, it should be obvious that Romanow shares similar views. In fact, Romanow was saying many of these same things long before Blair. He talked about communitarian values being the foundation of his social democratic beliefs when he was in opposition back in the late 1980s.

Others have picked up the reformist message and run with it. NDP backbencher Pat Lorje has spoken and written extensively about how the NDP needs to accept market economics while maintaining community values.

At a recent speech to the Canadian Communitarian Forum in Ottawa, Lorje talked about how people once believed any problem could be solved if government threw money at it.

"In my party, we felt if only we had enough strong state institutions everything would be fine. The result? People looked outwards to the state for salvation. They stopped looking inwards to their own communities," Lorje says.

The idea of transforming the NDP, modernizing it, if you will, so that its policies remain relevant in an era of the politics of debt, is a strong force that drives Romanow. He believes that if the NDP does not deal with the realities of globalization, non-inflationary economies and limited fiscal resources, the party is doomed to political irrelevance.

This theme was apparent again this week in the throne speech, when the Romanow government talked about the need for government reform. For Romanow, social democracy today is about reconciling reality with goals. The argument is, you save social programs by reforming them so that they are sustainable, viable and meet your needs in a much different economic environment.

He might not say it publicly, but Romanow believes he is part of the same process that Blair is leading in Britain.

In that sense, Romanow sees his role as critical to the very existence of the NDP. While critics on the left will accuse him of selling out the party's history by abandoning its principles, he maintains that those who resist the change are the ones jeopardizing the party's future.

As he said this week when he talked about reforming government, change is coming because there is no alternative.

The issue here, as with the Labor party, is whether the NDP's past will allow it to deal with the future.

A writer named Anna Quindlen once called journalists "emotional hit-and-run drivers". We witness people's lives from a safely detached perspective, report their pain and suffering, expose their frailties and encourage them to pour their hearts out to us. Then, when we have what we want, when we've done our job with all the impersonal professionalism we think is so crucial to our work, we step back out of their lives and get on with our own.

But I can't say it nearly as well as Quindlen. Here's how she puts it:

"For most of my adult life, I have been an emotional hit-and-run driver, that is, a reporter. I have made people like me, trust me, open their hearts and their minds to me and cry and bleed onto the pages of my neat little notebooks, and then I went back to a safe place and I made a story out of it.

"I am good at what I do and so often the people who read those stories cried too. When they were done, they turned the page and, when I was done, I went on to another person, another story, went from the cop's wife whose husband never came home to the impoverished 80-year-old holocaust survivor to the family with the missing child.

"I stepped in and out of their lives as easily as I did a pair of shoes in the morning and when I was done, I wrote my piece and went home, to the husband who had not been killed, the bank account that was full, the child safe in his high chair. "Sometimes I carried with me, for a day or a week or sometimes even longer, the resonances of their pain. But they were left with the pain itself."

It was years ago when I read those words by Quindlen, but they have always stayed with me. She struck a nerve because what she says about journalists is true. We use people for our own purposes and then discard them so that we can move onto the next story, leaving them to deal with the rest of their lives.

As journalists, someone else is always the story. Our job is to report it, reflect the emotions, peer into the lives of others, win their confidence so we can tap into private feelings that we exploit for public consumption.

Too often, what happens to people in this business is that a certain callousness develops. We think that to do our job properly we cannot become caught up in the story. We have to approach it with a kind of emotional shield, whether it is dealing with personal defeat, tragedy or triumph. What we do is delve into the lives of others, but never allow ourselves to be swept up in a tide of emotions. To do that would be to betray ourselves. We would act human and that would be unprofessional.

It's little wonder then that journalists are often so disliked by the public at large. People see us for what we often are, the emotional hit-and-run drivers that Quindlen wrote so poignantly about.

If ever this flaw in ourselves as journalists became clear, it was on Saturday when suddenly there was no safe distance, no way to detach ourselves from reality, no emotional armor for protection.

The ability to step in and out of a story, which is what can make us as journalists so emotionally shallow when trying to deal with the pain of others, was gone. This time, the story was us.

The 182 people who lost their jobs at The Leader-Post, StarPhoenix and Yorkton This Week and Enterprise weren't somebody else. They were ourselves, friends and colleagues. There could be no stepping in and out of our own lives, no safe distance to do the story, no escape to a safe haven from the reality of what happened.

Suddenly, all our defences were gone. We discovered what it was like for all those others we talk to, empathize with and then write about, before retreating to our own safe, private world.

For all those people who have gone through similar turmoil, this might sound melodramatic. Suddenly, when job losses strike our own people, when their lives are thrown into uncertainty, it becomes more relevant than the faceless thousands who have suffered the same fate.

Anyone who feels that way has a perfect right to their emotions because it's true. This time, we can't be emotional hit-and-run drivers for the simple fact that the truth of the past few days has intruded harshly into the world we created for ourselves. What's happened is the superficiality of much of what we do has been brought into focus. So much of our work is based on us playing a temporary role to suit the occasion. Outwardly, we take on the personality that gets us what we want -- the story.

But it is usually just a sham, a form of method acting that serves the need of making people trust us, to share their emotions to -- as Quindlen puts it -- pour out their hearts to us so that we can get a good story.

This time, we learned a truth we should have known long ago. What matters are the people, not the story.

How vigilant this NDP government tends to be on issues of principle does have a bottom line these days.

In fact, it's the same profit/loss bottom line that dictates most decisions by government and everyone else in the 1990s.

To appreciate this better, let's begin with Health Minister Eric Cline's post-throne-speech pronouncements on the possibilities of private health care facilities in this province.

In Thursday's throne speech, the government promised a Health Facilities Licensing Act that will "permit our promise to better manage the development of private sector health facilities and prevent the development of a two-tier health system."

The rough interpretation of such throne-speechese, according to Cline, is the government is not ruling out the possibility of some form of privatized health facilities in this province if their services are paid for as part of the publicly-funded medicare system.

What the government will not allow is Alberta's situation where private operators pay for services privately, because a two-tiered health system would emerge, the minister said.

Cline is somewhat right.

Survival of a publicly funded health system is dependent on everyone's participation in it for at least the basic services.

But the problem Cline and the NDP face today is Saskatchewan people who can afford to are already going to the Gimbel Eye Clinic in Calgary and other privately run health-care services available in Alberta.

Why not, then, allow such privately run facilities into Saskatchewan if people are going to Alberta anyway?

It's a matter of principle, Cline explained.

An intriguing answer, given how we've seen this government handle similar issues of principle these past few years.

The day after the throne speech, Gaming Minister Joanne Crofford appeared before the television cameras to explain how the first month's operation of the Regina Casino has exceeded the government's wildest expectations.

According to the government, this is very good news, even though one can likely presume beyond-expectations profits also likely mean beyond-expectations problems.

For every extra dollar the casino gets, that could very well mean one less extra dollar going to buy goods and services that will help local businesses and create jobs.

In some cases, it may even mean an extra dollar that's not going into savings or even to pay already-owed bills.

In extreme cases, it's money going directly toward increased social problems.

But when it comes to this so-called matter of principle, the NDP government seems to have taken a significantly different approach.

Like privatized health-care facilities, the government had the same option to bar casinos from this from this province.

As a matter of principle, as Health Minister Cline put it, one might have thought the inclination of an NDP government would be to do precisely that same thing by banning casinos as well.

Quite the opposite.

Not only did the government get into the casino business itself. It has also helped the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations add four other casinos.

This, on top of the VLTs that the government also could have barred from the province.

The explanation -- or, perhaps, justification -- for allowing VLTs, is too many bars and hotels on the borders were losing too much business to Manitoba, Alberta and the U.S.

After allowing VLTs, it was easy for the government to justify a casino on similar grounds.

Again, too many Saskatchewan dollars were escaping to Alberta, Manitoba and the U.S.

But what of the matter of principle?

If private health-care clinics should be barred because they tear away at Saskatchewan's social fabric, shouldn't casinos and VLTs be barred for the same reason?

Perhaps.

But perhaps not if your decision-making process is based on the bottom line.

Private health clinics outside of the medicare system don't bring any real money into Saskatchewan government coffers.

Gambling revenue from VLTs and casinos will bring in $100 million in 1995-96.

The price of principle.

OTTAWA -- One of the problems with government budgets is that they seem much larger than life. We have come to believe government can "fix" the economy by the way it taxes and spends, the way it controls the money supply, the way it deals with the inevitable tradeoff between inflation and unemployment.

This political belief largely has been a post-Second World War development. It is a product of Keynesian economics, which maintains government can greatly reduce the ups and downs of the business cycle through the use of fiscal policy. In rudimentary terms, Keynesians argue government should step in and spend more when the private sector economy is in a down cycle, then reduce its spending when the economy is strong.

In his compelling book, The Good Life and Its Discontents, author and journalist Robert Samuelson explores how government entitlement has become woven into the consciousness of American society since the war. His analysis applies equally to Canada. Central to Samuelson's thesis is the false notion that government can solve our economic and social problems. It has led to the growth of a society where entitlement from government has become central to our political and economic debate.

But Samuelson argues that government has only limited effect on the economy. The forces inside of any economy are so diverse, so often disjointed, affected by so many imponderable factors, that to assume government can have any major effect is more illusion than reality.

"The essence of a market economy is its disorder,? Samuelson writes. "Its genius is its self-regulating mechanisms, which, in the face of all this disorder, maintain a fair amount of stability.

"The exaggerated promise of postwar economics has been that, through the rational manipulation of government policies, the disorder might be better understood and ultimately suppressed. The result has been to foster the illusion that economic growth emanates from government itself . . . The transformation of economic performance into an entitlement ultimately debased popular economic discourse because economic doctrines were increasingly merchandised as panaceas to popular anxieties.?

It is difficult to argue with Samuelson. There is little doubt we have come to see government as having immense economic power, which has brought with it the belief that government budgets are the single biggest force shaping the economy, for good or ill.

The truth is much different. An economy is made up of millions of individuals who make independent choices on spending, saving or investing. While government can have some marginal effect, in an integrated world economy where national economies have largely been absorbed into the larger whole, government's power over the economy has been reduced even further.

Still, the belief remains that government controls and directs a nation's economic life. The fact people believe it's so makes it more true than it might be, because what people think is important. In that sense, government's economic power is more psychological than practical.

Since becoming finance minister, Paul Martin argued the key to economic renewal is restoration of public faith in government's ability to manage its own finances. If government began to achieve the deficit-reduction targets it set for itself, public confidence would grow as the deficit fell.

In his budget yesterday, Martin said the government will meet or exceed is deficit target of $32.7 billion in 1995-96 and will reach its goal of $25 billion -- three per cent of GDP -- by the next year. He said the deficit will be down to $17 billion by 1997-98 and a balanced federal budget is now within sight. "The attack on the deficit is irrevocable and irreversible. Nothing will cause this government's conviction to change,? Martin said in his budget speech.

There are those who argue that Martin's obsession with the deficit is ripping apart social programs; that his cuts in spending are weakening our social support system and driving down the economy. In short, by withdrawing from the economy, the government is suppressing growth and abandoning those who need its support by cutting social programs.

But this argument is predicated on what people like Samuelson say is a false notion. Government's influence over the economy, whether good or bad, has been greatly exaggerated by the expectations created by politics over the last 50 years.

Still, the fact that we believe government can cure our economic ills and right the wrongs of society is important. It means that eliminating the deficit matters because this will restore faith in government. If that happens, attitudes will change and the economy will improve.

It also means that Paul Martin is right.

In these days of government layoffs, corporate downsizing, continuing high taxes and seemingly endless debt, it does my little heart good to finally report on something nice happening to some people. There are some out there who will actually be getting a pay increase in 1996 from what they might have otherwise expected.

A whopping 14.5- to 14.7-per-cent pay increase in 1996, no less.

So who might this fortunate group be, you ask?

None other than Saskatchewan's selfless and ever-deserving MLAs.

Through fortuitous circumstances not even of their own making ? well, not directly attributable or traceable to their own making, at any rate ? our MLAs are in line for what is a mini-windfall.

It all began with Tuesday's decision by the Board of Internal Economy -- the legislature's all-party committee controlling MLAs' salaries and expenditures -- not to implement the recommendations in Sterling McDowell's report until July 1.

Many of you out there who re-elected your local MLA because you were impressed with his or her willingness to swallow the take-home pay cut recommended by McDowell's report of a year ago may be somewhat surprised to find out those recommendations haven't taken effect, yet.

Apparently, legislative law clerk Gwen Ronyk suggested Tuesday night her offices won't be able to implement a new pay system any sooner than July 1, now that the session is on. Ever co-operative government MLAs, plus the Liberal caucus representative, agreed the only decent thing to do would be to accommodate them.

Even if it just so happens that it works out to their advantage.

Had recommendations from McDowell come into place Jan. 1 as one might have thought they should, an ordinary, garden-variety MLA -- before extra duty pay as a cabinet minister or anything else -- would have made $55,000 in 1996. Of that, $4,500 would be considered a tax-free allowance.

For those of us who live in the real world that isn't exempt from federal/provincial taxes, $4,500 tax free on a $55,000 gross income gives you a real income equivalent of $58,904.

What Tuesday night's Board of Internal Economy decision means, however, is our MLAs will be paid under the old system for the first six months of 1996 and under the new McDowell system for the last half of 1996.

Under the current system, basic MLAs make $46,168 annually -- $7,622 of which comes to them in a nice tax-free bundle.

So for the first half of the year, an MLA's base salary will be the equivalent of $26,427. For the last half of 1996 under the new McDowell rules, it will be the equivalent of $29,452.

Combined, it's the equivalent of a $55,879 annual income in 1996 -- less than the $58,904 equivalent income they would have earned under McDowell for the full year.

But there's more.

Keeping the old pay schedule for the first half of 1996 also means keeping the per diems for this session -- $94 a day for Regina MLAs and $155 a day for all other MLAs for a maximum 70 days.

For Regina members who don't have hotel bills and who can go home for lunch, it's $6,580 in tax-free pocket money. In reality, it's much more. No taxes on that much chump change is equivalent to an extra $11,554 in your pocket.

Non-Regina MLAs do have to worry about room and board during the session. But if they are spending, say, about $60 a day -- the new per diem rate as suggested by McDowell -- they will still walk out of this session with an extra $6,650 in cash. By not paying tax on it, it's the same as earning an extra $11,666.

So when you add that extra $11,554 or $11,666 to the $55,879, our MLAs will be earning the equivalent of $67,433 to $67,545 in 1996.

That's all before any extra pay for being a minister or Speaker or caucus whip or whatever -- a 14.5- to 14.7-per-cent increase in 1996 from what they would have earned had McDowell been in place on Jan. 1 -- all because our MLAs are being forced to keep their per diems for one more session.

All because our MLAs have just been too darn busy in the eight months since the June election to get around to adopting the McDowell commission recommendations any earlier.

But should we be envious that life tends to work out better for some than others?

Heck, no.

It's just nice to see somebody get a break in today's tough economy.

OTTAWA -- For months, members of the Roy Romanow government have been attacking the federal Liberals over cuts in transfers to the provinces for health, education and welfare programs. With Romanow and Finance Minister Janice MacKinnon leading the verbal assault on Ottawa, it has become a constant theme to the political debate in Saskatchewan.

Other than a brief intervention by federal Finance Minister Paul Martin, who told Romanow and MacKinnon to quit whining and accused them of twisting the facts, this has been a lopsided fight. It has been a case of the provinces (including Quebec) closing ranks to engage in some old-fashioned Ottawa-bashing.

But with the release of Martin's budget, there are signs that federal politicians from Saskatchewan aren't going to take it any more. They are tired of turning the other cheek.

The budget itself didn't change the reality of what is happening. If anything, it merely confirmed that the cut in support from Ottawa is no passing, short-term phase.

The budget set out the federal government's plans for money it sends to the provinces for social programs through to the year 2003.

For Saskatchewan, the numbers clearly show that the days of stable (never mind slowly growing) support from the federal government are over. From the current level of $987 million from Ottawa -- made up of $624 million in cash and $363 million worth of tax-point transfers, Saskatchewan's share will fall to a low of $808 million at the turn of the century. Of that total, only $373 million will be cash transfers.

So, when Romanow and MacKinnon say the falling support from Ottawa seriously threatens the integrity of medicare, universities and the welfare system, they're telling the truth.

But to hear Romanow and others attack Ottawa for cutting its transfer payments as part of its battle to eliminate the federal deficit makes some Liberal MPs' blood boil. They have great difficulty accepting the criticism, arguing the Romanow government followed a similar path in its fight to wipe out its deficit.

In the wake of this week's federal budget, Saskatoon-Dundurn MP Morris Bodnar and Prince Albert-Churchill River MP Gordon Kirkby decided it was time to fight back. As Martin defended his budget to a horde of reporters only a few feet away, Bodnar and Kirkby were calling into question the tactics used by Romanow in Saskatchewan.

"I remember Roy Romanow running around the province with his finance minister, begging for mercy from health boards, school boards and municipal governments when he was slashing their funding to reduce his own deficit," Kirkby said.

"He talked about how important it was to understand the need to deal with Saskatchewan's deficit, how people had to work together and co-operate, how it was the Saskatchewan way. But when it's the federal government's turn to do the same and deal with its deficit, we hear just the opposite."

One of the central criticisms that the Romanow government makes of Martin's deficit-reduction strategy is that the federal government isn't cutting enough of its own internal spending. Thus, a disproportionate share of the cuts is being made to provincial transfers.

But if you study what happened in Saskatchewan, Bodnar says, the Romanow government did little or nothing to cut its departmental spending while the deficit was being off-loaded onto third parties.

"Anyone who looks at Saskatchewan's public accounts will see the provincial government's departmental spending has actually increased," Bodnar says. For that matter, Bodnar goes one step further and raises questions about how the province handled money from Ottawa that was earmarked for post-secondary education.

"If you look at the last two or three years, you'll see the federal government did not cut its transfers for post-secondary education in Saskatchewan. Yet they (the Romanow government) reduced its spending for the University of Saskatchewan," Bodnar says.

Asked if he was accusing the province of taking money from Ottawa that's destined for education and spending it elsewhere, such as using it to reduce the deficit, Bodnar would make no such definitive allegation. "All I know is federal money for universities didn't drop -- but the universities got less money. My question is, 'where did the money go?' " Bodnar asks.

Aside from what they see as the hypocrisy of the Romanow government, Kirkby and Bodnar also question attacks on the federal government when the unity of Canada is already in a precarious state.

"The separatists don't need any lessons on attacking the federal government from Romanow. Enough whining and snivelling," Kirkby says.

It seems clear the political battle between Saskatchewan and Ottawa is entering a new phase. From now on, federal Liberals from Saskatchewan will be returning the fire.

OTTAWA -- For Saskatchewan folk weary of government's fight against the deficit, last week's federal budget must have felt like deja-vu all over again.

Granted, there might have been some reason for relief: at least federal Finance Minister Paul Martin didn't raise taxes. In an age where deficit fighting has become the single dominant theme in government, no matter the political stripe, a budget that doesn't hike taxes is no small blessing.

Canadians could also take some solace, if not comfort, in knowing that Martin is indeed making real progress in his campaign against the deficit. In three budgets, Martin has been able to reduce the annual federal deficit from $42 billion to $32 billion. There is every reason to believe Martin will reach the Liberals election promise to reduce the deficit to three per cent of GDP -- or $25 billion -- in the coming fiscal year of 1996-97.

Even better, the government is on track to reduce the deficit to $17 billion in 1997-98. All of a sudden a balanced federal budget, a notion that three years ago seemed unthinkable, now appears not only achievable, but attainable within three years. Assuming, of course, the economy doesn't hit the recessionary skids before then.

From the beginning, Martin has said the need to restore the public's faith in government's ability to set and meet deficit-reduction targets was crucial. By that yardstick, he has certainly delivered. He has been the first federal finance in more than 20 years to deliver a budget that actually met its forecast for a lower deficit.

One way to measure progress on the deficit is the amount of new borrowing the government faces. The amount falls to $6 billion in 1997-98, the lowest since 1969-70, which is down from almost $30 billion in 1993-94.

Based on these numbers, Martin's budget papers note Canada is headed for the "lowest fiscal shortfall" in 1997 of all G-7 nations. Only four years ago, Canada's deficit-to-GDP was 7.4 per cent, double the G-7 average and second only to Italy. So there is reason to believe the deficit nightmare is beginning to fade.

Having come this far, Martin isn't about to change direction. In his budget speech he vowed the attack on the deficit was "irrevocable and irreversible" and that "nothing, I repeat nothing, will cause this government's conviction to change."

But all of this is still cold comfort for Saskatchewan people. Having just won the provincial deficit fight, they now find themselves conscripted by Ottawa to fight the deficit on a second front. And to win the federal deficit battle will almost certainly mean losing some gains made at the provincial level.

In the wake of Martin's budget last week, the question becomes how high will the costs be for Saskatchewan?

No one should delude themselves into thinking the next few years will be easy. Like it or not, Martin's fiscal agenda is forcing the federal and provincial governments to restructure themselves around a different set of public-policy priorities. The politics of debt have shattered the government status quo, which is why people like Martin and Roy Romanow say that change, to meet the new fiscal reality, is inevitable.

At the core of our federal system of government is something known as Ottawa's "spending power." By giving the provinces money to help pay for programs in areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction -- namely health, education and welfare -- the federal government is able to ensure social programs across the nation are consistent.

Money from Ottawa is available, providing the provincially run programs measure up to national standards, which is why social programs are seen as part of the cement that holds the country together.

In his fight against the deficit, Martin is cutting deeply into transfer payments to the provinces for social programs. The finance minister argues that with such transfers representing 25 per cent of his spending, it's impossible for social spending to be spared in the deficit fight.

As such, in last week's budget Martin set out the schedule for transfer payments, made up in tax points and cash payments, through to the year 2003. It shows total provincial entitlements drop from current levels of $29.7 billion, to $25.1 billion by 1997-98. The total is frozen at that level for three years, before starting to recover at the turn of the century. At the end of Martin's projections in 2003, the total is projected to be $27.4 billion, or $2.3 billion less than today.

When you add even minimal inflation, in constant 1996 dollars the provinces will probably be getting closer to $3 billion less for social programs seven years from now.

For Saskatchewan, our current entitlement of $987 million bottoms out at $808 million in 1999-2000 and struggles back to $864 million by 2003. More graphic is what happens to the cash Ottawa sends to Saskatchewan. The total falls from $624 million today, to $371 million and never gets above $377 million in Martin's projections ending in 2003.

The question all this raises is how does Saskatchewan cope with falling support from Ottawa? Having going through a painful process to eliminate its own deficit, the idea of the Romanow government reverting the province back into deficit financing is clearly not an option.

In other words, we face the same hard choices, the painful restructuring that was part of the last four years when the deficit was being fought in Saskatchewan. The only difference is this time someone else is leading.

For students of international relations, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis remains a case study that demonstrates how the world lacks a proper system to deal with a confrontation between nations.

We reached the brink of nuclear war when the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a showdown of nerves over Nikita Khrushchev's effort to install nuclear warheads in Cuba. What happened was that the level of political rhetoric became so extreme that both sides were quickly entrenched in their positions. Rather than invade Cuba outright, president John Kennedy imposed a blockade that would intercept Soviet ships carrying military equipment to the island. The incident rapidly escalated to the point that a nuclear war seemed not only possible, but even likely.

With "saving face" crucial to the resolution of such political confrontations, the problem was finding a way for one side to back down gracefully. The difficulty was that communication between the two sides, other than public denunciations of one another, was almost nonexistent. As such, there was no process to open lines of communication so the situation could be defused through diplomatic channels.

After a few tense days, Khrushchev sent a letter to Kennedy offering to remove the missiles if the U.S. agreed not to invade or interfere in Cuban affairs. The terms were accepted by Kennedy and the shadow of nuclear war that hung over the world for a week or more was lifted.

What the Cuban missile crisis demonstrated was the difficulty of implementing and enforcing international law. The question of how you impose a system of law on sovereign nations is not easy to answer. We have tried to develop instruments and processes, such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, to adjudicate disputes and bring order to international relations. But the system is, at best, fragile and often ineffective.

The reason is that nations will always behave in their own self-interest. A country will do what it sees as best for itself, which leaves anarchy as the process that most often governs international affairs. With no sovereign power that governs the world community, often disorder and happenstance are the forces that guide relations between nations.

There are those who argue the Cold War actually brought some stability to the world. What it did was provide a structure and predictability to international affairs because nations were identified by how they fitted into the geo-politics of capitalism versus communism, the U.S. versus the Soviet Union.

With the triumph of capitalism and the collapse of communism, the ideological forces that helped govern the way nations interacted have largely disappeared. As a result, other, less predictable, forces, like nationalism in the form of religious fundamentalism, now tend to shape relations between nations.

But there are still remnants of the Cold War psychology that remind us how difficult it can be to create stability between nations. One, appropriately enough, is Cuba; the other China.

The reaction of the United States to Cuba's barbaric act of shooting down two unarmed planes carrying Cuban-Americans who were said to be in Cuban airspace is one example. The other is the more menacing, and infinitely more dangerous, situation developing between mainland China and Taiwan.

In the case of the Cuban incident, the Americans have responded in a rogue fashion that shows little regard for international norms. Granted, the killing of American civilians by the Cuban military is despicable. Moreover, a dictator like Fidel Castro, who shows no respect for political or individual rights and has been in power for 36 years because he suppresses dissent, must be denounced.

But that doesn't mean the Americans can thumb their noses at other nations and act in a way that serves only their perceived national interest. By imposing trade sanctions on Canadian and other foreign companies that do business in Cuba as a way to advance their political and economic agenda against Cuba, the U.S. provides a perfect example of a nation behaving without regard for a system of international order. Most experts agree such extra-territorial application of U.S. domestic law is inconsistent with existing trade agreements.

While the U.S. mistreatment of other nations as a means to punish Cuba is unacceptable, it is less worrisome than China's ominous gestures towards Taiwan. The war games being played by China are a clear provocation and threaten stability and peace in the region.

The Chinese aggression is an attempt to undermine support for Taiwan independence from China in the midst of a Taiwanese election. What's happening is that China is throwing its weight around to get what it wants.

Or, in short, it's behaving like a nation that is determined to pursue what it sees as its own best interests.

Contrary to the opinions of some, politicians don't always make promises with the intention of breaking them.

To do so is bad for business (especially, bad when it comes to staying in a business that still allows you to arbitrarily increase your own salary the equivalent of 14.5 per cent).

But there are some promises politicians are far more committed to keeping than others.

The NDP government's promise last year to give municipal governments and health organizations 10 per cent of all VLT revenue was just such a half-hearted promise, although it may not have seemed that way at the time it was made. "I want to make it clear that the commitment we are announcing today is to share 10 per cent of the government's net income each year," then-municipal government minister Carol Carson announced in a Jan. 27, 1995 press release. As solid as this commitment seemed then, we had reason to be suspicious. After all, it was a commitment mostly about addressing potential political problems the NDP faced in the upcoming campaign.

Less than two months before, more than 60 per cent of Saskatchewan people surveyed by Leader-Star Services said they opposed the NDP's gaming policy.

Even more overwhelming numbers agreed there were harmful effects associated with gambling and the NDP government wasn't doing enough to address the policy's social impact.

Released the weekend of the annual NDP convention -- something Premier Roy Romanow took as a personal slight -- the poll became an immediate problem for a government planning an election.

Three years of defending its decision to gouge its citizens with increased taxes to pay for past PC deficits was bad enough. Now the NDP government faced a public perception it had taken square aim at pleasure-seekers or weak-willed gambling addicts. And it was hard to see how gaming revenue was flowing back to help Saskatchewan people.

Making matters worse, then-Liberal leader Lynda Haverstock announced four days before Carson's announcement that an elected Liberal government would channel 50 per cent of all VLT revenues back to the communities and leave another 20 per cent from the machines with bar or restaurant owners.

So along came Carson's announcement -- plus cuts to lottery licence fees and help for charities hurt by the government's VLT windfall.

The government then left rural, urban and hospital organizations to fight over how they wanted to spend the 10 per cent or $10 million. To no one's surprise, they couldn't agree.

A year later, virtually none of this VLT revenue was being directed to specific municipal programs. It was that much easier for the NDP government to argue it had to claw back the money to fight federal clawbacks of transfer payments. (Note the irony.) Some may legitimately wonder why this government with a $5-billion budget really felt it needed to go back on a promise of a measly $10 million.

It's a good question. You still don't have to look all that hard to find $10 million in savings in government.

The per diems MLAs will still claim this session -- even though they'll get a July 1 salary increase that makes the need for these per diems unnecessary -- will cost taxpayers almost another $600,000.

Adding a net four extra cabinet minister last fall has been pegged at $2-$4 million in additional costs.

And lest we forget the NDP government is sitting on $700 million in Cameco shares it will start unloading next week.

One less charitable theory suggests the government is sending a loud message to the municipalities -- particularly those of the rural variety -- who are balking at the government's request to amalgamate voluntarily.

But as likely, it's simply a case of politicians getting away with what they can.

Gambling doesn't have quite the same bad image it did a year ago. There's no election. There's no burning need to throw money at the problem.

And since it's money the municipalities never officially had in their hands anyway, it's that much easier to to take it back.

As for the politicians' promises?

Well, some are just worth more than others.

It's time in this province for a serious discussion about the future of our two universities.

In an age of government debt and reduced public expectations, it is neither sensible nor advisable that our two major post-secondary education institutions escape a rigorous analysis. We have to determine what we expect from our universities, what roles they should play, their function in our economy and how they fit into our social and economic agenda.

We need to ask tough questions. Do we demand too much from the universities? Are separate universities necessary? Should they amalgamate and return to the one university, two-campus concept? Should they avoid duplicating faculties like arts and science, education and engineering? Instead of two mass enrolment universities that offer a wide academic spectrum should we provide each with different mandates?

For months, Premier Roy Romanow has been talking about restructuring government in Saskatchewan for the 21st century. He argues that if social programs are going to be saved, they must be made sustainable in the economy of the late 1990s and beyond. "Tailor the suit to fit the cloth," is the way Romanow describes the task of designing and defending social programs in an era shaped by the politics of debt.

We're already well down this path. The health-care system has been rationalized and changes to the structure of local government appear inevitable. Without question, the next stop on the road to reform will be the education system.

For the most part, the universities of today in this province are a product of the 1960s. The huge influx of students, as the baby-boom generation reached university age, put enormous pressure on post-secondary education. It was an age of expanding entitlements, when universal social programs became a public virtue and university education a right to anyone who sought it.

In Saskatchewan, the rapid growth in university enrolment created the momentum that carried us to essentially where we are today -- two separate universities that, in many cases, mirror one another. What had been for decades a single University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, with a separate campus in Regina, divided into two independent universities.

There are still good arguments for the two-university concept. Indeed, three years ago, a study by Al Johnson, the former Saskatchewan senior bureaucrat and onetime head of the CBC, concluded the two universities should remain separate. Johnson determined that the U of S and University of Regina have developed distinct roles and to consolidate them would undermine public accessibility.

But to assume that a university structure that emerged out of an earlier and much different era should remain largely intact today denies the reality of the late 1990s.

As a society and economy, the Saskatchewan of 1996 is a far different place than it was 20 or 30 years ago. As crucial institutions within the public life of this province, the universities must reflect that changed reality.

This is not to suggest the universities have been impervious to change and not evolved over the years. Certainly they have been forced to cope with declining public dollars, which has forced inevitable rationalizations, larger class sizes and elimination of programs.

But we must look beyond merely internal restructuring within the concept of two large campuses, to changing how the universities deliver their services to the public.

One area where the universities have changed their role is in distance education. Using the community college system, both universities offer first- and second-year accredited arts and science classes in 11 designated communities across the province. It has been a process driven largely by government, which has sought to adjust the definition of accessibility. The idea has been to take university to the people, rather than have students come to the the university. While it is been a step in the right direction, it doesn't go far enough.

What we need to consider is developing a system of junior colleges, where students could take the first two years of their university education in or near their home community.

The only remaining junior college in the province is St. Peter's at Muenster. It has been operating for 75 years, offering high quality and cost-effective university education. A study four years ago found the per-student cost at St. Peter's to be significantly less than that at the U of S.

Granted, part of the benefit is a result of the Benedictine Monks who teach at the college but receive no salary. Still, the idea of decentralizing university education through a system of affiliated junior colleges would make university more accessible and help sustain local rural economies and society.

It is one option that needs to be part of a bigger debate over the future of universities themselves.

There are three reasons why the NDP government will win its battle to amalgamate municipalities throughout Saskatchewan.

The first is, senior governments control the purse strings.

The second reason has to do with the fact that most of what the Romanow government is proposing makes a tremendous amount of sense. But it is the third reason that's both the most pertinent and intriguing.

It is the difference between professional politicians (like the ones that inhabit the legislature) and amateur ones (like the ones that attend SARM and SUMA conventions whose main livelihood is really derived from less nefarious means like farming or business.)

After his amalgamation talk received a less-than-warm reception from Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities delegates Wednesday, Premier Roy Romanow hinted to reporters the provincial budget "will have some impact" on the way local politicians approach this issue.

Reason One:

Put away the carrot; pull out the stick.

The provincial government can simply wear down municipalities' opposition to amalgamation by slowly cutting their grants -- a move that will force them to amalgamate to survive, anyway.

Normally, such bullying would draw the disdain of an entire province.

But there are many -- likely even many from rural Saskatchewan -- who agree there are a lot of efficiencies to be found in amalgamation.

Reason Two:

Subtracting the 531,068 combined population of Saskatchewan's 12 cities -- Estevan, Lloydminster, Melfort, Melville, Moose Jaw, North Battleford, Prince Albert, Regina, Saskatoon, Swift Current, Weyburn and Yorkton -- and you have 835 town/village and rural governments for 486,532 people.

That's one local government for every 583 rural Saskatchewan residents.

And if you subtract the approximately 45,000 people living on Indian reserves that are not really represented by town, village or rural councils, it's one local government for every 529 rural residents.

Maybe small local governments don't run deficits. But that, in itself, doesn't make them efficient.

Conversely, some of Romanow's claims that local governments are inefficient are just as specious. One such remark was his assessment that "some municipal governments" spend 46 per cent of their budgets on administration alone -- a cheap shot if there ever was one.

About 90 per cent of the budgets reeves and councillors deal with go to gravelling grid roads. Whether they amalgamate or not, such costs are reality.

If Romanow was so worried about inefficiency in government, many SARM delegates were likely left wondering why he and his cabinet members needed an entourage of 12 to 20 political staff accompanying them to the convention Wednesday.

And most SARM politicians wouldn't dare attempt to quietly slip themselves the equivalent of a 14.5-per-cent pay increase for 1996 in the disguise of a pay cut.

But the ability of our provincial politicians to get away with such things has a lot to do with why they'll win this fight.

Reason Three:

Being right and being able to control the purse strings doesn't always guarantee a political victory.

There is a perfectly legitimate argument that the federal government is well within its right to address Canada's debt problem by decreasing transfer payments to the provinces.

But judging by the polls in Saskatchewan, it certainly appears the provincial government is winning this fight for hearts and minds.

Rural councillors don't have the time to spend two months touring the province to complain about off-loading like the entire NDP government did in January and February.

Most of them are soon going to be more worried about putting seed in the ground than justifying their own existence as part-time politicians.

Nor do they have the $130,000 the province spent on its fed-bashing campaign disguised as "pre-provincial-budget consultations."

Even without a legitimate argument, the NDP government's political machinery would likely still win this public opinion battle.

It is a fight local governments are destined to lose.

One of the most important institutions in this province is the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College (SIFC) at the University of Regina. It's exactly what we need more of: a forward-looking, practical approach to the social and economic realities of Saskatchewan.

Sadly, straight talk about the future can be a rare commodity. We prefer to comfort ourselves in the language of politics and government, which, by its nature, is more often rooted in what we would like to believe is true, than what in fact is. Politics is like that. It convinces people things will be, or can be, made better. It serves to give us optimism.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with optimism, providing it doesn't deceive us by blocking out the truth about our future. It's one thing to be optimistic and strive to make things better, but something else to see the world in a way that ignores some basic and important facts.

This May will mark the 20th anniversary of SIFC. As a federated college controlled by Indian people and seeking to serve the post-secondary educational needs of aboriginal students, SIFC is unique to North America, if not the world.

The college was founded, in large part, due to the efforts of former U of R president Lloyd Barber. The idea of an Indian college was originally turned down by the University of Saskatchewan. Barber, who had been at the U of S when the offer of an Indian federated college was rejected, quickly seized the opportunity when he joined the U of R.

The concept behind SIFC is simple and sound. It seeks to at least partially address a critical and undeniable socio-economic problem. By offering classes tailored to meet the needs of aboriginal students, as well as the student population at large, SIFC is facing up to a fact that most people simply ignore, or pretend doesn't exist. It is an institution that squarely faces the truth about the province's future and tries to do something about it.

And what are the facts about this province and its future?

One person who has spent the last eight years studying and talking about it is Dr. David Weaver, a professor at Luther College at the U of R. Weaver identifies four crucial and interwoven demographic trends in Saskatchewan. One is the steady decline of rural and small-town populations. Another is a rapidly aging population that is already, on average, the oldest of any province. A third is steady out-migration of young people. Fourth is the rapid growth in the aboriginal population, which isn't as mobile as other parts of our population.

Here are a few numbers to illustrate the trends.

In 1951, fully 70 per cent of our population was classified as rural and 30 per cent urban. Today, the numbers are reversed. As of now, almost 15 per cent of our population is 65 or older, compared to eight per cent in 1951. Approximately 25 per cent of all births in Saskatchewan today are in the aboriginal (status, non-status, Metis) community and, by 2020, up to 30 per cent of the population will be aboriginal and a majority of births will be from that segment.

In and of themselves, these sterile demographic facts don't mean a great deal. They only take on significance when you put them into their social and economic context.

As a group, the vast majority of aboriginal people are far from the mainstream of Saskatchewan life. The on-reserve unemployment rate is effectively more than 50 per cent and, in the cities, aboriginal unemployment is 30 per cent. Within many impoverished aboriginal communities, where there is a mind-numbing lack of hope, crime and alcohol abuse is all too common.

The frequency of fetal alcohol syndrome among aboriginal babies is far above the non-aboriginal rate. And its harmful cognitive effects on the afflicted children, which they will carry for life, are enormous.

While strides have been made in education for aboriginal people, reflected in the fact that 70 per cent of students on reserves complete high school, the numbers are far from adequate. As a society, we still have far to go if we hope to reconcile any sense of optimism with our social and economic future.

Weaver talks about how the province, whether at a government or institutional level, is failing to adequately deal with and prepare for the outcome of these trends.

If the situation were properly addressed and aboriginal people brought into the mainstream of Saskatchewan society, he argues a negative socio-economic situation could be transformed into a positive market opportunity.

"The key is recognizing the situation and doing something about it now," Weaver says.

One small, but crucial, example that is part of securing an optimistic future for Saskatchewan is the SIFC. It recognizes reality as it exists, the future for what it will be, and it seeks to do something about them both.

The idea of the Reform party as a spent force in Canadian politics has been gaining strength in recent months. And for good reasons.

The party remains mired in the polls, unable to make any significant public opinion gains on the governing Liberals. Since emerging as a powerful populist force out of Western Canada in the 1993 election, Reform has been perceived by many as another regional protest party. Inevitably, the parallels have been drawn with the Progressives, a western populist movement in the 1920s that disappeared when it could not establish itself as a national party.

Indeed, even the federal NDP, with roots in the western-based populism of the CCF in the 1930s and '40s, has never fully shed its image as a western-protest party. The federal NDP of today has been reduced to a western rump, without even party status in the House of Commons.

In recent days, there have been signs of internal discord over Reform's direction. Last week, Calgary Reform MPs Jim Silye and Jan Brown talked openly about how the party had to broaden its electoral appeal by becoming more mainstream. Earlier, MP Stephen

Harper, whom many see as the logical successor to Leader Preston Manning, announced he would not seek re-election. Harper wants Reform to evolve from a populist movement to a more traditional party that brokers interests of the conservative right.

Then there is the example of what has been happening in the U.S. Republican primaries. People can't help but wonder if there are lessons for Manning and Reform.

For a time, Pat Buchanan's anti-establishment populist message caught fire in the Republican presidential nomination race. But it died just as quickly when it became apparent that his views were considered too extreme by a majority of those who number themselves as conservatives.

These arguments, however, do not impress Manning. The Reform party leader argues there are "misconceptions of extremism" about the party that need to be addressed. Once that happens and people realize Reform represents values common to a majority of Canadians, Manning says the party will rapidly gather momentum.

Those who doubt Manning would be wise to recall the months leading to the last federal election. Reform's support in the polls appeared minimal and many were predicting the party had been marginalized. But once voters turned their attention to issues and alternatives, support for Reform exploded. The same could easily happen again.

Manning argues the key to any party's success is its ability to reflect the interests and priorities of people. If Reform does that, he believes its support will grow and solidify.

"There is no more broad and diverse constituency than the Canadian taxpayer. We've got a platform of deficit reduction to the point of offering tax relief, with a Canadian version of the flat tax," Manning said during a recent visit to the province.

"If we hammer away on that, then I believe we have a policy plank in that area alone which has an enormous breadth of appeal. We don't have to do a lot to broaden our appeal."

In effect, what Manning talks about is a fairly narrow and tightly focused Reform agenda. He says that if the party can identify three or four issues crucial to voters, then it can catch fire.

"I do believe the electorate is getting more issue-oriented. Not so much who the leader is, or the party label, but who is closest to the public on a few big issues most important to them."

The issues he sees as key are related to "personal security". Specifically, taxes and jobs, preserving the social safety net, criminal justice and national unity. "If we stick to those and articulate people's concerns, we'll be all right," Manning says. As for the Buchanan parallel, which suggests Reform will not be able to expand its base if it doesn't moderate its position, Manning says the analogy is false. It's predicated on the misconceived notion that Reform's populism, like Buchanan's, is extremist.

"It's not a good example," Manning says. "He (Buchanan) appealed to the anti-free trade crowd and we support free trade.

"On moral issues, he doesn't like the liberal moral agenda so he comes up with a conservative one. But he's just as strident as liberals are in using the state as an instrument to impose it.

"We say the more you get out of the social and moral issues the more you democratize the decision-making process; you don't try to impose."

Still, there is no doubt Reform is at a crossroads in its history. It needs to demonstrate it can appeal to more than the public anger with government that has carried it so far.

If Reform can provide a positive alternative that can accommodate mainstream Canadian values, it won't be a spent force in Canadian politics. If . . .

A rather haughty Joanne Crofford, minister responsible for gambling and hard-done-by politician, issued an interesting challenge last week.

Waving a book of blank cheques, Crofford challenged the PCs to fill them out for "the amount that you feel you've been overpaid."

Personally, I think that's a wonderful idea.

Crofford should start by filling out her own blank cheque for $38,928 -- the amount she was able to collect in tax-free per diems in less than four years as a Regina MLA.

But, frankly, we'd all be just as satisfied if the NDP MLAs would hand back the same $4,356 the PCs are now giving up to make up for some of the unjustifiable per diems they will collect this session.

In fact, NDP MLAs -- particularly those from Regina like Crofford -- should just be grateful the taxpayers aren't demanding back all the extra per diems they've gouged out of the system over the years.

What's truly galling in the theatrics from Crofford and other NDP MLAs this past week is how deceitful they've been when it comes to the extra money they will pocket in 1996, a result of delaying the implementation of the McDowell recommendations from Jan. 1 to July 1, 1996.

Contrary to what Crofford and other NDP MLAs have said:

The extra amount each MLA will take home this year because of the July 1 implementation is between $4,000 and $4,300 or an 8.9-per-cent increase -- not the "$600 to $800" Premier Roy Romanow initially claimed.

The clerk's calculations are also based on the presumption that had McDowell been implemented Jan. 1, 1996, MLAs would have received an automatic two-per-cent raise on April 1, 1996. Without such an automatic raise, what MLAs will take home in 1996 is really equivalent to an 11-per-cent increase from what McDowell had originally recommended.

While Crofford calls the 1996 windfall "a bump during the transition year," she also neglects to mention McDowell's recommendations provide them with that two-per-cent cost-of-living raise each and every year.

But maybe even worse than the deceit -- something we sadly come to expect from politicians when justifying the unjustifiable -- is how out-of-touch and arrogant they've become in justifying this per diem money they've never earned nor deserved.

No provincial politicians in Canada have free-loaded off their taxpayers more than our Saskatchewan MLAs have via what has been the richest expense allowance system in the country.

In the case of Regina MLAs, virtually each day they've shown up at the legislature during their careers they've been given a tax-free expense allowance ($94 a day since 1992) for no legitimate reason. They have no hotel bills. They can go home for dinner.

Yet, each day, they've been given $94 in tax-free cash. If this isn't an overpayment, as Crofford suggests, what is?

But Crofford's $38,928 is minimal compared with what many of her Regina counterparts have collected in per diems over the years: Doreen Hamilton, first elected in 1991, $34,555; Dwain Lingenfelter, first elected in Regina in 1988, $53,691; Ned Shillington, 1975, $91,964; Ed Tchorzewski, first elected in Regina in 1985, $73,906; Kim Trew, 1986, $75,995; and Harry Van Mulligen 1986, $71,315.

Of course, let us not forget how much some of our recently retired Regina NDP MLAs collected during their political careers: Serge Kujawa, $29,566; Bob Lyons, $65,650; and Louise Simard, $61,747. All tax free. All for no legitimate reason.

And while non-Regina MLAs do have legitimate expenses for meals and hotels, their $155 per diems are every bit as extravagantly ludicrous.

For example, longtime Board of Internal Economy member MLA Eldon Lautermilch has collected $109,871 in tax-free per diems since first being elected in 1986. Given that McDowell suggests non-Regina MLAs only need about 40 per cent of the current per diems, it's quite plausible to think Lautermilch has pocketted an extra $66,000 of his per diem money over the years.

The least the NDP MLAs could do is pay back a portion of their 1996 per diems. After all, it's a small investment, given what they've already gouged from us.

There is little doubt many are offended that Ed Tchorzewski would take a part-time teaching job, after resigning from cabinet to spend more time with his family.

The arguments against this are many, but the one raised by the Liberals' Rod Gantefoer is probably the most compelling. Gantefoer argued it was improper for Tchorzewski to take the teaching job while he remained an MLA when young people with education degrees are forced to leave the province to find work.

As Gantefoer explained, like countless others, his daughter was unable to find a teaching position in the province after she graduated from the University of Saskatchewan. But she had four offers from Alberta and is now teaching in Calgary.

While Tchorzewski teaches only in the morning, five days a week, Gantefoer says a young university graduate would jump at such an opportunity. "They would at least get their foot in the teaching door and begin building a career," Gantefoer says.

Still, the question of Tchorzewski filling a scarce teaching job, while he is a sitting MLA, is really just a symptom of a larger issue. What the Tchorzewski case raises is whether we should expect MLAs to treat their jobs as full-time occupations. Clearly, the tradition in this province is that we don't. As Tchorzewski pointed out, there are many MLAs who have second jobs. Probably a third of the 58 MLAs in the legislature remain as active farmers, assorted others continue private businesses and others have maintained on-going private law practices. Indeed, Gantefoer owns, with a partner-manager, a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in Melfort.

So, in that sense, singling out Tchorzewski is unfair. As he said, if it is improper for him to hold down a second job, then what about everyone else? "Where do you draw that line?" he asked.

That's a fair enough question. We should try to answer it.

In the past, I have argued that, in reality, the job of an MLA is not a full-time job. There certainly are times when the work is demanding and the hours long, but there are also times when the workload is not onerous. Does anyone really believe being the

MLA for Regina South is a full-time job? Serge Kujawa, the former MLA for the constituency, certainly didn't.

But many, if not all, of the politicians adamantly disagree. They argue that being an MLA is, indeed, very much a full-time job and needs to be treated as such. At one point, prior to being named to cabinet, Joanne Crofford made the case for the workload faced by backbench MLAs by preparing a detailed list of the meetings and events she attended in her capacity as an MLA. Her agenda looked very busy.

As well, many politicians campaign on the premise that they will be a "full-time" MLA. Implicit in that is the notion you cannot properly represent your constituents if you hold down a second job.

Over the years, the role of an MLA has clearly evolved into being considered, and certainly compensated for, as a full-time occupation. Last year, MLAs earned an average of about $55,000, which includes about $15,000 in tax-free allowances.

Which begs the original question. What is it? Full time, as Crofford and others insist, or part time, as Tchorzewski and so many others actually practice?

The politicians can't have it both ways. They can't expect to be paid as MLAs on a full-time basis and then treat the job as if it deserves something less than their full attention.

In arguing his case, Tchorzewski asked about others, such as journalists, who do work outside their salaried position on a freelance basis.

Are we perhaps applying a double-standard when it comes to politicians, he wondered? The answer is yes. And for good reason.

Politicians should be treated differently because they are in positions of public trust, paid for from tax dollars. If the public compensates them on the basis they work full time as MLAs, we have the right to expect that they behave in that manner.

If a journalist, or anyone else in the private-sector economy, is shortchanging his or her employer, that is a matter between the employee and the employer. What's at stake are private, not public, dollars.

No so with Tchorzewski. He is being paid by taxpayers on the basis that his role as an MLA is a full-time job. If, by taking a teaching position, he is treating it as something less than full time, what are we to assume other than he is overpaid and underworked as an MLA?

And what of Tchorzewski's original motive when he quit cabinet to spend more time with his family? Apparently, as an MLA, he has enough extra time to part-time teach and still fulfil his family commitments.

What politicians need to do in this province is finally come to terms with their own jobs and what the public can rightfully expect from them once they are elected.

The Tchorzewski incident merely highlights the ambiguity.

One of the first things Allan Blakeney did in those dark days immediately after the NDP's Monday Night Massacre in 1982 was assemble as many NDP lawyers as he could find.

With his 11-year government recently pummeled by Grant Devine into an eight-member Opposition caucus -- Snow White and the seven dwarfs, the PCs used to call them -- the former NDP premier knew they needed outside help with the legislation load the Opposition would be required to critique and criticize.

Here is where lawyers -- trained in legalize and picking apart laws -- are invaluable to politicians. Unfortunately, seldom do lawyers donate their services for nothing.

Since the recently defeated NDP had no way of guaranteeing it would ever again be able to offer lucrative government patronage business, understandably few lawyers expressed interest in helping.

But one who did heed his party's call was Tom Waller of the Regina's Olive Waller Zinkhan and Waller.

One NDP source estimates Waller and his firm likely donated half a million dollars in free hours to the NDP caucus in its nearly 10 years of Opposition.

It often showed.

Even as a small, eight-person rump, the NDP sometimes had a major effect on legislation like the bill that privatized SaskOil in 1985. (Dwain Lingenfelter's insistence on a strong clause calling for the head office to remain in this province may be one reason why Regina has that tall, blue Wascana Energy building at the corner of Broad Street and Victoria Avenue.)

As for Waller and his firm, they have done about $1.7-million worth of government and Crown corporation business since the NDP's re-election, November 1991. Prior to that, they had virtually nothing.

(Based on the volume of government work PC/Liberal-rooted MacPherson Leslie Tyerman continues to get from the government -- close to $5 million in the last five years -- few could blame Waller if he still feels he's not getting his just deserts.)

The problem the 1996 Liberal Opposition -- nine brand new members; none of whom are lawyers -- has is similar to Blakeney's in 1982.

But with both a federal Liberal government in Ottawa capable of doling out tonnes of legal work and an over-abundance of Liberal lawyers in Regina, one would think the Opposition caucus wouldn't have much trouble finding someone eager help.

However, it wasn't so long ago this Liberal caucus was run by Lynda Haverstock -- an avowed enemy to all forms of patronage.

Haverstock's anti-patronage talk often outraged Regina Liberal lawyers (as was apparent in last November's leadership coup d'etat). Certainly, there is little to suggest many of them were willing to donate their time to help the Liberal MLAs prepare. The net impact of this for the Saskatchewan taxpayer may have been seen in the assembly at 3:19 p.m. Monday when the legislature adjourned for the day because the Opposition wasn't prepared to debate many bills.

This wasn't the worst travesty to the democratic process we'll ever see. As Liberal House leader Glen McPherson pointed out, some bills are simply not worth debating.

It's also important to note that legislation critique is just one small element of an Opposition's job.

Listening to the people is, obviously, far more important.

And here, both oppositions made great strides on the government in the past week.

Watching the NDP MLAs justify their whopping $4,300 1996 pay raises, it was disconcerting to see how much this government has lost touch with both the truth and reality.

But after initially siding with the NDP government's greed -- the Liberals came on side with the Tories by also volunteering to give back some of the overpayment.

In other words, the Grit caucus appears more clued in to people's concerns than the government's fat cat frontbenchers.

But it's also clear that the Liberals don't yet have all the tools they need to perform all the important functions needed to keep a government in check.

No doubt, they'll get better with experience.

But like Blakeney in 1982, this Opposition needs all the help it can get.

There is probably no crime, short of murder, that offends the sensibilities and values of a community more than the sexual assault of children. In many ways, it is the most unconscionable of criminal acts because it victimizes the weakest, most vulnerable and most innocent among us.

So, it's not surprising that the public recoils in horror with the news that a pedophile is being released into the community after completing his jail sentence. It becomes an even more emotional event when police say the released individual is likely to reoffend.

Such a situation has unfolded in Saskatoon. Public anxiety has risen with the news a convicted pedophile, who police say is a high risk to offend again, has moved into the community.

The issue was raised in the legislature by MLA Lynda Haverstock, who said parents in her constituency are upset because the pedophile is living in that part of the city. They want some level of assurance that the public will be alerted with the name and full description of pedophiles, so that the parents can take steps to protect their children.

As it happens, for the last 18 months, the Justice Department has been working on a disclosure protocol relating to pedophiles. A committee is expected to release its recommendations within a month.

Beyond an individual's right to privacy, there is no law governing the disclosure of this information. Certainly the release from custody of someone after serving time in jail is public information and, in some cases, a public event. There is nothing, in a strict legal sense, that prevents the police from naming and identifying a pedophile to the community.

So, you ask, what's the problem? Why don't the police do what people are demanding and make all pertinent information about the individual public?

Unfortunately, the issue is not so simple. As Saskatchewan deputy justice minister Brent Cotter explains, there are many factors the police must take into consideration.

The most common pedophile is someone who assaults a family member or someone close to them. What that means is that, by identifying the pedophile, the police could inadvertently identify the victim.

Then, there are the types of offenders themselves. Some are considered treatable, others not. If you identify those who experts believe can be treated and are unlikely to reoffend, the public stigma created by identification could do more harm than good. "The dilemma that arises is really one for the police. Potentially, they could face an issue of liability," Cotter says. Based on a recent Supreme Court ruling, Cotter says the dynamic has changed so that police are tending toward releasing the information.

In the Supreme Court case, an Ontario woman sued the police after she was assaulted by a sexual offender who was released into the community. The police were aware of the individual, but did not make it public.

The woman brought a negligence suit against the police, arguing that she was a likely target to be assaulted by the released man, but she had not been warned by the police. The Supreme Court ruled the police can be liable if they do not disclose the information and someone is harmed.

At this point, the extent of the liability the police could face is unclear . How do you put a value on a life? Or someone's esteem or mental health if they have been sexually assaulted?

"In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, the police have begun to think a lot more about the liability issue," Cotter says.

One way to deal with the situation is the way it's done in Manitoba. That province has established a committee of ordinary citizens, criminal justice people and other experts to review each case. The idea is that if the police follow the recommendation of such a committee, it tends to protect the police from liability should the individual assault someone else after being released.

In the past nine months, the committee has reviewed 12 cases and has recommended full public disclosure in only one instance.

Another option would be to have a judge rule on the disclosure issue at the point when a pedophile is released from custody. The judge would make a decision based on objective evidence, which would virtually eliminate any potential for public liability. But these are far from perfect solutions. The reality is that we cannot expect police or anyone else to constantly track and monitor offenders after they are released into the community.

And, at the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves if we want to hound these people from one community to another. To do that would likely help to ensure that they do reoffend.

What we need is a measured response that recognizes the needs of the community to protect itself, but doesn't create a vigilante climate that will do more harm than good.

Far be it from me to be offering medical advice, but maybe some Saskatchewan government members ought to consider being tested for mad cow disease.

Frighteningly, an epidemic with similar symptoms seems to have stricken some in our NDP government.

For those of you who have had no way of accessing international news because you're a permanent fixture in the backbench of Premier Roy Romanow's NDP government who is only permitted to read your own speeches in Hansard, the Commonwealth and clippings from your local newspaper that have first been vetted by executive council's media review services, allow me to enlighten you.

Most people out there aren't getting a $4,300 raise this year.

Also, there seems to be a problem in England's $6-billion beef industry because of a disease known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease.

The concern here goes well beyond what this might do to England's otherwise sterling reputation for fine cuisine.

Some British scientists suspect there is a link between the BSE and its human equivalent called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease -- a theory that has caused a major political row in Britain.

According to British Agriculture Minister Donald Hogg (not an NDP member of Saskatchewan legislature's Board of Internal Economy), scientists cannot prove there is a definite link between mad cow disease and the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Therefore, the British government has decided to do nothing, even though major hamburger chains in Britain like McDonald's think it's best to get out of the hamburger business altogether.

The Labor Party Opposition -- kin to the NDP -- allege this is a massive coverup by the ruling Tories who are only interested in the farmers' votes. (Sound familiar?)

Adding to the debate is the ever-responsible British press. The 578,294 Fleet Street reporters no longer needed to cover Chuck and Di's marital difficulties have thrown themselves into the panic by digging up every gruesome case of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease they can find.

Tastefully described in the British tabloids as "brains turning to mush", the early human symptoms of the degenerative disease are confusion, unco-ordination and forgetfulness.

Since confusion, forgetfulness and lack of co-ordination are most frequently observed symptoms of an early-in-its-second-term NDP government, it is here where our concerns begin.

Of course, such symptoms have sometimes been mistaken for the recent snout-in-trough virus that's led to government members delaying the implementation of the McDowell Commission report to July 1 so they could rake in an extra session's worth of $94- or $155-a-day per diems. Believe me. Absolutely no confusion ever existed here on the NDP MLAs' part.

But what is truly worrisome is the forgetfulness and confusion we have seen in the NDP's ranks -- particularly since the June election.

For example, how a bright, new cabinet light like Agriculture Minister Eric Upshall could so easily forget that his predecessor Darrel Cunningham had promised just last June to forgive any GRIP overpayments is downright disturbing.

Then there's Economic Development Minister Dwain Lingenfelter,.

This, the brightest mind in the NDP government, is often frequently confused over his government's job-creation record since the June election. On average, there have been almost 2,000 fewer jobs each month.

Of course, maybe I'm just being an alarmist. But until we know for sure, we should encourage our government members to please stop eating British beef.

When Roy Romanow made a provincewide television address almost two months ago, he briefly mentioned how, in the coming weeks, he would set out an "alternative national agenda".

It was an intriguing comment, tossed out as an afterthought near the end of a speech that dwelled almost entirely on issues relating exclusively to Saskatchewan.

Since that time, Romanow has said little about what he means by an alternative agenda for Canada. At one point, it looked like Romanow might set out his ideas at a conference on national unity this weekend, co-sponsored by the University of Regina and Montreal's Le Devoir newspaper at the U of R. But that idea was scrubbed because the conference is a closed, by-invitation-only affair that would not provide the kind of platform Romanow wants to flesh out his ideas for Canada.

It is more likely Romanow will explain his alternative agenda sometime later this spring, probably at what is being described as a "major leaders conference" in Montreal scheduled for mid-May.

But just because Romanow has yet to outline what he means by an alternative agenda doesn't mean we don't know what he's likely to talk about. Romanow set out the framework for his ideas last September when he gave a speech on national unity and the future of Canada at Johns Hopkins University in Washington.

More recently, when asked about his ideas, Romanow talked about the need for a new national policy. In essence, he said that Canada needs to rediscover the nation-building spirit of the Sir John A. Macdonald era, when a national vision was reflected in public policy that became the National Policy.

Although not formally recognized as such, a second national policy in Canada emerged after the Second World War. It was the set of social policies that created the welfare state that helped redefine Canada as a modern, industrial nation.

So, just as Canada needed a national policy in those earlier eras, it needs one now to overcome the threat to its unity. Such will be the basis of Romanow's alternative national agenda.

Based on his John Hopkins speech, the essence of Romanow's alternative national agenda -- or new national policy, if you will -- attempts to reconcile the three major forces at work in Canada today: the politics of debt, the future of social programs and the question of Quebec and national unity.

It is Romanow's position that the fiscal crisis created by the debt that all governments face provides Canada with a challenge that can be turned into an opportunity. In short, if we create a national consensus on the kind of country we want to preserve as we restructure government to deal with debt, we can actually strengthen national unity.

Romanow bases his argument on an historical fact: government has played a constructive role in defining and maintaining the Canadian identity in the past. It was the National Policy of Macdonald and the post-Second World War creation of a welfare state that, more than anything else, has given Canada its identity and helped to unite its people.

Without a doubt, those ties that bind us have been weakened, and, in some cases, broken, in recent years.

The signing of the free trade agreement with the U.S. signalled the end of the east-west economy created by Macdonald's National Policy. It severed the economic links that were established as a result of government tariffs, which established a national economy separate from the U.S.

As for the unwinding of social programs, the process has been driven by the fiscal reality of debt. It has been a haphazard unfolding of events, where individual provinces and the federal government have taken different approaches and applied different priorities to the treatment of social programs. The inevitable result will be the creation of an inconsistent social safety net, the so-called patchwork quilt, that will tend to separate Canadians based on the economic factors of the regions where they live.

What Romanow suggests is that it need not be this way. It is possible for governments to preserve social programs, and therefore the fabric of the nation, while dealing with the politics of debt. But what it will take is a commitment to the principles Canadians share as people inhabiting a nation. A new national policy, if you will.

Romanow maintains if that happens, we will also address the national-unity issue. By preserving social programs, we will give Quebec the sense of security, values and identity that comes with nationhood.

On a theoretical basis, it is difficult to argue with Romanow's call for a alternative national agenda. But the question is whether the will remains, let alone the ability, to find the political consensus it will take for a new national policy. Romanow's task will be to do what he can to get the ball rolling. The sooner he, or someone else, starts, the better.

It's not as if Finance Minister Janice MacKinnon's budget has suddenly made Saskatchewan a worse place to live. On the surface, MacKinnon can put forward a solid argument to the contrary:

There are no tax increases and even a smidgen of tax relief (if you consider the $150 reduction in personal income tax first announced last year).

While there are "layoff notices" for 544 civil servants -- part of the government's attempt to get its house in order -- it should be noted 302 of them are taking early retirement and as many as 177 are union members who might be able to "bump" into other vacant government jobs.

A predicted $230-million reduction in government spending this coming year -- including less spending in 18 of 24 line departments -- could mark the first real reduction in the size of government this province has ever seen.

And, perhaps most importantly:

There are the first tangible signs we are making headway reducing the monstrous provincial debt -- including a $38-million reduction in this year's interest charges, courtesy of the Cameco share sale.

In the government's pre-budget consultations, the public stated it didn't want higher taxes or more debt, MacKinnon explained Thursday.

"Instead, they asked us to scrutinize every aspect of government spending. We listened. We responded."

Add in the NDP government's argument that it is also still protecting health and education (despite cuts in federal transfer payments) and you have a compelling case that the government is headed in the right direction.

But you start to see the problems with MacKinnon's budget when you begin to look at where it did cut, where it didn't, and how it did or didn't.

You don't have to peer too deeply into this document to see how politically cynical this NDP government sometimes is.

For example, a short six years ago, when the environment was everyone's top-of-mind issue, the NDP gave deputy leader Ed Tchorzewski the critical assignment to "heighten awareness." In Thursday's budget, with environmental issues no longer registering in the opinion polls, we see 125 positions cut from the department, plus the gutting of key programs like forestry's insect and disease control, the Saskatchewan Wetland Conservation Corporation and the parks budget.

Even more cynical is the ongoing political manipulation of public expectations that now seems part of every NDP budget process.

For two months, all we heard from this NDP government is how drastic the cuts would be -- so bad that every election promise the NDP made last June was on the table.

Lo and behold, Thursday's spending cuts somehow turned out to be not quite as bad as the government predicted. In fact, MacKinnon even raised the possibility we might see major tax cuts in the next two or three years or so -- coincidentally, just as another provincial election rolls around.

Then there is the focusing of cuts in rural Saskatchewan -- particularly in the southern half of the province, which yielded only five NDP MLAs last election.

They've closed the Agriculture Credit Corp. office in Swift Current. They've closed the 26 rural highway department depots. They've cut back hours in three rural social service offices...

No doubt, many rural people will be wondering what exactly they got out of this budget. With 27 of the NDP's 42 MLAs from the major cities, they shouldn't expect answers any too soon.

And how easy will it be for highways employees in Val Marie or Ituna to bump into the civil service in Regina? They might have a slightly different take on how compassionate these cuts were.

But perhaps most cynical of all is the priority of a government that sends out 544 layoff notices the same week it announces it has added former radio talk show host Lorne Harasen (at $70,000 a year) to the media strategy unit in its already burgeoning executive council.

Come to think of it, only two people are being let go in Romanow's office. What happened to cuts at the top?

Maybe time will prove this budget was about making Saskatchewan a better place to live.

One would hate to think it was only about getting the NDP re-elected.

Unquestionably, the single most important political event in Saskatchewan in recent years has been the radical, even revolutionary, transformation of public expectations.

Calling it an event is probably not accurate. An event suggests a specific point in time, in this case an occurrence that carries with it a lasting effect. This has been more a political evolution that has unfolded over the last six to eight years.

Moreover, it has not been limited, or even unique, to Saskatchewan. Far from it. This has been a sea-change that has swept the world, manifest in events as large as the collapse of the Soviet Union, to the relative insignificance of Saskatchewan politics.

What has happened is a fundamental, maybe even an irrevocable, change in how we see ourselves, our province and our future.

We have gone from the almost childish political and economic naivete of the Grant Devine years, when there was "so much more we can be", to the steadfast, sometimes fastidious, perhaps even dour, fiscal realism of the Roy Romanow government.

What we have gone through has been a revolution of diminished expectations. In some ways, the politics of debt in this province have had a traumatic effect on us similar to that of the most wrenching period in our history -- the Dirty Thirties. Certainly,

what we've experienced so far in the 1990s has produced a transformation in our political attitudes not unlike what occurred in the 1930s.

What's happened is obvious and undeniable. We see government and its role in society as being far different from a few short years ago. Just as the 1930s led to a belief that government could fulfil our needs and create opportunity, the 1990s and the politics of debt have shattered that illusion.

Government is now, more often than not, seen as an impediment to our goals, something we need to tame, control, and, in many cases, minimize, if we ever hope to achieve the better things to which we aspire.

We got another remarkable example this week of the political and economic revolution that has swept over the province when the Romanow government brought in the first budget of its second term. It provided further evidence of how much our expectations of government have changed.

Ten years ago, this kind of a budget was politically unthinkable. Indeed, 10 years ago, the former Conservative government of Grant Devine was bringing in a budget that ended up with an operating deficit of $1.2 billion. To even say those words now, ''an operating deficit of $1.2 billion'', seems beyond belief. Our expectations and attitudes toward government have changed so drastically that to imagine such profligate spending by government today seems mad.

For the most part, this NDP government has presided over our revolution in diminished expectations. It has been the politics of debt's unrelenting message that has dominated public life in this province throughout the decade of the 1990s. The stated and unstated theme that underlies all our public choices is "expect less" and find ways "to do more with less."

The budget this week merely advanced that cause. Having defeated the deficit, we now must tackle the debt. There is now a kind of remorseless logic to politics that equates progress with reduced expectations of government.

The idea is expressed in the new vernacular of politics. An entire section of Finance Minister Janice MacKinnon's budget speech is entitled "Restructuring and Streamlining Government". It talks about "cutting administrative costs", which means eliminating 669 positions in government, winding down agencies and eliminating programs.

"All levels of government must consider this kind of common-sense change that combines and co-ordinates activities to make taxpayer dollars go further," MacKinnon said.

The next stage of doing more with less will come in the form of rationalizing and restructuring municipal government. In a year, the province will cut its grants to local governments by 25 per cent, which amounts to a financial club that will force other levels of government to scale back, reorganize and retrench.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with our radically different attitudes towards government and its role in our lives. It reflects how, for years, politics created false expectations of government that led us down the road to increasing public debt because our reach exceeded our grasp. What's happened is our day of reckoning has merely arrived.

The underlying hope to this revolution in lowered expectations is it will lead us to a more secure future, where what we expect from government and the economy will be not only realistic, but sustainable.

For a province like Saskatchewan, where people were crippled by debt in the 1930s and again in the 1990s, it's a lesson worth the learning.

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