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Leader-Star News Service November 1996 Archive |
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Leader-Star News Service November 1996 Archive |
While a student at the London School of Economics completing his masters degree in the history of politics in 1971, Larry Sandomirsky, son of a Regina hardware store owner, reached the following epiphany:
A career in politics is not the best way to serve people.
"It sounds awfully altruistic, but I just wanted to do something useful in the world and contribute in a useful fashion," Dr. Sandomirsky said of his decision a quarter century ago. "I thought medicine was an excellent way to do it."
And it was during his ensuing years at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine, Sandomirsky reached a second epiphany:
"The place for me to practise was rural Saskatchewan," Sandomirsky explained. "Again, with some of those same (altruistic) feelings, doctors should go where they are needed.
"Rural Saskatchewan was where doctors were needed at that time and Hudson Bay was in a situation where they had two older doctors ready to retire. They very desperately needed new, young Saskatchewan grads."
So Sandomirsky and two other recent U of S medical school graduates moved to Hudson Bay -- 383 and 236 kilometres northeast of Regina and Saskatoon, respectively -- in 1979 with a commitment to stay a minimum of three years.
The other two young doctors decided to specialize in anesthesiology and eventually moved to B.C. and Ontario. But Sandomirsky fell in love with Hudson Bay -- the same town that many Regina civil servants scoffed at as being in the middle of nowhere when the Grant Devine administration tried five years ago to relocate the Saskatchewan Liquor Board headquarters there.
He stayed and has been a town councillor for 15 years. He helped coach midget hockey and he and his wife raised three children there -- two of whom are now in university.
He's also been active on the Saskatchewan Medical Association bargaining committee, so his combined experiences would seem to make Sandomirsky the near-perfect person to ask: What should be done to keep or attract more doctors to rural Saskatchewan?
It's an issue that Sandomirsky has often thought about since arriving in Hudson Bay. In fact, he's reached yet another epiphany:
"I came to rural Saskatchewan for the lifestyle," Sandomirsky said.
"If there is one reason I would leave rural Saskatchewan, it's the lifestyle."
The 18-year physician said he is simply no longer able to work the hours that he's been working.
"I must have more time to preserve myself and rejuvenate myself.
"Now if that means more physicians, then that is the answer. If it means working with other health-care officials in a positive and collaborative way, then perhaps that's an answer, too."
The key problem for the rural physician is the on-call responsibilities that have become unduly onerous with more doctors leaving, Sandomirsky said. It's taking away the lifestyles that initially attracted doctors like him to rural Saskatchewan.
It's also a problem that could be partly alleviated if there was a better understanding of what rural doctors face.
"For example, don't attend the hospital at 10 o'clock at night with something that should have been seen at normal clinic hours," he said. "Now, that's a responsibility to your health-care professional and it's a responsibility to the system."
While the continuing problem of keeping rural doctors now "seems to be reaching crisis proportions," Sandomirsky doesn't blame any one particular factor. "It's not the provincial government's fault. It's not wellness's fault. I don't want to blame anybody."
Maybe less beds and less rural physicians are part of the reason, he said. But in a world where heart, liver and kidney transplants have meant responsibility for your own health care has been transferred to the health-care professionals, more informed patients have heightened expectations, he said. Even an aging rural population requiring more care may be contributing to the toll on country doctors.
And, yes, Sandomirsky says graduating doctors may be part of the solution, too.
Asked if that means he believes today's graduating medical students should share the sense of duty he had 20 years ago to practise where needed, Sandomirsky would not comment.
But given how much of their university medical training is heavily subsidized by Saskatchewan taxpayers, it's hard to see how that could be seen as an unreasonable request.
And who knows?
Maybe today's graduating doctors would find the same rewards in practising in rural Saskatchewan that Sandomirsky discovered.
If 90-year-old David Starger died the way many believe he died, it may be more than just his assailant on trial.
The death of the elderly man may very well turn into a trial of Canada's Young Offenders Act.
Starger, a retired Rhein-area farmer, had lived by himself since his wife died 10 years earlier. He was "doing all right on his own," his son Ken said, and was even able to mow his five-acre yard on his riding mower.
On July 30, a 15-year-old young offender may have taken away the old man's life.
Starger -- alone at the time -- was awakened at 5:15 a.m. by three people who had driven the family's grain truck into a grain dryer.
According to Regina lawyer Tom Dore, representing the 15-year-old Regina youth involved, the three people were drunk at the time and looking for gasoline to steal.
They kicked in the door of Starger's home and the elderly man was assaulted. He suffered three broken ribs, lacerations to the head and multiple bruising, the RCMP reported.
Starger managed to drive three kilometres to the nearest neighbor and was then driven the 30 kilometres Yorkton Union Hospital.
David Starger would die five days later.
Dale Christopher Quewezance of Fort Qu'Appelle and Justin Daniel Wapash, both 19 years, both pleaded guilty to counts of break and enter, mischief and attempted theft in the incident.
So far, that young offender has only been charged with break and enter, mischief and attempted theft -- counts on which he pleaded guilty and is now serving four months.
Crown officials in Yorkton have been awaiting an autopsy report that will determine how the injuries Starger sustained that day may have contributed to his death five days later.
''Nobody has the right to be righteously indignant yet," Dore said.
As the lawyer in the case, Dore has an obvious vested interest.
But some things Dore has to say are worth listening to in these times when home invasion seems on the rise and when so many people -- particularly rural elderly people -- are fearing for their safety.
Like most, Dore -- a lawyer for 20 years and now a professor of Indian studies and the principles of Indian law at the University of Regina -- is also alarmed by what seems to be the rise in the number of youths being involved in home invasions across the country.
However, Dore equates the recent home invasion phenomena to the so-called "Oldsmobile Gang" -- a loosely connected group of Regina-based youths with a penchant for stealing Olds.
The more publicity and hysteria such crimes created, Dore explained, the worse the problem got.
Dore's other concern is that PC and Liberal politicians demanding a tougher Young Offenders Act feeds both the problem and the hysteria around it. "The Young Offenders Act is a big, slow-moving target," the lawyer said. "Everyone wants to take a kick at it. But I'd like to see a study of how many of these young offenders (since the federal act came into existence in 1984) have wound up in adult prisons."
Perhaps as alarming as the trend is the support given to Weyburn-area farmer Bruce Croal for shooting at a car-load of youths stealing gasoline, Dore said. Similarly, the case of 88-year-old Paul Zarry who shot and killed an adult invading his home has heightened the tension.
The fact that the race issue has come up in many of these cases is especially disturbing to Dore, a Mohawk Indian born and raised in Montreal.
Dore also wonders why parents and society keep shifting the responsibility for young offenders on to the courts and police.
But none of this addresses the issue of whether the Young Offenders Act is appropriately dealing with violent youth, the Liberals argue.
Nor does it address the reality that from 1992 to 1995, the number of Saskatchewan young offenders charged with robberies increased 77 per cent, those charged with motor vehicle theft increased 32 per cent and those with offensive weapons charges increased 51 per cent.
Certainly, David Starger's death is more than just another statistic.
And if Starger's death is not perceived to be handled fairly, it will only further discredit the Young Offenders Act.
In today's atmosphere, it is not going to be easy to alleviate the fear out there unless people feel that justice has been served.
"Certainly, if employees ... feel they've taken on added responsibility, I would assume it would be appropriate for them to contact the person they report to with respect to these issues (of getting a raise)," says SaskPower Minister Eldon Lautermilch when explaining why SaskPower vice-president Carole Bryant averaged a 10-per-cent annual raise for the first four years she was with the power corporation.
So let's get this straight.
Government policy, according to Lautermilch, is everyone should be considered for 10-per-cent annual raises if they've had to take on added responsibilities or workload because of downsizing.
This may be hard for some of you to believe, but it's possible Lautermilch's raise policy -- the one that's allowed Bryant's salary to hike to $133,872 from the $95,400 she started at in 1992 while her boss SaskPower President Jack Messer's salary has vaulted to $166,332 from $153,780 in early 1995 -- isn't being consistently applied across government.
Methinks this may be a better example of the old political adage: the more unjustifiable the action, the more screwy the explanation.
But let's assume for a moment that Messer and Bryant are not receiving special considerations as political appointees who ran the NDP's 1991 election campaign.
What claim, then, do highways department employees and managers now have for 10-per-cent-a-year increases?
In the March budget, no department was hit harder than highways where $168.8 million was set aside for 1996-97 -- down 2.5 per cent from what was spent in 1995-96 and a whopping 12.3 per cent -- $20.7 million -- from what was budgeted in 1993-94.
The downsizing reality is most apparent in the number of bodies now working for the highways department -- 528 summer staff and 383 winter staff in the 1996-97 budget. That compares with 595 summer staff and 423 winter staff last year --and 670 summer staff and 459 winter staff, respectively, in 1993-94.
Whether such downsizing really does suggest we have a strong, effective management in the highways department depends on your perspective.
Rural people might think otherwise, if the concerns about last year's winter road maintenance measures are any indication.
The department's decision to cut back on salting, to delay the clearing of secondary roads, to wait until snow storms end before sending the plows out and to only remove "finger" snow drifts when they begin to impede traffic, has been a sore point with rural drivers since the policies were introduced a year ago.
But there can be little doubt that highways department managers are saving taxpayers money, as is apparent in the public accounts.
The most recent numbers for 1995-96 also show a total of $53.9 million spent on salaries in the department, including $40.3 million for in-scope (unionized) employees.
From 1993-94 to 1995-96, salary costs for the department were almost $58 million -- mostly because the department was shelling out about 8.8-per-cent more for in-scope salaries.
In fact, a random sampling of unionized workers in 1995-96 (all the Smiths plus a Smytanuik and Sorchanski) shows their average wage to be $27,149.
That's actually an average $881 decrease -- 3.2-per-cent less -- than what they made in 1994-95. (Department officials partly attribute this to a possible shorter construction season.)
But contrary to what Lautermilch says, it is clear you don't get more money if you are a rank-and-file government worker who happens to have more work to do because of downsizing.
Surely, though, managers who oversaw this downsizing must have received Messer/Bryant-like salary increases.
After all, didn't highways lose 243 out-of-scope management positions in the last budget alone?
Well, yes and no. Yes there were huge cuts in highways department managers, but no, nobody received Messer/Bryant-like wage hikes. Some are making less.
Deputy Minister Clare Kirkland's salary in 1995-96 went down 3.6 per cent, to $102,396 from the $106,062 he made in 1994-95.
One of his assistant deputy ministers received a whopping .5-per-cent increase while the other received 2.7-per-cent more (mostly because he was promoted from acting assistant.)
A random survey of the salaries of other senior highways managers ranged from 1.7- to 3.5-per-cent increases last year -- mostly dependent on where they were on the pay scales they had to adhere to.
But such scales don't seem to exist for former political operatives now running SaskPower.
Which can only lead one to believe that raises in this government aren't necessarily based on what you know or even what you do, but who you are.
That odd slurping noise you hear emitting from the Centennial Auditorium in Saskatoon this morning is the sound 1,000 New Democrats make when they are simultaneously licking their chops.
Their reasons for salivating have little to do with their own lot.
Five years after Premier Roy Romanow first led them into power, the delegates from the governing party gathered for their annual convention are swamped by the realities of laid- off, unionized civil servants, severe health care cuts and cutbacks to highways snow removal that their own internal memos say pose some additional risk to public safety.
Certainly, there will be the opportunity at this NDP convention to rally around what should be a sure by-election win in North Battleford on Tuesday, the upcoming federal election where New Democrats are bound to do better than the eight seats they won last time, and, of course, the battle to save the Canadian Wheat Board.
But the problems won't disappear when New Democrats leave this convention tomorrow.
They will be no better able to explain to their neighbors why Jack Messer and Carole Bryant -- the hierarchy of this party not so long ago -- should be rewarded with 10-per-cent-a-year salary hikes after hiking power rates 12 to 14 per cent last year.
Nor will New Democrats likely be able to say what their party really stands for, other than the same principles of budget slashing we see from Ralph Klein's Alberta to Mike Harris's Ontario.
But does this mean New Democrats have nothing to look forward to?
Quite the contrary.
No, their salivation (or maybe we should say, salvation) has, once again, come courtesy of the Saskatchewan Liberals.
If any Saskatchewan party should be in the midst of political rapture, it should be the Liberal party going into its leadership convention next weekend.
With a minimum 850 delegates, three hours of live television coverage on CBC and a hotly contested leadership race, it briefly looked like the Grits might finally be able to put their divisions behind them.
But these are, after all, the Saskatchewan Liberals.
First, they insisted on getting into one final pre-convention scrap over former leader Lynda Haverstock's status in the party -- a thoughtful reminder for those of us who might have forgotten how vicious internal Liberal politics can be.
Then there is Gerard Aldridge's withdrawal from the leadership, pointing to a severe flaw in this selection process and possibly more backroom manipulation.
Only at 9.4 per cent in the popular vote, Aldridge had no chance of winning. In fact, he stood to be humiliated on the first ballot -- a fate that would not have sat well with him.
So he decided to withdraw, leaving Ken Krawetz as the low man on the totem pole and most likely to be bumped off the ballot after the first vote.
Sour grapes or not, there is a lot of legitimacy to Krawetz's concerns that Aldridge's departure makes the pre-convention voting "farcical.''
The first ballot voting, Krawetz contends, actually began October 3 when the delegate selection process began. A candidate can't drop out once the voting starts, Krawetz argues.
Under this leadership contest's rules, the first-ballot votes each candidate gets is automatically recorded based on the popular vote they received in each riding.
In Wood River, for example, the 74.1-per-cent popular vote Aldridge received would have translated into 12 of 16 delegate votes from the seat had he stayed in the race.
But now that Aldridge has withdrawn, any votes he received will be ignored. Instead, votes will be proportioned out to rest of the candidates.
Tom Hengen received 22.1 per cent of the remaining 25.8 per cent of Wood River's popular vote. So without Aldridge in the race, Hengen will now take 85.7 per cent of delegates -- as many as 14 out of a maximum 16.
As Krawetz correctly argues, votes cast by Wood River Liberals now wind up counting for someone other than who they were intended. In Moose Jaw Wakimow, where 100 per cent of the popular was registered for Aldridge, their first-ballot votes won't count at all.
Worse yet in a party where trust isn't exactly at a premium, there are some Liberals who suspect Aldridge's departure is a backroom deal cooked up between his camp and Hengen's to manipulate the process.
So regardless of who wins on the Liberal's second ballot in a week, this leadership will be seen by some as tainted.
And who benefits?
That sound of 1,000 New Democrats now licking their chops is one big clue.
Who Liberals want as their new leader may not be nearly as telling as who New Democrats and Progressive Conservatives want to be the new Liberal leader.
Quite content to sit back and watch the internal bickering, the other parties have known for ages the simple reality that Liberals have failed to grasp -- if Liberals are perceived as being incapable of running their own affairs, they'll never be trusted to run the province.
So the leadership candidate least capable of dealing with the internal strife and least likely to give the Grits some clear direction is generally the one that PCs and New Democrats want.
But which of the four leadership candidates -- all relatively unknown commodities -- best fits that bill has been the subject of much spin and speculation from the other parties.
Let's take a look at those opinions and why, or why not, they might be valid:
Gerard Aldridge:
He's in. He's out. He's in again. He's been the Liberals' Ross Perot in this race with significantly smaller ears, but arguably no less paranoia. (Remember his -- Aldridge's, not Perot's -- theories on why SaskTel's $102-million net profit on the LCL Cable sale was a bad deal for Saskatchewan taxpayers and why it may be part of some secret deal cooked up between Premier Roy Romanow and Goldman Sachs?)
Both the NDP and Tories say they would have dearly loved to have seen Aldridge as leader because of his sometimes quirky approach to issues. (Again, remember the Crown-Life-is-about-to-collapse-under-the-weight-of-lawsuits stories?) It's hard to say where the Liberals would have went under Aldridge as their party leader.
But everyone -- PCs, New Democrats, Liberals and, most certainly, Aldridge -- have now concluded that simply isn't going to happen.
Tom Hengen:
Being the least known of any of the candidates, the opposing politicians' theories vary. The Tories -- and the NDP, for that matter -- are legitimately concerned that Hengen's more right-wing policies would give voters less reason to split the vote on the right side. One clear right-wing alternative is definitely bad news for the NDP. Also, the fact that he has come from nowhere to top the polls shows some organizational skills.
But from there, reaction is mixed. Tories and some New Democrats see Hengen and his criticism of the Regina "cabal" as divisive. That's bad news for the Liberals, but good news for everyone else.
There is one school of thought -- mostly emerging from Dwain Lingenfelter's camp -- that Hengen, as a one-time Lynda Haverstock supporter, would be most able to heal the rifts. It's an odd theory, given the fact that most Tories and New Democrats gleefully believe the pro- and anti-Haverstock camps will never come together. And given that this theory seems to be coming from Lingenfelter's direction, don't rule out the possibility it's something the NDP are floating in hopes of bolstering Hengen's chances, thus allowing the divisions to continue.
Ken Krawetz:
The reaction to Krawetz from both the NDP and the PCs is consistent and seems reasonably sincere.
Both parties admit it would be very difficult to criticize the easygoing and non-combative Krawetz. And both worry that the lack of political baggage and the fact that he is a rural candidate from an NDP stronghold would make him a force to be reckoned with.
But the knock on Krawetz has been that his easygoing nature may make him the wrong guy to get tough with the divisions in the party. How strong a leader Krawetz would be as a leader is an intangible.
Jim Melenchuk:
Undoubtedly, Melenchuk is the choice for Liberal leader the NDP have zeroed in on. As a doctor, New Democrats would dearly love to deflect from their own health record and pick a fight with the Liberals over doctors' remuneration. It would be 1962 all over again, they hope. And some cabinet ministers are already taking shots at Melenchuk's health-care policies in this leadership race.
But it does make one curious: Are New Democrats really all that eager to do battle with the good doctor or are they girding their loins for what could be a significantly tougher Liberal opposition under Melenchuk's leadership?
The PCs see Melenchuk as a huge threat -- particularly if he is able to make health care the Liberals' issue. And some Tories say Melenchuk may be the candidate that will allow the party to get past the Haverstock fiasco.
For the following reasons, the NDP's byelection loss in North Battleford Tuesday night is a swift kick in the pants for our governing party:
* Forget the theory that Saskatchewan governments don't do well in byelections.
It's a myth.
Prior to Liberal Jack Hilson's 218-vote victory over NDP candidate Glenn Tait in North Battleford, the province had held 34 byelections in the post-war era. The governing party had won 17 of them. The other two opposition parties of the day had won 17 of them.
* Also, byelections have been the particular forte of the CCF/NDP, winning 17 of Saskatchewan's last 34 byelections. (This, despite supposedly being burdened with the yoke of government during 34 of the last 52 years. In fact, of those 17 CCF/NDP by-election wins, 13 have come while they were in power.)
* The NDP or CCF have won North Battleford's seat in 13 of the previous 16 byelections and elections, and held it for 43 of the last 51 years. Short of Regina Elphinstone and Regina Centre, there hasn't been a safer NDP seat in Saskatchewan.
* New Democrats argue that since the town of Battleford was removed from the seat after the 1991 election, it hasn't been as good an NDP seat. That's somewhat true, but it's not all that much of a difference.
While Doug Anguish won The Battlefords seat by 3,371 votes in the NDP's sweep in 1991, he still won the new North Battleford seat by 1,249 votes in 1995.
The NDP went into this byelection with a 1,249 vote lead.
* Premier Roy Romanow also selected the most advantageous time he could find to call this byelection.
Liberals were completely distracted by next week's leadership convention. The byelection call was immediately accompanied by a flurry of government activity in North Battleford, including a cabinet retreat at nearby Jackfish Lake, where ministers used the opportunity to knock on doors. Finally, the call came two days after an NDP convention in Saskatoon.
* The notion that New Democrats -- perhaps older and perhaps somewhat overconfident of a win -- were less inclined to come out in a storm is bunkum.
Yes, the NDP vote did fall by more than 1,600 from 3,988 Anguish received in 1991. Yes, the storm meant voter turnout in the riding was only 52 per cent (compared with about 70 per cent in 1995).
But nobody would have had more storm troopers trying to get out the vote than the NDP. Especially with cabinet ministers and their aides knocking on North Battleford doors for the month prior, there is no question the NDP had its vote identified.
And if a lot of older New Democrats did choose not to take advantage of the party-supplied four-wheel drive that would have showed up at their doors, it may also have been because the NDP-appointed local health board is contemplating closing two nursing homes in the riding.
* New Democrats' grumbling that Glenn Tait was not a good candidate and did not run a good campaign is equally bogus.
Tait beat out four others for the nomination, so the fact that the Meota-area farmer wasn't from the constituency's biggest centre and was running against a Liberal city councillor shouldn't be an issue.
The fact is, Tait chose to run on the government's record. So did the other candidates. The North Battleford voters either voted against him or stayed home.
* Perhaps the NDP's most solid argument still is voters are looking at sending a particular message in a by-election rather than examining the parties' policies or determining who should be the premier the next day.
The NDP point to the fact their party was upset in the Regina Northwest byelection on another cold, snowy night three years ago and still were re-elected in 1995.
This is all true. But there is another reality. The party that has won Saskatchewan's last 34 byelections recaptured the seat 20 times in the following general election.
And in 24 of the last 34 provincial byelections, the party that won has gone on to win the next general election.
Once the euphoria over the North Battleford byelection win and today's selection of a new leader dissipates, Liberals will be left to deal with a couple of unpleasant realities.
The first is that bottom line reality that the NDP government has done a remarkable job of seeing us through what has been a financial nightmare in Saskatchewan.
And the second is, proving they are a better alternative than the New Democrats, it may be a lot more complicated for Liberals than winning a byelection or tossing aside a leader and replacing her with another.
Finance Minister Janice MacKinnon's release of the mid-year financial assessment on the 1996-97 budget this week was, by any measure, good news.
I stand corrected.
It was terrific news -- a testimony to how committed this NDP government has been to straightening out the financial mess.
Topping the good-news list is the $327-million reduction of the province's overall debt (largely, because of the decision to pay off the crop insurance debt) to $13.1 billion. It's an amazing accomplishment, given that three short years ago Saskatchewan's gross public debt peaked at $14.5 billion.
Certainly, falling interest rates have helped.
Nor can we ignore the fact that this NDP government has had a bit of luck.
The last time Saskatchewan was raking in this much resource revenue (an estimated $782 million this year), Pierre Trudeau was still running Ottawa.
The crop is above the 10-year average for the third straight year and we all know the best thing that can happen to any Saskatchewan government to is to have money in the farmers' pockets.
Retail sales are expected to increase eight per cent from last year. New vehicle purchases are up 12.2 per cent.
But luck wouldn't have been enough. Just think about from where we've come.
Five years ago when Premier Roy Romanow took power, Nelson Skalbania and Bruce McNall had better credit ratings than Saskatchewan.
Today, the Royal Bank is predicting Saskatchewan could be the first province to eliminate its debt. Not slash-and-burn Alberta. Saskatchewan.
The one true, indisputable, unequivocal success of this NDP government has been its handling of the debt.
It's done it through tedious discipline -- something also apparent in MacKinnon's financial update this week. All but four of the 24 line departments are on budget -- one notable exception, the extra $40 million Health Minister Eric Cline handed out to help local boards deal with their deficits.
But perhaps more amazingly, this financial accomplishment has come in defiance of most everything New Democrats said while in Opposition in the 1980s.
Remember?
Five-per-cent increases in health and education spending were never enough. No lay-off of a government worker was ever justifiable. Privatization or selling off of assets were unthinkable. And $7,000 grants to homeowners to put in hot tubs and build backyard decks were perfectly acceptable.
The NDP's penance for its ridiculous behavior of the 1980s has been the Tories' debt.
But give the New Democrats credit for doing their penance. Their actions of today are an undeniable admission they were wrong about most everything they supported 10 years ago.
The first job of the new Liberal leader will be to catch up with the NDP in the 1990s.
He will have to change gears quickly.
Liberals aren't just the muddled party of the 1995 election, spinning in neutral. As of late, the party has gone in reverse.
Reacting to MacKinnon's financial statement, Liberals reverted to the tried and trusted opposition tactics of the 1980s -- essentially, complain that the government isn't spending enough.
There's more to governing that just balancing the books, said Humboldt MLA Arlene Jule, offering the frighteningly familiar diatribe of where the government has taxed too much and not spent enough.
What then, are the Liberals' alternatives?
Should the Crowns be sold off or kept? We've heard both from Liberal caucus this past year. Should windfall revenue go to paying debt or paying for services? Again, it would depend on which Liberal you ask.
And we don't know if the Liberals still intend to reduce the PST or how they will do it.
About the only thing they've been clear on since the election is the government of the day hasn't spent enough and has taxed too much.
Been there. Done that. Need better answers.
The Liberal leadership race will be over today.
But the Liberals still have to a long ways to go to catch up with the fiscal realities of the 1990s.
There has been no stealth-of-the night moving of furniture from one legislative office to the other.
Police have not been called in to investigate cash that was withdrawn and suddenly returned to the Liberal caucus bank account.
And about the only blood let all weekend came from the Liberals who were stabbing themselves by hurriedly putting on Jim Melenchuk buttons before the final ballot.
Already, this weekend's Liberal leadership convention has to be considered a smashing success from last year.
But does this mean that Liberals have set aside their destructive and divisive ways?
Is Jim Melenchuk the complete package they need to take them to power?
Or for that matter, did they even select the best candidate?
Let's explore those issues today.
Under somewhat different circumstances, Liberals might have been busy today explaining how they intend to put a nuclear reactor and/or small factory in every small town as had been promised by new leader Tom Hengen.
How many would have had the stomach for it would have been questionable.
Certainly, there will be some pro-Lynda Haverstock Liberals who will see the election of Melenchuk -- the candidate most vilified for taking away the former leader's membership -- as reason to cut ties with the party.
But with a number of pro-Haverstock people in both Melenchuk's and Ken Krawetz's camp, there might be some hope for party healing.
Hengen's camp, on the other hand, was truly dominated by pro-Haverstock forces.
Whether he deliberately recruited those upset by Haverstock's demise or whether they were just naturally attracted to his camp is a moot point now.
But a Hengen win would have undoubtedly left the Haverstock issue unresolved.
At worst, it might have meant more divisions.
Krawetz -- while still seen by many Haverstock supporters as one of the villainous caucus members who forced her resignation last year -- would have been a far better compromise.
He as much as told the voters so with his election buttons that stated: "Nobody's last choice. Everyone's final choice."
And comparing Krawetz's upbeat and passionate speeches to Melenchuk's wet-noodle delivery, many Liberals might be wondering if they did pick the most dynamic leader.
But ever since Joe Clark gave compromise candidates a bad name, there have been few leadership conventions in this country won by everyone's second choice.
Krawetz's campaign was also considerably less organized and did not have a urban power base. In fact, his rural base was confined to the traditional NDP stronghold of the northeast.
Perhaps more significantly, Krawetz was less definitive in where he would have taken the Liberals.
Given what Melenchuk has already said about harmonizing the sales tax and scrapping district health boards, there will be no misunderstanding Liberal policies. And they will be significantly different from the NDP government's.
Being the least offensive choice may have been one way to unite Liberals. But having clear direction and having the NDP -- not your own people -- as the clearly defined enemy may be a far more effective way to achieve party unity.
All this brings us back to Melenchuk himself and whether he has the skill needed to be party leader.
We already touched on his speaking style.
It simply has to get better because Melenchuk 's speeches are, frankly, backbencher boring. He's obviously spent far too many years giving or hearing classroom lectures on kidney infections.
But improvement can be expected here.
Melenchuk does grasp the issues and, one-on-one he's actually quite relaxed.
In fact, his direct, to-the-point answers are actually quite refreshing from political bafflegab you hear from a Roy Romanow or Ralph Goodale.
Being a doctor has its upside as a credible professional. But it also has its downside and not just because of the way the NDP will paint Melenchuk's health care policy as self-interested.
In politics, one's authority tends to be questioned far more frequently then in medicine.
It's simply not a matter of filling out a prescription and ordering the patient to take it.
Watch for how well Melenchuk reacts to his authority being challenged -- both internally and externally.
It will say much about what kind of leader he will be.
But as for the overall selection of Melenchuk as their leader, let's put it this way:
They certainly could have done worse.
And there isn't all that much to indicate the other choices were clearly better.
"There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt.
But those riches perish by evil travail: and he begetteth a son, and there is nothing in his hand.
Ecclesiastes 5:13-14 Holy Bible, King James Version
The annual Provincial Auditor's Report is a lot like the Bible. Admittedly, you won't find an auditor's report in the night table drawer of every hotel you stay at, nor will there likely ever be a controversy over whether it should be read in school classrooms each morning.
In fact, despite provincial auditor Wayne Strelioff's fondest wishes, it's probably doubtful we'll ever have morning readings from the provincial auditor's report in either our public or separate school systems.
But like the Bible, the auditor's report is thick and chockfull of proverb and parable-like wisdom.
Both are documents to which we constantly refer. In both cases, people always seem to claim to have read far more of each than they actually have.
And, ultimately, the prudence in both are largely ignored because of the prevalent notion in today's world that if it's all been reported before, there can't be much in it that's worth repeating it again.
No doubt, we have all heard Wayne Strelioff's major theme before -- the public has the right to know how the Crown corporation intends to spend taxpayers' money well in advance of it being spent.
"Forty per cent of the revenues and expenses of the government of the day are not included in the budget that is presented to the (legislative) assembly," Strelioff again reminded us this week when he released the 1996 version of the annual auditor's report.
If planned spending in the Crowns is not outlined in the budget the same way health, education and highways spending is, Strelioff argues, there is no way for the public and legislators to compare what a Crown planned to do with what it actually did.
It is the argument that Strelioff and auditors before him have been making since about the time of Genesis.
And as they do every year, the government argued that Crowns in a competitive environment should not have the same disclosure requirements as government departments.
So Strelioff's concerns about a lack of disclosure in Crown spending was relegated to issues-that-come-up-every-year status.
Most of the news coverage emerging from this week's auditor's report focused on the lack of accountability in the electoral office and the need to improve the rules and procedures for anonymous donations of more than $100 -- a more current issue that caused a bit of a ruckus during the last legislative session.
But our auditing David of Goliath stature has some very good reasons for continuing to insist that we should have complete disclosure of all government spending, including the Crowns.
More and more, government is carrying out its programs with money from entities like gaming and other Crown dividends that operate well outside the operating budget, the auditor noted. For example, we should know that in 1995-96, the government ran a $570-million surplus (even after you calculate in an $108-million unfunded pension liability the government dutifully ignores) on total expenses of $9 billion.
Strelioff's concerns are real ones.
They are best summed up in the aforementioned biblical quote and for those of you who may have difficulty understanding the King James version, here is a clearer interpretation:
"Here is a terrible thing that I have seen in this world: People save up their money when they need it, then lose it all in some bad deal and end up with nothing left to pass on to their children."
Either Health Minister Eric Cline or several members of the Regina District Health Board are not telling us the truth about the costs related to closing Regina's Plains Health Centre.
How either scenario will instill much confidence in the government's health reform is hard to see.
But -- given both the lack of substance in Cline's denials and the lengths the government or its appointees have gone to justify their decision to close the Plains -- why we should believe the government line is even more difficult to see.
It started this week when Regina's CKTV broke the story that closure costs associated with the Plains would be $12 million more than the $83-million cost originally anticipated.
The figure was immediately confirmed by Stevenson: "It's big money. We recognize that,'' he said. In fact, Dr. Borden Bachynski, an elected board member, said the additional costs would likely be $20 million because of another $8 million that would be needed to consolidate psychiatric services and to build a larger room for the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine.
Given that the Regina health board is already struggling with a $13-million "funding shortfall'' in the next two years, this was very bad news, indeed.
From a political standpoint, the news got worse. Darlene Sterling, another elected board member, said Cline's deputy minister Duane Adams allegedly told the supposedly independent health board that the information on the costs overruns should not be released last week because of the North Battleford byelection.
Confronted by reporters, Cline's denial was unequivocal.
No less than 30 times, Cline said the closure of the Plains Health Centre would be "on time and on budget,'' and tossed in a few "absolutely untrues'', "wild speculations'' and "personal agendas.''
Not only would there be no need to pump more money into the health district to offset closure costs, Cline said, but there will be no need to close any more of the district's 731 beds.
So the choice of "Whom do you believe?'' becomes a simple one: Stevenson and the other board members or Cline.
Oh yes. One other thing you might want to factor in:
Virtually every explanation the government or government-appointed-health-board officials have used in the past year or so to justify closing the Plains have proven to be unfounded.
It was a little more than a year ago the cash-strapped health board found a lot of money for newspaper advertisements explaining how the Plains was the oldest and most inadequate facility without adequate fire sprinkler protection.
It would cost $40 million in capital construction to keep all three Regina hospitals open at the status quo, then health board chairman Dan de Vlieger explained. Of that, $26 million would have to go to the Plains alone.
Also, de Vlieger -- a long-time New Democrat hand-picked to oversee the Plains closure -- said costs associated with closing the Plains would never exceed $100 million, that there was no plan to reduce the health districts 810-bed capacity and no job loss would be associated with the Plains' closure.
Finally, closing the Plains would save $10 million a year. (Until Cline's "on-time-and-on-budget'' mantra this week, it was single-most-repeated phrase associated with the Plains' closure.)
Fast forward a year.
There are now 731 beds in the district. It is expected an announcement will come soon outlining 36 more bed closures and plans to cut back hours for surgeries and other weekday functions. There were already job cuts at the Plains this spring.
Stevenson acknowledges the $12-million additional cost will push the Plains closures costs to $95 million. If Bachynski's numbers are to be believed, it will be at least $103 million. And presuming the Plains is converted to a SIAST campus, won't the government still have to spend $26 million to upgrade sprinklers and remove asbestos?
Finally, the $10-million-a-year-savings mantra is still chanted, but neither the health board nor the government have been able to offer an outline of where those savings exist.
With so much of the rationale for closing the Plains now in doubt, does this not cast into doubt both the decision to close the hospital and the government's entire health reform package?
Might this then possibly explain why our otherwise politically astute health minister would be so adamant about there being no problems associated with the Plains' closure in the face of a mountain of evidence to suggest otherwise?
And is there really all that much doubt as to who we should believe?
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