Blakeney / McKinnon Show-Down

I recently attended the Canadian Political Science Association Convention as part of the Congress for the Humanities and Social Sciences in Saskatoon, where I presented a paper. One of the sessions I took in during the convention was “Agrarian Socialism,” which was comprised of academics and politicians discussing Seymour Martin Lipset’s famous work, which examined the rise of the CCF in Saskatchewan in the 1940’s.

Among the panelists were Allan Blakeney and Janice McKinnon. It was interesting to see how two former politicians of the same party in different eras diverged so much on their political views. Indeed, while McKinnon was touting the importance of lower taxes and royalty rates for oil and gas, Blakeney was saying that the province should raise royalties and that if oil companies wanted our oil they would just have to pay it and if they wouldn’t pay it then the province could drill the oil itself through a crown entity. McKinnon countered that saying that lowering the royalty rates actually ended up bringing more money into the province and that having high rates is detrimental for investment in the province because it creates an anti-business perception. She also spoke of globalization and the knowledge economy and how an anti-business climate was not conducive to suceeding in such an economy. She also spoke about the jobs that would be created because of oil companies moving in. Blakeney countered this by saying that if the rates remained high, the province could create jobs from the profits. What jobs those would be he did not say, but I imagine expanding the bureaucracy or other such jobs where the workers of which would be predominantly socialist friendly is what he had in mind.

It is the persistence of thinkers like Blakeney in this province that continues to hold us back. His comments were not only out of touch with the realities of modern times but came across as absurd and lacking global vision. I would argue that a lot of the current NDP caucus that is sticking around to run in the next election is more of the Blakeney mindset than the McKinnon school. For instance, while we are losing more centrist members like Eric Cline and Andrew Thomson, we get to keep Pat Atkinson and good ole Lorne himself. In fact, McKinnon herself said that after 1999 the party had lost touch with the common people after losing nearly all of its rural seats and the effect of that was palpable in caucus meetings.

What was perhaps more interesting was the fact that Ms. McKinnon stated no less than four times that the NDP will lose the next election. She can see that the writing is on the wall for this tired NDP regime. I am not on the ins enough to know whether or not McKinnon even holds party membership in the provincial NDP at this time. However, I doubt that she does. Listening to her you would think she is a right of centre Liberal or maybe even Conservative. She would likely fit well within the Saskatchewan Party caucus and would be a definite asset to the new government. Also, with the emergence of Senate elections in Canada, she would be well-suited to run for a Senate seat representing Saskatchewan. One thing remains clear – the people of Saskatchewan would benefit from having her advocate on their behalf, no matter at which level of government it is.