It's 1987 all over again

Mayor Pat Fiacco, on the surface, picked a real bad place to trash Brad Wall's government, but if I were Mayor Mullet, I would do the same thing (CJME). For the past two years, the Sask. Party government has conducted its financial affairs like a spoiled brat trust fund kid who has now run out of money, and much like what happened from 1987 to 2005, the senior levels of government will starve the lower levels for funds to balance their books.

Funding Coming for Regina's Recreation Infrastructure

Went to a press conference at the YMCA today. It was organized to announce infrastructure funding for recreation infrastructure in Regina. Money will be coming from the federal government to the tune of $1,523,666 with a matching amount coming from the provincial government.

Projects to be seeing some of this cash include the downtown YMCA which will have it's reception area and men's locker room rebuilt; improvements to the Broad Street pedestrian bridge and trail; upgrades to the accessible playground at the Wascana Rehabilitation Centre and to Candy Cane Park; the installation of artificial turf, lighting and a multi-purpose support facility for Leibel Field.

Additional funds for these projects will be coming from the City of Regina ($3,000,000 for Leibel Field), the Wascana Centre Authority ($563,668 split between the Broad Street pedestrian improvements and the parks) and the YMCA ($666,754 for their facility improvements).

The total amount of infrastructure funding coming from all sources is $5,777,754.

Making the announcement were MP Andrew Scheer, MLA Bill Hutchinson and Regina mayor Pat Fiacco.

It's hard to find something grumpy and critical to say about the announcement. (Not that I feel obliged to say something grumpy every time the Conservatives fork out some cash.) Regina's rec infrastructure is in serious need of support and I think I can safely say I'm a fan of money going into making the city more walkable and more accessible. Mind you, it would be nice to see some of the cash coming from the Conservative's Economic Action Plan eventually make its way towards Regina's similarly under-funded arts infrastructure. Or -- and this is an even bigger priority -- some support for our crumbling rental housing market would also be welcome.

Beyond that, all in all, a good news event for Regina.

On a personal note, I brought my daughter along to the Y to witness all this. It was her first press conference. I don't think she enjoyed it very much.

Late to the party, eh?

Notice to CBC Saskatchewan's newsrooms: (CBC Saskatchewan)

Way ahead of ya. (Planet S)

The last and final word, I promise, on the NDP leadership convention

It’s hard to imagine that the NDP leadership vote last Saturday was anything but the worst of all possible worlds for both Dwain Lingenfelter and the party. Link got a 55-per-cent vote in the second and last round of balloting, and by most indications is going to have problems uniting a party that’s anxious for generational change and not certain that a 60-year-old oil executive has anything relevant to say about being on the lower end of the social and economic scale – the NDP’s heart and political home.

Firstly, imagine what would have happened if Link’s ‘Waterhengate’ had gone undetected? Well, Link would have had a first round victory by a substantial margin … instead, he goes to a second ballot and has to face the fact that a good chunk of his party will demand to have their voices heard, especially on nuclear energy. Lingenfelter is not going to go in as the Master of His Domain: he’s got to compromise, schmooze, and massage some wounded egos. He’s not good at that. Never has been. It never was in his job description: it never was what he was hired for.

Secondly, I’m more than a bit surprised about Higgins’ poor showing. I thought the coalition that elected Lorne Calvert would have done better. This, frankly, shouldn’t bode well for the NDP establishment.

And lastly, there’s some serious problems for the NDP in its ability to recruit members and attract new ones (membership – especially membership sales – is critical to the NDP because its volunteer base, theoretically, offsets the deeper financial pockets of the Sask. Party’s corporate backers). The NDP had about 18,000 members voting at the 2001 convention which brought Lorne Calvert to the premiers’ chair (Wikipedia): just over 9,000 voted on June 6, with another 3,600 members sitting this one out (Murray Mandryk, one of the few reasons to buy the Leader-Post).

So either there’s a number of NDP members who feel alienated from the leadership process of their own party … or there’s a couple more Waterhengate-style membership sale fiascoes the party doesn’t want to talk about.

All in all, the NDP has a lot of work to do in order to convince Saskatchewanians that they’re ready for governing this province. A lot of people within the NDP think that getting re-elected is merely a matter of marching. I don’t think they really understand how the psychology of this province has changed: and they’re unable or unwilling to contemplate the changes that they need to make in order to take on Brad Wall in a meaningful way.

Last thoughts on the cabinet shuffle

Probably the best way to look at Brad Wall’s recent cabinet shuffle (Government of Saskatchewan) is to put it in context of the NDP leadership race. Wall thinks (correctly,) that Dwain Lingenfelter is going to win in a walk, so Wall prepared a wartime cabinet.

That’s the main reason why Wall has removed three people (Sask. Party website) who (for Sask. Party politicians, anyway) were doing not that bad a job, and replaced them with three hard-core ideologues (Sask Party website). Wall is expecting that the next months in the Legislature will resemble trench warfare in the First World War – massive expenditures of manpower, time, money and effort for little or no gain.

Then again, I’m sure Wall would rather see Link as NDP leader than anybody else, for the same reason why the Pentagon would rather fight a conventional war than a war of counter-insurgency. It’s what they know; it’s what they think they’re good at.

As for the other factors? Surprised that former Regina city councilor Bill Hutchinson was dispatched to Indian and Métis Relations: in Wall’s philosophy, that’s a dead-end job. I didn’t think he was doing that bad in Municipal Affairs. Christine Tell was a low-level screwup at Tourism, Parks, Culture and Sport, so I was kind of surprised that she stayed in cabinet, instead of replacing her with say, Laura Ross. Daryl Hickie botched Corrections so badly that Wall should have grabbed him by his ears, stuck a handful of stamps to his keister and mail him home to his mama. His replacement (who thanks to spell-check and to the fact I won’t trust my eyesight totally until I get my new spectacles, I will refer to here as “The Yogic Flier”) campaigned in the late 1990s on bring in boot camps, so the Sask. Party’s knuckle-dragging camp won’t be totally dissatisfied by Wall’s increasingly metro-sexual dress up façade.

But Saskatchewan’s political power base has shifted: the further you get away from Swift Current, the further you’re getting away from power. As well, The Jurist (Accidental Deliberations) has a good analysis about what the shuffle means for Wall’s campaign for a SaskaNuke.

(Yes, I know. It's late. And conflict between MS Word and Internet Explorer that refused to allow me to cut-and-paste from Wod really frost my buns, kids ...)

Kapow! Cabinet Shuffle!

While prairie dog was blogging about gas prices and kittens, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall was announcing his newly-shuffled cabinet. Stephen LaRose will have more on this later--I predict an entertaining Yogi Huyghebaert diatribe sometime this evening. In the meantime, you can read the story in the Star Phoenix, here. And here's the government's official press release.

One quick note for Reginans--Regina Wascana Plains MP Christine Tell is out of Tourism, Parks, Culture and Sport and into Government Services, which means she's the MP in charge of liquor stores now. Maybe she'll let us distribute prairie dog through the LBs again! Yeah!

Rosie's first ever top six in the A.M.

1. The Quebec jail system isn't that good a place for a convict with the nickname of The Flower (Globe and Mail).

2. Mosaic Stadium. At Christmas. For a hockey game or a possible double-header. (Mitchell Blair) What could possibly go wrong?

3. Solidarity forever ... or why Fox News is trying to bury the story of the U.S. Navy SEALS rescuing Capt. Richard Phillips. (Crooks and Liars)

4. Kevin Smith's newest movie project sounds as if he's doing a documentary on the next Lethbridge Chamber of Commerce meeting. (IMDB)

5. Okay, Murray, Brad Wall is likeable. Calvert was likeable too. And compared to Stephen Harper, Montgomery Burns is the King of Kensington. Being likeable didn't make Calvert a good premier, so why does the L-P's chief (read: only) political columnist think this trait makes Wall a Man of The People? (Regina Leader-Post)

6. I didn't know my blog posts (prairie dog) had such an effect on Don Morgan, arguably the most incompetent minister in Wall's cabinet (CBC Saskatchewan).