The pronoun bill and other wedge issues are already taking priority in Saskatchewan politics on the eve of the provincial election.
Back in the day, we used to call them wedge issues in campaigns, but today it seems we call them the issues.
Just about everything seems to be about wedge politics … or at least, stuff of lesser significance seems to be running roughshod over the things we desperately need to be talking about as Saskatchewan’s provincial campaign is about to start.
Wedge issues are sucking the oxygen away from things that require serious exploration.
Why should it worry if it gets an another unfavourable ruling? It will simply further ignore it anyway, and again put the problem on activist judges.
All of this for an issue that affects an infinitesimally small percentage of the voters and would be of absolutely no concern to those not directly affected. Yet somehow this was elevated to a matter of “parental rights” rather than one in which we could trust teachers’ judgment.
Sadly, that’s how wedge politics works. It’s seldom ever about a substantive issue.
In no small irony, less than a mile away from the Regina courthouse, NDP Leader Carla Beck was simultaneously holding a press conference on an issue of considerably more consequence — a public health system struggling with wait times and caregiver burnout.
“I’m not going to attempt to speak for the government on why we haven’t seen a focus on health care (in the election runup),” said Beck, at her latest pre-campaign stop with unionized health-care workers and an overcrowded Regina General Hospital in the backdrop.
“I know for us, this is the top one, top two issues in the province.”
Of course it is. And as politically self-serving as it was for Beck to stand before unionized health workers with her unspecified plans to spent $1.1 billion over four years on heath care, it is at least addressing what people want politicians to address.
Who could possibly disagree with Beck’s assessment: “This is not the time for Band-aids; it’s time to get back down to the basics”?
Even the government and Health Minister Everett Hindley held a simultaneous event to highlight the second anniversary of the government’s “historic Health Human Resources (HHR) Action Plan” — the $300-million recruitment initiative it claims “has delivered extraordinary health system progress within a short period of time.”
In no small irony, this news got little attention on Monday because it was perfectly timed with the government-initiated court case.
But that’s how wedge politics works. Even if it occasionally gets in the way of the more positive things a party might hope to promote, it now remains a priority.
We’ve always had wedge issues. But with the importation of politics from south of the border, there is just no doubt we are now seeing more and more of it.
For example, there was a time when politicians would walk wide circles around the radicalized.
A week before an election, shouldn’t the focus instead be on what’s truly important to all of us?
Unfortunately, “us” in politics has become less important than “we” and “them.”
Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
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