Voters in Saskatchewan seemed more interested in change than culture wars
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OTTAWA — Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre has likely kept a close eye on this month’s provincial election races in New Brunswick and Saskatchewan, where hot-button culture war issues like gender identity in schools haven’t appeared to move the needle with voters.
Saskatchewan Party Leader Scott Moe squeaked out a narrow victory in Monday’s provincial election that was marked by big gains from the opposition NDP.
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But political strategists say it’s incumbent fatigue, not disagreements over pronouns and single-sex spaces, that has weighed down conservative campaigns in both provinces.
“It’s tough for incumbents right across Canada right now,” said conservative strategist Fred DeLorey.
DeLorey, who ran the last federal Conservative campaign in 2021, said he doesn’t think that the decisive loss of the Blaine Higgs-led New Brunswick Progressive Conservatives on Monday will slow down Poilievre’s growing momentum in Atlantic Canada.
“We’re comparing apples and pineapples,” said DeLorey.
“Poilievre is hitting it out of the park right now, and his main message is affordability… There’s no cautionary tale for him (from Higgs’ loss) other than that he’s on the right track and shouldn’t leave that track.”
Voters in Saskatchewan seemed more interested in change than culture wars, with 55 per cent saying it’s time for a new provincial government last week.
The governing Saskatchewan Party has been in power for 17 years, by far the longest tenure of any government in Canada.
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Moe spent the campaign’s home stretch on defence, after stumbling into a messy scandal involving the “outing” of two children of an NDP candidate.
The children were the subject of a complaint about two biological males changing next to girls at a school change room in southeastern Saskatchewan.
Moe brought up the complaint during an impromptu mid-campaign announcement in which he said he’d immediately issue a directive banning “biological boys” from girls’ school change rooms if re-elected — a promise that wasn’t included in the Saskatchewan Party’s election platform.
Moe says he wasn’t aware of the children’s identities at the time.
Saskatoon-based pollster Lang McGilp said it wasn’t a good use of Moe’s time heading into the closer than usual election.
“The top four issues of the election have stayed pretty consistent: health care, affordability, taxes and education,” said McGilp.
“You can debate whether (gender identity issues) fit in any of these boxes, but there’s a lot of other stuff that’s more top of mind with voters.”
New Brunswick and Saskatchewan are presently the only two provinces with formal parental notification and consent policies on the books. Alberta is expected to become the third later this year.
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Higgs sparked a national debate last year with his resolute defence of controversial revisions to New Brunswick’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity policy, popularly known as Policy 713. Higgs said last summer that he was willing to call an early election over the changes, which established the first province-wide parental notification and consent requirements in Canada for student name and pronoun changes in K-12 schools.
Polling at the time showed strong support, in Atlantic Canada and beyond, for parental notification requirements, with Canadians more ambivalent on the question of parental consent.
Before the year was out, Moe would adopt similar guidelines, upping the ante by pre-emptively using the notwithstanding clause to push through his so-called Parents’ Bill of Rights.
Poilievre himself trod lightly on the matter, declining to comment directly on Policy 713, but later told an ethnic media outlet that he believed “parental rights (should) come before the government’s rights.”
Jon Robinson, a progressive strategist based in greater Saint John, N.B., said that the split in the Progressive Conservative caucus over the changes to Policy 713 likely hurt Higgs more than the changes themselves.
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“This became a very personal issue for (Higgs),” said Robinson, noting that Higgs stayed highly involved in his local church while premier and was largely aligned with the province’s Christian right on the issue.
Robinson said Higgs’ unwillingness to compromise on the contentious revisions reinforced already negative perceptions of his “autocratic” leadership style.
“Higgs was cast as someone where it’s his way or the highway,” said Robinson. “And this stuck with him.”
Two members of Higgs’ cabinet resigned, and two more were demoted, amidst party infighting over Policy 713.
Robinson added that controversy surrounding the nomination of Christian TV host Faytene Grasseschi to run for the Progressive Conservatives in a safe Saint John area riding exacerbated internal divisions heading into the election.
(Grasseschi narrowly lost on Monday to ex-Progressive Conservatives MLA John Herron, who ran as a Liberal.)
DeLorey said that a wave of resignations and retirements among incumbent Progressive Conservative MLAs further stacked the deck against Higgs.
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“We have much smaller seats in the Maritimes than you do in the rest of the country,” said DeLorey, who grew up in neighbouring Nova Scotia. “People get to know their local MLA’s quite well.”
“So when you have so many incumbents who don’t reoffer, that’s a huge blow to the campaign from the very start.”
DeLorey said it would be unfair to pin the high turnover on Higgs’ leadership style, noting that the veteran premier was going for an almost unheard of third term in a province with a long history of political swings.
“It’s a major achievement to win two terms in New Brunswick, let alone three.”
He added that Liberal leader and premier-designate Susan Holt’s lack of a personal connection to Justin Trudeau gave her a boost by allowing her to credibly distance herself from the toxic Trudeau brand, something her counterpart Zach Churchill will have a harder time doing when Nova Scotians head to the polls next summer.
Holt said during the campaign that she’d never met Trudeau in person.
National Post
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