Murray Mandryk: More than teachers raised in start to spring session

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What seems the biggest problem for the Saskatchewan Party government right now presented itself in the hundreds of people in front of the legislature on a snowy opening to the spring sitting.

The teachers’ strike is a big problem for the Sask. Party right now. But it’s not the government’s only problem … and may not be the biggest issue come the fall general election.

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This does not underplay the significance of the teachers’ issues unlikely to be soon resolved, notwithstanding Moe’s musings Monday that government may make an announcement in the next couple days regarding classroom size and complexity.

Hundreds of teachers braved the -30 C windchill Monday for the specific purpose of demanding language on classroom size and complexity be written into their next contract.

Yet government remains obstreperously tone deaf.

Presumably from the warmth inside the Marble Palace, Sask. Party MLAs busily posted on social media as teachers trudged past their legislature office windows that the union has been requested to return to the bargaining table 14 times.

Later in a member’s statement, former environment minister Dana Skoropad, a former teacher, praised the government’s fair-minded budget and the need for local school boards to address local classroom issues.

But as both politically fruitful as this issue may now be for the Opposition, NDP Leader Carla Beck opted to lead off the spring sitting by calling for Premier Scott Moe to suspend the province’s 15-cents-a-litre fuel tax like the Manitoba NDP government did.

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That was followed by Beck questioning why Moe — instead of making a third trip to India — didn’t stay home and fight harder to convince the federal government to carve out a cut of the federal carbon tax break here. It is a position that will be unpopular with some in Beck’s own NDP ranks.

Beck further noted that neither Moe nor Crown Investment Corporation Minister Dustin Duncan had even bothered to contact Ottawa to negotiate a better deal for the people of this province.

Beck did raise the teachers issue, but then her NDP caucus moved back to other issues like the excessive rates Regina Northwest MLA Gary Grewal’s Sunrise Motel was charging social services and the latest Canadian Institute of Health Information (CIHI) report, which suggests rural communities in this province have 21 per cent fewer nurses since Moe became premier in 2018.

Some will question why the NDP wasn’t exclusively focused on the teachers — especially given public support for the teachers and government’s stubbornness in negotiations, essentially blaming the breakdown exclusively on teachers. (Beck also said Monday an NDP government would include classroom size and complexity in the negotiations.)

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But if the NDP hopes to broaden its support beyond the shadow of the legislature (and perhaps Saskatoon) it needs to broaden its issues and also focus on other things — especially those issues in which rural voters may feel that this Sask. Party government is taking them for granted.

For that reason, it was wise for the NDP to hammer away Monday on things like rural health care and the suggestion from the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) that the government isn’t supporting nurse practitioners in rural areas.

“In this area they’ve had nurse practitioners — I believe they had two — but just recently they lost both of them because I guess they’re not willing to drive back and forth and they’re not willing to stay out here,” SARM president Ray Orb told the Leader-Post’s Trillian Reynoldson, referring to his Cupar area.

While the teachers dispute may be seem politically fruitful for the NDP right now, there is a plethora of other issues and needs, arguably more relevant to many rural people and others in this province.

If the NDP are to make headway after that next vote, they need to make a case that the Sask. Party government is not addressing those issues.

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On a very cold and miserable first day of the spring sitting, the Opposition recognized that need.

Murray Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

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