REGINA - The parties are now more than halfway through the provincial election campaign and the final full week is almost upon us.
The parties have released their election platforms and the leaders’ debate between the Saskatchewan Party’s Scott Moe and the New Democratic Party’s Carla Beck has taken place. Now, it’s the final stretch run with the final mad dash of campaigning, with Voting Week set to begin Oct. 22.
We spoke to Tom McIntosh, professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of Regina, to talk about the Saskatchewan provincial election campaign and to get a sense right now of where things stand heading to Election Day October 28.
We spoke to McIntosh on Thursday morning, on the day after the Leaders’ debate and right before the unexpected announcement from Moe that his government’s first order of business if re-elected would be to issue a directive to ensure biological males are not changing in girls’ change rooms in schools.
On where we are at in the provincial campaign:
Well, we're heading into the, I guess I'd say we're at the beginning of the final stretch. Voting day is not that far away, mail ballots are out, so people are voting already.
We're about to open polling stations relatively soon, so there'll be many days in which people can vote. So things are ramping up. We had the debate last night, the platforms are out, there's a debate over whether either side has properly costed their promises and whatnot, all of which is to be expected.
We see this virtually every campaign. But I suspect we're going to see a ramping up now of more events, more ads, more attempts to grab people's attention and to get them to focus.
On the importance of the platform release:
It can be an important moment in the sense that it's sort of the background to the key promises and statements that you've made. Very few people are going to go and sit and read the full platform document.
People like me do it because we're paid to do it. And they're not probably going to sit and try to parse the financial statements and costing that goes with it. But a platform becomes then a sort of symbol of what your key messages are.
So it's about, you know, in the case of the NDP, it's about the focus on health care and education and affordability and the issues around cost of living. Similar things from in the Saskatchewan Party, different sets of promises, but the same kinds of emphasis. It's about no new taxes. It's about plans to fix health care and the like.
On the provincial leaders’ debate:
So, yeah, debates are sort of a compulsory figure, if you will, in a campaign. But it seems the big thing is to minimize any potential negative impact. And so that's where everybody's focus is.
And so a structure that lets you stick to your talking points, never really engage with the other person, it serves that purpose. It almost ensures that you don't make a mistake. And neither of them went off message, right? They were both very much on their message last night.
On the smaller parties not being included in the leaders’ debate
Well, you know, and this is a debate we have every provincial election. Do parties without seats in the legislature get a seat at the leaders' debate? The answer is usually no, unless you can make a compelling case that there is sufficient support across the province for that party now.
So, you know, in B.C., had it been a three-party race — it's only back down to a two-party race — you probably would have invited the Conservative leader just because they were beginning to ride so high in the polls.
And so it would be only right that they be there at a leaders' debate. Here, the Sask United, the Buffalo Party, the Greens, none of them are polling province-wide more than a few percentage points. And so having four or five voices at a debate makes it that much harder to do.
I don't think you could do what we saw last night, which was really less than an hour by the time the debate actually started, and have four or five people debate because you'd
only ever get four or five minutes apiece to actually say anything. So you'd have to have a longer debate. You'd have to have a different format.
I'm not deeply troubled by that. I don't think every party necessarily gets into the debate unless you've got some serious chance of representing some significant part of the population. Yeah.
On the slates of candidates for the minor parties, with none of them fielding a full slate:
The closest, I guess, are the Greens, who have got almost a full slate. The Greens have actually been particularly good at running either full slates or almost full slates for the last four or five elections, I think.
But as expected, the Sask United and the Buffalo Party, they have pretty limited slates of candidates focused probably in the areas where they think they will do better. But they're not in most of the urban ridings in the two big cities and the like. So that may actually have a bit of a change.
If they were doing better and likely to split the vote, I suspect the NDP would want more of those Buffalo and Sask United Party candidates on the ballot, if they would siphon some votes away from the Sask Party in close ridings. But I don't think there's enough of them there that they're going to have much of an impact in the overall results.
On the introduction of Voting Week in Saskatchewan:
These, I think, are very positive developments. We're making it easier for people to vote, and I think that's generally a good thing. It should not cost you a lot to vote. It is a basic fundamental right of your citizenship in this country. And so we've seen the proliferation of mail-in ballots, which I take advantage of myself. I like the mail-in ballot.
It used to be, when I was first voting, hard to get an absentee ballot. You had to really demonstrate that you were going to be out of town on Election Day, and that you would not be able to cast your ballot in order to get an absentee ballot. So that's opened up.
And now, rather than just a couple of days of limited advanced polls in only some sites, we're opening up all of the polling stations for a long voting period. Will it have a big impact on turnout? I don't know. I hope it does.
I don't think... It certainly won't hurt turnout. And I just think the easier it is to get people to cast a ballot, the better. It does change the campaign, though, because now you've got to factor in when people... It used to be you could go right up until Election Day, and then 85 per cent of the people who would vote voted on Election Day. A few people voted in advanced polls. But now people are voting for a much longer period in the campaign. So it's much more important that you get your message out forcefully and earlier. And those key messages have sunk into the voting public a week or so, at least, before voting day. Before the official voting day.
