Dear Editor
The Sask Party's Bob Bjornerud wrote a long letter in the Dec. 29 News-Optimist, evidently in response to an article quoting Dwain Lingenfelter in the Dec. 15 issue. Bjornerud began his letter by claiming Lingenfelter's remarks were "hypocritical and ignore the facts." He then went on to hypocritically not only ignore important historical facts, but also to put the kind of spin on the ones he did refer to that gives people reasons to distrust all politicians.
He refers to that period in our history beginning right after the end of the Grant Devine government when the misdeeds and financial mismanagement of those right-wing Devine conservatives had, in only nine years, brought our province to the brink of bankruptcy, and had raised our provincial debt by over a billion dollars for each year they had been in government. In the process, our provincial credit rating had been lowered into the cellar. He doesn't mention the party that had called itself "Progressive Conservative," was so discredited it had to change its name to the "Saskatchewan Party." ( A few had refused to change the name, so hung on to the PC banner.) Those were lean years at first, causing a lot of distasteful belt tightening by the NDP government.
Now, after the NDP government had raised the provincial credit rating back to respectability, and had begun to actually hack away at that enormous debt the Conservatives had left, bringing the province back onto the road to economic well-being, Bjornerud not only ignores that fact, but also tries to imply that the same right wingers (his party) who almost brought the province to its knees, are now solely responsible for our comparatively respectable economy.
The times we live in presently have, so far, been fortunate for our province, and we should be able to see the financial condition of our present government actually improve, but on many fronts that has not been the case. As the official opposition in the legislature, it is the duty of the NDP MLAs to point out what they see as the shortcomings of the present government. As an interested citizen, I would hope that when questions are asked by those members - in question period or otherwise - we could hear straight forward answers instead of personal attacks against the questioner, and calling any NDP criticisms, "doom and gloom," as Bjornerud does in his letter.
Russell Lahti
Battleford
