Mandryk: Too much political gamesmanship at Legislature

By Murray Mandryk

When it comes to most anything in life, we learn more from losing than winning.

We learn to be gracious and that how we play the game is usually more important than winning it. We carry these lessons into our adult lives.

This makes it puzzling why those who go into politics — people who presumably grew up experiencing the same life lessons as the rest of us did —often to take the need-to-win-at-all-costs approach that they do.

Maybe it’s because politics tends to be an uber-competitive way for adults to earn a living. You have to be pretty committed to a set of beliefs if you want to be involved and the stakes are pretty high when you lose.

Or maybe it is just the defence mechanism one should expect in a business where you likely to get a lot more public criticism than most.

But what seems clear is the desire to winat all costs — to believe that everyone needs to be on your team and that those who may question what you are doing aren’t on your team—become a big problem this fall for a 14-year-old Saskatchewan Party government.

Consider the reaction of Agriculture Minister David Marit and Finance Minister Donna Harpauer to the Agricultural Producers of Saskatchewan after APAS suggested whether it was fair to cite Saskatchewan Crop Insurance costs as the big reason the 2021-22 deficit vaulted to $2.7 billion at mid-year.

In fairness, Harpauer has a point she and probably should have made better. Added crop insurance debt is a flow-through cost based on summary financial budgeting.

But where she was wrong and Merit were wrong was in their response to APAS suggesting it acting out of “ignorance” or “deceit”. APAs was doing its job. For government to suggest this criticism threatens its ability to work with the government in the future is out of bounds.

How problematic this was became obvious next week when Premier Scott Moe decided to cozy up to a group he decided he can’t fight —the Unified Grassroots movement that actually unsuccessfully took this government to court of to stop vaccine passports.

After granting its president Nadine Ness an hour-long phone call both she and Moe described as productive Moe continued to draw fire for giving voice to a group that has posted information on vaccinations his own medical health officers describe as misleading.

Asked about this later, Moe explained that his government listens to all sides on all issues. Government should treat with certain amount of respect, Moe said.

The problem is, none of that has been the case for this government of late.

APAS _ which some in this Sask. Party government clearly view as betraying them by being the least bit critical — clearly didn’t get treated with respect. And any farm or business group fares much better than most others when it comes to access to this government to express concerns.

But why someone like Ness does had little trouble getting the Premier has everything to do with politics being seen as game about winning.

For whatever reason, Moe and the Sask. Party see Ness’s group as one having a broad-base of support _ one that they don’t want to anger even if what they are advocating flies in face of the government’s own direction guided by public health professionals.

This was not about fairness in granting this group a voice to a group deserved of it.

In fact, many in the medical community are rightly livid the Premier would give a voice to group tied to vaccine misinformation simply it was popularity.

But like all too many things in politics, it becomes all about winning, which is often about being seen as popular.

It can’t be about this. How you play is the game is actually more important than winning it.