I’m not going to tear into this in detail. Just the fun highlights:
Provincial sales tax increases to 7%. Together with the GST, that means most items one purchases in the province are taxed 14%. Sales tax free Alberta revises revenue projections upward due to a bump in retail sales.
Usual cigarette and beer tax increases. Four pages of free increases, on everything from registrations of births to fishing licenses to hearing aids to estate settlements (from $600 to $900). The comic relief is provided by Parks – new “Weiner Roast Tax”. Lighting a campfire will require a $3 permit. Per day. Summer officially postponed to mid June, as provincial parks openings are pushed back to save $$.
Green Economy; Government to allow “fire to play a more natural role in the forest.” Permit may not be necessary, after all.
Under “Government By The Unions, For The Unions” aka “keeping your base on the payroll” ; 95% of 20,000 civil service employees have contracts due for renegotiation this year. SaskPower is in a legal strike position. Oops. No can do.
Budget mandates 0% wage increases this year, 1% in 2005, 2006. Over 400 jobs cut. Heh. I’m getting me a lawnchair to watch the fireworks. (Next time I’m in Alberta.)
No relief for astronomical rural property taxes. Clawback of farm fuel tax rebate. Can you spell t-a-x r-e-v-o-l-t? Rural Service centers closed, replaced with Agriculture Knowledge Centres. Can’t have a budget without the “rename game” and another sign contract for someone.
44% of entire budget goes to health care. Promise to bring surgical waiting lists to a maximum of 18 months…. in two years time. Tommy Douglas, still dead.
But, another balanced budget….. 6.1 billion spent on 975,000 residents.
Eh… well balanced by borrowing money from a “rainy day” line of credit, and leaving out losses incurred by publicly owned Crown Corporations.
The SaskParty responded with a non-confidence motion today, vote on Thursday.
One defection, new election.

“On time, and on budget.”

The $18 million cost of the project was shared by city, provincial and federal governments, and Federal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale says it is a good example of how all three levels of government can work together.

Another installment for the Wide Open Future campaign – “Experience Saskatchewan – Endless Blue Horizons, Colorful First Nations Culture, the Synchrotron and Free Bags of Goose Shit.”

Goodale also marvelled at the size of the project, which he describes as, “1.3 million cubic metres of earth, moved by 200 workers and a massive amount of equipment, all in the dead of winter, working 24 hours a day.”

$13.84 a cubic meter. Second reaction – does this qualify them to fill holes?
Thousands attended the ceremony. No, really. Thousands.

From a source inside the government – the budget coming down ain’t going to be pretty. Saskatchewan (pop 975,000 and dropping) has been running half-billion dollar deficits and now has an accumulated debt equal to the highly criticized “Devine years” of the 1980’s.
The difference is that the Grant Devine Conservatives had an revenue-poor economy to deal with in which potash, oil and grain prices were in the tank, coupled with drought and sky-high interest rates. Plus, they had inherited the Blakeney legacy of hostility towards investment and private development – the nationalization of the potash industry, the despised “Land Bank” government purchases of farm land, and gas/oil royalty structures that crippled development of the resources.
Romanow, to his credit, faced the music, and the deficit was brought under control, though the province still fared miserably when it came to economic development. Old socialist economic theories and entitlements die hard – especially when your political base consists of unionized labour and “Tommy Douglas” seniors who respond to “Mediscare” campaigns.
The Calvert NDP have managed to dig us back into a very large hole despite record revenues and lowest interest rates in a generation. It didn’t stop them from campaigning on a spending platform and pledging to preserve “public ownership” of the sacred Crown Corporations – of which the government owns around 70. The only jurisdiction in North America with more government ownership of the economy outside Saskatchewan is Cuba.
Bottom line? The government may fall over this budget. There is real concern that some on the government side of the benches will not vote for it, and with the current 50 – 50 split of NDP to conservative SaskParty members in the legislature – it won’t take but one defection.
Interesting times ahead.

A new sexual abuse scandal has just surfaced in Saskatchewan. The scandal – as it came to pass in the Martensville and Klassen cases – is the overzealousness of the police and Social Services, and the ruination of another innocent family.
Saskatoon Star Phoenix

Social Services and the RCMP turned up at the family’s farmhouse without warning; took four of the children into care; conducted videotaped interviews with the kids that show leading questions were asked; asked one brother, aged 15, if he had witnessed or committed sexual assault without advising him of his legal rights; then charged two other brothers and the father with sexual assault based solely on those interviews, with no corroborating evidence.
Information presented at one of the subsequent trials shows that the decision to lay charges was made within hours of the police becoming involved: before the interviews had been completed and before anyone had even looked for other evidence.
The parents were not allowed to say goodbye to their children. Three of them were made permanent wards of the province and have been moved from one foster home to another ever since.
The charge against the father was stayed after 15 months, although only after the Crown prosecutor offered him a deal to plead guilty.
One brother was found not guilty and refuses now to live in Saskatchewan because of his experience. The second brother was found guilty, but had his conviction overturned on March 11 by Mr. Justice Gerald Allbright of the Court of Queen’s Bench.
The final injustice is that the family has been threatened with legal action if they take steps to publicize their situation.

This is a favoured tactic of prosecutors in Canada. Laws that were designed to protect “young offenders” and sexual assault victims from having their names publicized are being increasingly abused to hide misdeeds and mistakes of prosecutors and police. The courts place a publication ban on all evidence, charges are stayed, and only those directly involved are aware of the injustice and the damage caused.

Really, how could I not link to this?

Having suffered a trip up along the yellow brick road of social engineering, the NDP government was greeted with good news this morning – the Supreme Court Of Canada will hear the “Shower Curtain Case”.
What is the Shower Curtain Case? Well, mindful that children might see cigarettes for sale in convenience stores, and suffer an irresistable compulsion to crawl over the counter and inhale the things whole, the Saskatchewan government decided this would not do and enacted legislation that compels retailers to cover their displays of cigarettes with a curtain or door in any establishment that serves customers under 18 years of age.
The law was challenged and struck down. Not to be deterred, the Saskatchewan Health Department decided this was worthy of a Supreme Court hearing.
This is same department that announced two days ago that they are “working towards” reducing surgical waiting lists to 18 months. It’s a goal, mind you. May take two years to get there.
Yesterday, the Saskatchewan Government announced yet another ad campaign this one amounts to $75,000 worth of public whining about federal transfer payments. They’re going broke, running a half billion dollar deficit. In a few days, they bring down a budget – tax increases and civil service cuts are expected.
The ad campaign will run in Saskatchewan, of course. To remind us it isn’t their fault.
Our taxdollars at work.

The famed diamond-bearing kimberlite pipes in South Africa are about the size of your living room.
The kimberlite pipes in Saskatchewan are the size of several city blocks. The Fort a la Corne site, near Prince Albert, has more kimberlite than all the other souces in the world combined.
What does this mean? Watch for diamonds to drop to $3 a bushel.
For the Beltway Traffic Jam

Sunday evening I heard a loud bang – thought it was a cattle hauler pulling up to the stop sign outside the house. Turns out, it was a sonic boom.

A brilliant fireball streaked across the central Saskatchewan sky Sunday night around 8:30 p.m., providing a colourful spectacle and rattling windows and walls with its pressure wave. But what has astronomers agog is the possibility it landed.

A Saskatoon astronomer interviewed this morning confirmed that cameras in Calgary caught an image, and indicate that the fireball – described by some witnesses as blue in color with a long orange and white tail – was moving slowly enough to have survived entry and probably landed in the Kindersley area – around 80 miles from here.

Despite the dramatic display, the show lasted only about four seconds. But it will stay in the memory of Ronalda and Ben Kleinsasser, who farm near Kerrobert. That’s where Beech suspects the meteorite may have hit because of the intensity of the smell and tremors.
“I was watching TV when I saw this ball of fire dropping out of the sky with a tail of flames,” said Ben, who described the rock as larger than a half-ton truck. “I watched it coming down until it was right in front of us.
“My hair went up on end and I had goose-bumps. It was wild. And it rumbled the floor pretty good because my daughter came running upstairs asking if someone fell in the house.”

Paul Martin is announcing aid for the cattle industry this morning – to the tune of nearly a billion dollars, with a considerable part of that going to the actual cattlemen. [note to urban media types – not “cattle farmers”]
The best news to come out of Adscam yet.
Last week it was federal Finance Minister, Ralph Goodale, taking a look at the transfer payment situation and declaring Saskatchewan has been – gosh darn golly gee! shortchanged after all! – a hundred million on the way, and more to come. Heh.
Got to love the irony of that – Paul Martin is fighting for his political life – in Picture Butte, Alberta, while the premier of the same province is in Washington representing Canadian interests to the US on getting the borders open.

CBC: Cancer patient dies waiting for treatment

Duff McDonald was showing symptoms of prostate cancer last March. He had to wait six months to see a specialist and before a bone scan could be performed, the 65-year-old checked himself into the hospital and died. His daughter spoke out because she says her dad trusted the health care system and doesn’t want other people to make the same mistake.

This wasn’t the first case of prostate cancer going undiagnosed due to long waiting lists. It’s not even the first case this month. (see Tommy Douglas Is Dead – Pt II.)
In late February, it was announced that the NDP’s Agriculture Minister Clay Serby had to step down from his portfolio and would be out of the legislature, while undergoing treatment for cancer. The type of cancer has not been revealed, but it is known that it’s “treatable” and that he has already had surgery. Officials stressed that Serby was not given preferential treatment or moved to the front of the waiting list.
Perhaps so, and I wish Mr. Serby nothing but the best.
However, if it is revealed that he is suffering from prostate cancer, a lot of people are going to be asking a lot of questions of this health care department, and charges of insensitivity and “using his illness for political purposes” are going to fall as flat as the promises by Health Minister John Nilson to look into the particulars of Mr. McDonald’s case.

I’ve been busy today trying to untangle the complications of trying to get my dog to Brazil with me, on the same aircraft, and for less than my own ticket…. but had enough time to check out the regulars, and read my comments section.
For Willie – some much needed historical perspective. The Price of Freedom in Iraq at Outside The Beltway.
For Canadian readers, meet fellow Saskatchewan blogger, Theresa Zolner, and learn about how best juggle your choices on a preferencial ballot to your prefered candidate’s advantage. Tomorrow the Conservative Party of Canada chooses a leader.
By way of Drudge .. another scandal at a major media outlet – USA Today reveals Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Jack Kelley has been fabricating stories. For years.
And for your landscaping problems, John Kerry’s your man. All this and Vietnam, too.
And most importantly – Murray Wood on 650 CKOM radio just recieved his first report of a gopher sighting! It is spring! Time to go dust off the .22

Dennis Scott’s saga began in February of 2003 when his family doctor found antigens consistant with prostate cancer. He didn’t receive a biopsy until the next September.
CBC

A Saskatchewan family says waiting for health care has been devastating. Tracy Grube was at the legislature Monday morning to talk about her father’s battle with cancer.
She says her dad had to wait seven months for a biopsy to diagnose his prostate cancer. Once the test results came back, Grube says the cancer was found to have spread and was considered incurable.

That wasn’t the end of Dennis Scott’s ordeal. He requires surgery to ease his discomfort. Last week he was on a hospital gurney, prepared for the surgery, when he was told to get up and put his clothes on. There were no recovery beds. It was the third time the surgery has been cancelled.
Apparently, we have an council established to monitor these incidents.

“We don’t know if this is an isolated incident, or something that’s happening repeatedly,” Quality Council chair Dr. Ben Chan said upon hearing about the incident. The Health Quality Council was set up and began monitoring the performance of Saskatchewan’s health system last summer. Chan doesn’t know how common it is to wait seven months for a biopsy, but finding out is definitely a priority. “If we’re going to manage the system better, we really need to have good quality information about just how many people are in that type of a situation,” he said.

This is the so-called Health Quality Council chairman, and he doesn’t know “how common” this is? He’s lacking good quality information? What exactly does this man do for his paycheck?

Without that information Chan said that it is hard to tell where the system may be breaking down and how to fix it. “If somebody has an urgent problem, are they going to the doctor that has the shortest waiting list, or do we know which doctor has the shortest waiting list?” Chan won’t speculate on when the council may have answers, but says if it’s any consolation, Saskatchewan is probably further ahead in this work than many other parts of the country.

Well, no Dr. Chan, it isn’t any consolation. Where the hell were his doctors? Didn’t they read his medical records? The hospital JANITOR could tell you that 7 months for a cancer biopsy is too long to wait. Why do we need an entire beaurocracy on the tax payroll to tell us what we already know and more to the point –why the fuck haven’t the whole lot of you been fired?
More – A good post at Trudeaupia about the effect of socialized health care on doctors.

This year’s Kinsmen Telemiracle is over, with over 3.5 million raised by the province’s residents.
Since its inception 27 years ago, the 20 hour province-wide telethon continues to hold a Guiness World Record, for raising more money per capita than any other fund raising event of its type. The funds are used to help residents with special needs.

If you head out for a weekend getaway, and the traffic looks something like this

You might be in Saskatchewan.
….
If longing to see something green means driving two hours north

You might be in Saskatchewan.
…
If you pull up to your motel room, and half the vehicles in the parking spaces have tracks

You might be in Saskatchewan.

Today, the Saskatoon Health Region announced that they will be closing up shop the last few days of March. March is the end of their fiscal year, and they’re $7 million in debt. Cancelling the surgeries is expected to save an estimated $200,000. Well, not save, of course… defer.
Saskatoon Star Phoenix:

After waiting for four years for knee surgery, a Saskatoon woman has been told she’ll have to wait even longer because the Saskatoon Health Region (SHR) can’t afford to do the procedure this month.
“I’ve waited for four years without too much complaining. I’ve been really patient because I realize there were people who needed it worse than me. But it’s got to the point where I need it as bad as anybody right now,” said Joyce Ratke, who learned this week she won’t have both knees replaced as scheduled on March 30.

One of 60 people being affected by the cancellations, her case is considered “elective”.
The annual budget of SHR is over a half billion dollars. $200,000 is a drop in their annual budget. The surgery moratorium has nothing to do about cost overruns, and everything to do with putting pressure on the politicians, and making a splash in the media. This time, though, the local media seems to be “on to them” and the decision is backfiring on the SHR.
I have a friend who works in the higher echelons of Sask Health, and she sometimes phones to vent her frustrations at the bloated unionized wages and threats to pull services whenever they need leverage for contract demands.
I told her the provincial government’s solution to reset the mindset of these “essential employees” could be summed up in 4 words.
Reagan. Air Traffic Controllers.
I had to explain what that meant.

Another best-kept-secret of Saskatchewan spilled in the media.

A series of Molson USA print and radio ads points out that the zinc in Saskatchewan barley is also common to oysters and truffles, known for their amorous properties.
“Here at Molson, we’re constantly asked if our Saskatchewan barley is an aphrodisiac,” one print ad states. “Those rumors are unfounded,” the ad concludes.

Well, all I can tell you is that I got friends – not naming names, mind you – but I got friends, who went out for a few brewski’s – and you know, woke up naked.
Not saying there’s a connection, mind you, but, I’m just saying is all.

The most popular name for baby boys in Saskatchewan is Ethan? For the third year in a row?
And “Austin” is number 5?
Holy cow. Is there a cool new cartoon character out there than I don’t know about?

Saskatchewan owns the distinction of having produced more NHL players per capita than any other place in the world.
Here’s why;

All of these towns — Shaunavon, Eastend, Climax, Frontier and Cadillac — are clustered in a small, tight area south of the Trans-Canada Highway, north of the Montana border and west of Highway 13. [ed – strange error. Hwy 13 runs east-west from border to border]
Beyond Van Allen, Shaunavon also produced Braydon Coburn of the Portland Winter Hawks, the eighth player chosen in the 2003 entry draft and a player the Atlanta Thrashers believe will ultimately anchor their defence corps. Then there is Hayley Wickenheiser, considered by many to be the best female hockey player in the world.
Wickenheiser did grow up in Shaunavon, which she describes as “essentially, a grain-farming community of about 1,800 people right now. The oil fields are a big part of the economy as well. Farming and oil, I think, is it.
“There’s a hockey rink and a curling rink, two schools, Catholic and public, and a high school. Over all, it’s a pretty quiet community. On weekends, everything is based around the arena. You get the kids cruising up and down Main Street, flipping the half-turn at the end. That’s the cool thing to do when you get into high school.

I grew up on the farm, but schooled in the town of Arcola, at the opposite end of Hwy 13. About 3 years ago a fire razed the local rink complex to the ground – a devastating loss for a rural community where hockey, figure skating and curling are central to social and family life. The million dollars insurance on the building was only half the the sum required to rebuild.
14 months later a new structure was ready to open, and the building fund had a surplus of around $100,000. Today there are plans in motion to add an expansion for curling. All of it community raised, and much of it built through the work of volunteers. The NHL Players Association recognized their efforts by donating the plexiglass for the boards.
Arcola has a population of around 500.

Arcola’s 100th anniversary in pictures

I had to do some finishing work on a Harley tank today, and was unable to catch all of the John Gormley Show interview with Prime Minister Paul Martin. I did listen to the first half on the drive to town, and now I’m catching a repeat broadcast. The calls were varied and the questions well considered.
Martin seemed to acquit himself well enough when it came to general presentation, though the outrage and earnestness he’s trying to convey is beginning to sound a little forced. – “unacceptable, unfathomable … not going to stand for it … going to get to the bottom of it … the old way doesn’t work” …After all, Adscam has been going on 11 days, and it’s hardly news – the Auditor General first reported on the fundamentals of the scandal in 2002.
But in substance, there seemed to be a disconnect on matters “Western”. Questions about the deepening crisis in the cattle industry over BSE resulted in sober expressions of concern about streamlining agriculture relief programs, and assurances that he had discussed this with President Bush in Mexico and had been using “maximum pressure to get those borders open” (cold comfort that) – but nothing new. I know some hearts sank. If there was anything dramatic coming down the chute, one would think he’d have chosen this swing through the province for an announcement.
But the question everyone was waiting for elicited a wobbly response that confirmed that while he may think he sounds sincere about the problem of western alienation … he does not yet get it.

Members of the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation gathered outside the radio station.
People held a sign reading Remember the Firearms Registry When you Vote.
A caller named Brian from Regina voiced his concerns over the gun registry.
“I’m one of those typical alienated western rednecks. I own guns. I hunt and I trap. Could you please tell western Canada why Canada is safer now that your $2-billion government program knows about my guns,” he said.

The rage that simmers in the west over the indefensibly stupid and unworkable gun registry is not registering with him. Martin made this clear. He mumbled something about the Association of Police Chiefs being in favour of it and being in favour of reviewing it. He mentioned that rural eastern Canadians were also against gun control, as though that diffused the “anti-Western” bias of the legislation. Ah… best not do that, Paul.
In a country where federal laws dictate a farmer in Saskatchewan can have property seized and serve jail time for selling wheat to the same customer that a wheat farmer in Ontario is free to do business with at twice the price…. best not to invoke nonexistant solidarity. Best not to mention it at all.
What he does not “get” is the depth of resentment about the condescension and dismissiveness that has characterized federal (read: central Canadian) attitudes towards Western culture and identity. The $2 million $1 billion $2 billion gun registry that makes my possession of a 65 year old, unregistered ..22 calibre gopher rifle a criminal offence, has become a symbol for this resentment in a way that no other ever has.
Adding injury to insult, when asked about private First Nations MRI clinics and Alberta premier Ralph Klein’s announcement yesterday that his province may withdraw from the Canada Health Act because of dissatisfaction with federal cost sharing, Martin strenuously defended universal health care, and stressed that those who await medical diagnosis (22 months for an MRI in this province) should “you should not be able to buy yourself better health care” to “jump the cue”. Ouch.
In afternoon discussion, Gormley and the other talking heads of the station chatted about the security arrangements and revealed that the studio was crammed with 9 TV cameras during the hour long phone in.
Tyler McMurchy related the most telling anecdote. He returned to his desk to find a voice message from a Toronto Star reporter, “mystified” that the sponsorship scandal had been largely ignored. They asked if the station had intentionally screened callers by topic, to swing the discussion to western issues.
*sigh*
No, they hadn’t.
No wonder we feel alienated.