OttawaWatch: Thoughts from Saskatoon

By Lloyd Mackey

IN THIS election, it seems that the major parties are seeing British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec as critical to their placement in the October 14 results.

So here I am in Saskatoon. And, as it turns out, that is a good thing.

The riding of Saskatoon-Wanuskewin, as I have suggested a few times previously, has been represented in the House of Commons by Maurice Vellacott since 1997. And my wife, Edna, has worked with him since 1998 as his administrative assistant, in Ottawa.

That ties in with a few other things.

We come from British Columbia, where, on the provincial level, centre-right governance has been a way of life for most of the past 70 years, first under a Liberal-Conservative coalition in the 1940s, then later, under W.A.C. Bennett, followed by his son, Bill, for a combined three decades, and now, under Gordon Campbell's BC Liberals -- reputedly 60 per cent conservative in makeup. There were two "interruptions" of NDP governance, totalling a decade, during that time.

And yes, that has something to do with Saskatchewan. Just recently, it elected its first BC-style centre-right government, under the Saskatchewan Party, after mostly left-leaning governance for most of that time under which the west coast province was more to the right.

Here enters Saskatoon. Vellacott's riding is a roughly-pie-shaped territory. If it was a Saskatoon berry pie, the berry at the very tip would be a portion of the city of Saskatoon itself, containing half the population of the riding but only a miniscule amount of its acreage.

The other three Saskatoon ridings, likewise are largely pie-shaped rural and small town entities, with the very tip containing part of the city.

These ridings have elected various parties through the years. More recently, the vote has gone successively to the Reform, Alliance and Conservative groups.

The ridings are not exclusively centre-right leaning. The city polls draw fairly heavily from pools of NDP and Liberal voters -- as they would if they were in the central and inner cities of Vancouver or Toronto.

The point of this little story is to illustrate my thesis that, in western Canada, particularly in BC and Saskatchewan, the ground is fertile for federal voting alignments that bring together the centre and right parts of the political spectrum.

And I believe, as well, that a virile Christian faith-based political interest helps to make this possible -- and likely could do so in Ontario as well.

I want to be careful, here, to avoid the trap that requires the right to demonize centrist liberal-leaning voters. Rather, I would suggest that, at the right time and in the right way (no pun intended), conservative-leaning people who will otherwise have been fearful of a more narrowly rigid party, will feel safe to "come home" to a group that is more outreaching in nature.

And sometimes, it takes the openness and naivety of a transparent faith to pave the way to such a homecoming.

* * *

In reading fairly widely about the reaction among American elitists and intellectuals to the emergence of Sarah Palin as John McCain's vice-presidential running mate, I came across an interesting piece to illustrate the above thesis.

It was in the September 29 issue of Newsweek and penned by Michael Gerson, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Gerson was responding to a blistering attack on Palin contained in the same issue of the newsmagazine, by Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, one of a recent series of atheistic polemics against Christianity.

Harris had suggested, in effect, that the elites needed to rule the nation, and that allegedly religious enthusiasts like Palin could never measure up.

Gerson began his response with a quote from someone he, somewhat tongue-in-cheek described as a "backwoods, religious no-name," who rose in 1896 to address the Democratic National Convention.

The no-name, as it happened, was William Jennings Bryan, a brilliant attorney who "never won the presidency in three tries . . . but his populism transformed the Democratic Party and informed the New Deal, making him perhaps the most influential presidential nominee never elected to office."

Here is what Bryan told that convention in 1896:

Great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.

(Palin) attended the University of Idaho, entered a beauty contest, joined the NRA and a church where people speak in tongues and was elected to govern a state with few Starbucks. Obama rose quickly from Columbia to Harvard Law, taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago and joined the most exclusive club in America, the Senate. Even with no governing experience, he can claim what might be called "elite experience." And this is enough for elitists.

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I could go on. But to bring this little discussion to a head, let me talk about a fellow I met a couple of days ago at an open house at Vellacott's campaign headquarters.

He was close to 80, I would say, and seemed pleasant enough. He attended a Mennonite Brethren church in Saskatoon and I figured him to be a retired grain farmer, probably.

But I decided to ask him what he did before retirement. It took a little tugging, self-effacing as he was, but it turned out he had a PhD from a very good university and had taught philosophy at university and high school levels for several decades in both the United States and Canada. Never in New York or Toronto. But that wasn't really the point.

I checked out the facts, later, with staffers at the campaign office. He was, indeed, who he said he was. And he had just dropped by to show his support for a politician he thought was doing a good job.

Saskatoon is just one of a number of places in Canada where populists and elitists can rub shoulders with each other. And, in this election, that shoulder-rubbing might just help nudge Canada along in the same way that William Jennings Bryan influenced the nation to the south of us.

* * *

Lloyd Mackey is a member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa. He is author of Stephen Harper: The Case for Collaborative Governance (ECW Press, 2006) and More Faithful Than We Think: Stories and Insights on Canadian Leaders Doing Politics Christianly (BayRidge Books, 2005). He can be reached at lmackey@canadianchristianity.com.

Related stories:

For Sikhs, 'it is in their blood' to campaign
Influential visible-minority group is the country's only one with more MPs than its share of the population
Globe and Mail, September 26

Palin blog postings draw fury from down south
Blog comments about vice-presidential candidate touch a raw nerve south of border
Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun, September 27

Quebec shock jock is accused by the usual suspects of a hit job on a hijab
There's a witch hunt going on in Quebec, and as all too often in this country's linguistically fractured country, what is happening in Quebec seems to be staying in Quebec. This is annoying, because it's a free-speech issue that concerns us all.
Barbara Kay, Full Comment, National Post, September 29

Conservatives seek to head off abortion issue
You can set your watch to it. With two weeks left in campaigning, the abortion issue has once against surfaced on the Conservative campaign. The issue came up at the same time in 2006 and in 2004.
David Akin, Full Comment, National Post, September 29

Harper has hidden agenda: Duceppe
A majority Harper government would have a hidden agenda to re-criminalize abortion, Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe alleged yesterday. To support his argument, Duceppe referred to Bill C-484, the Unborn Victims of Crime Act, a private -member's bill presented by Alberta MP Ken Epp, which Duceppe said most members of the Conservative government, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, voted for. Quebec ministers Josee Verner and Lawrence Cannon voted against the bill, which would make it a crime to kill or injure an unborn fetus.
Montreal Gazette, September 30
Also: National Post

Abortion debate will stay closed, Harper says
Stephen Harper used some of his most specific language to date yesterday in saying a re-elected Conservative government would not reopen the debate over the country's abortion law because there are too many other important issues to deal with.
Globe and Mail, September 30

Has Sarah Palin ever crossed border into British Columbia?
Vancouver, B.C., is the closest major metropolitan city to the U.S. state of Alaska, home of Governor Sarah Palin. As a result, as a Vancouverite I'm feeling a bit of journalistic responsibility to discover some data about the life and foreign travel experience of the woman whom John McCain has named his running mate for the president's office.
Douglas Todd, The Search, Vancouver Sun, September 30

Holding the abortion card
Sometimes, as Sherlock Holmes taught us, it is important to note the dogs that do not bark. Such has been the case in the current federal election campaign in regard to abortion. There are still 10 days to go, but it does seem that Stephane Dion has chosen a different path than his predecessors.
Father Raymond J. De Souza, National Post, October 2

Sarah Palin has never been to B.C. or any Canadian province
As far as I and an intrepid U.S. reporter have determined, Republican vice-presidential nominee has never crossed the Alaskan border into British Columbia. It appears the only place Palin has been in Canada is Whitehorse, a remote town of 20,000 in Canada's northern territory (not a province) of the Yukon. She went there last year, her first visit to Canada in 44 years. She's a woman who stays close to the U.S. version of the Great White North.
Douglas Todd, The Search, Vancouver Sun, October 2

October 2/2007