Tank: Carney runs back for Saskatoon’s first meeting of premiers, PM

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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is running back to Saskatoon for his fourth visit of the year.

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For the first time, Saskatoon will host a first ministers meeting, including the prime minister and the provincial and territorial premiers, on June 2.

Premier Scott Moe revealed Wednesday he had invited Carney to visit Saskatchewan and that the newly elected Liberal prime minister suggested hosting his initial first ministers conference in the province.

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Carney’s last visit came the day before the election, with a surprise stop on a cross-country blitz to boost the chances of Saskatoon candidates. But, despite significantly improved showings by Liberals in the April election compared to the party’s dismal 2021 performance, no Liberals in Saskatoon or Regina got elected.

Carney’s Liberals did prevent an unprecedented third straight Saskatchewan sweep by the Conservatives by winning the northern riding that covers more than half of the province’s territory. So it looks impressive on a map.

Generally, though, Saskatchewan can still be considered hostile territory. Saskatoon has been particularly unfriendly to Canada’s natural governing party. Bridge City last elected Liberal MPs in 1993, but the two only lasted a single term.

You would have to harken back to Pierre Trudeau cabinet minister Otto Lang, who represented Saskatoon—Humboldt from 1968 to 1979, to find the city’s last successful Liberal MP. Yet Carney keeps coming back here, the only federal leader to visit twice during the campaign.

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Maybe that’s because there’s some under-the-radar Liberal love in Saskatoon, even if there’s little history of success. Mayor Cynthia Block ran for the Liberals in 2015, but finished third. Former councillors Darren Hill (2011) and Tiffany Paulsen (2004) also ran unsuccessfully under the federal Liberal banner.

Arguably Saskatoon’s most popular mayor, Sid Buckwold left city hall to run twice for the Liberals and lost both times — first, during the 1963 Progressive Conservative sweep of Saskatchewan and then, after the MP who beat him died in office, to the MP’s widow, who ran in a 1964 byelection.

Buckwold was appointed to the Senate by Trudeau in 1971.

Later, four-term mayor Henry Dayday incurred voters’ wrath by refusing to resign when he ran for the Liberals in 1999. Dayday finished third in the federal contest and third in the 2000 mayoral election.

Regardless of Liberal fortunes in Saskatoon, the city provides a microcosm for issues afflicting cities across Canada, like homelessness and addiction. Let’s hope none of the first ministers get attacked with bear spray, which has become an epidemic here.

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Speaking of epidemics, all three federal party leaders visited Saskatoon during the campaign, but none spoke about the unprecedented overdose scourge that was happening.

The Saskatchewan Coroners Service has confirmed 21 drug toxicity deaths so far this year in Saskatoon, more than double the number in Regina, which usually exceeds Saskatoon in such fatalities. And, sadly, there are almost certainly more confirmed deaths coming.

Saskatoon’s fire department alone had responded to more than 900 overdoses this year by mid-April.

Conversely, Saskatoon is building homes this year like never before with 707 housing starts during the first three months, marking the most ever recorded. That meshes nicely with Carney’s “build, baby, build” pledge on housing.

Yet, when you consider that Saskatoon added 14,400 new people from 2022 to 2023 alone, even unprecedented homebuilding will fail to keep pace with population growth. That disparity has sparked the housing crisis across Canada, even as Saskatoon remains more affordable than most cities.

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Saskatoon has hosted premiers conferences before, most recently in 2019 (under Moe) and in 2009. But the last time all the first ministers met in Saskatchewan, in Regina in 1985, Brian Mulroney was prime minister and Grant Devine was Saskatchewan premier.

During that meeting, Devine pushed for expanded international trade and entertained the first ministers with his folksy phrase: “When you’re in the middle of a mud-hole, you don’t say whoa.”

Devine hailed that conference as the possible start of a “new era in Canada,” a perception echoed by the other premiers, including the separatist premier of Quebec, Rene Levesque, who admitted the meeting “was not a useless one.”

Similar topics — trade, the economy, separatism (this time from the West) — will likely dominate the looming first ministers meeting in Saskatoon. Carney and the premiers can only hope for such a positive outcome.

Phil Tank is the digital opinion editor at the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

ptank@postmedia.com

twitter.com/thinktankSK

@thinktanksk.bsky.social

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