If you belong to the right group and make the right noise about Sask. Party MLAs losing power, a mere whisper will get their attention.
It isn’t so much the volume of those nattering in the ears of a Saskatchewan Party government.
After all, you can have tens of thousands of emails from teachers or supporters and they will be ignored. You can have a thousand people on the legislature’s lawn screaming at the government not to take away support of LGBTQ2S+ rights and Sask. Party MLAs inside somehow can’t hear them.
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Maybe it’s all the noise from traffic in the cities where the Sask. Party no longer thinks it can win. Or it might that if you belong to the right group and make the right noise about Sask. Party MLAs losing power, a mere whisper will get their attention.
Or so we learned from 158 letters and emails sent to those in the Sask. Party government after the Planned Parenthood fiasco in which some Lumsden Grade 9ers got their hands on some unapproved sexually explicit education materials.
Critical correspondence after the infamous Lumsden school incident in June and before government policy changed in August has finally been obtained by Leader-Post reporter Larissa Kurz through a Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act request.
Perhaps they aren’t the “tens of thousands” of letters and other feedback Education Minister Jeremy Cockrill and others misled us about. But a few dozen letters from right-wingers threatening political repercussions sure had an effect:
“I trust you are listening to your voters, not the loud activists,” wrote one (the names of senders were redacted) seemingly confused as to who exactly the “loud activists” have been.
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“You need to take a stand and lead maybe other premiers will stand up alongside you and end this.”
“Get your act together. We the people can vote you out too!”
“I believe the Bud Light consumers have spoken — it’s time to listen to them.”
“You seem to be forgetting who your voters are and what they stand for.”
This is not to suggest Planned Parenthood acted responsibly in the Lumsden incident by bringing in non-age-appropriate ABC sex cards tailored to a more mature clientele to a classroom of 13-year-olds.
But given repeated language and phraseology in the letters, the government (Action 4 Canada’s theme Planned Parenthood is “causing harm to children” was mentioned in 67 of the letters and emails) the government surely knew this was a social conservative letter-writing campaign.
Moreover, what happened in Lumsden appeared to be a single, isolated incident, as far as any reasonable, intelligent person without a vested interested could tell. Restricting third-party sex education instructors or restricting sex ed in any way in a province with among the highest rates of STDs, AIDS and teen pregnancies was a massive reaction.
But to then bring in Bill 137 and twice use the notwithstanding clause — all in the face of warnings from judges, teachers, psychologists and the once-unbiased Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission — was killing a flea with a nuclear bomb.
So why such an overreaction to a lobbying campaign? Well, the letters obtained by the Leader-Post provide that insight.
The other reoccurring theme in the letters is the name-dropping of United Grassroots organizer Nadine Ness, former People’s Party of Canada candidate/anti-vaxxer Mark Friesen and Saskatchewan United Party stalwarts MLA Nadine Wilson and Lumsden-Morse candidate Jon Hromek.
“Do not step up … I will work hard to get you out at the next election,” one letter ominously warned.
“Look for the Sask. United Party to make increasing inroads on our province’s political landscape if the Saskatchewan Party fails to start supporting as well as defending faith/religion and moral issues,” someone wrote on July 18.
“If you cannot step up and be a leader then you will not have my vote in the upcoming byelection,” wrote another on July 19, shortly after Premier Scott Moe called the summer byelections for Aug. 10.
“Remember the silent majority support conservative moral values. If you want our votes you will represent our views,” warned one email after the August Lumsden-Morse byelection.
If you are right-wing lobbyist, it takes a mere whisper to get the Sask. Party’s attention.
Murray Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
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