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One of the two main parties in today’s Saskatchewan election is prioritizing, in no particular order, the cost of living, taxes, health, education, housing, crime and the economy.
The other, meanwhile, is focused on the cost of living, taxes, health, education, housing, crime and the economy.
In short, there’s considerable crossover in what the Saskatchewan New Democrats (NDP) and the Saskatchewan Party see as the main issues facing the province, albeit with (mostly) different means of addressing them.
But it’s not just the list of shared concerns that is uniting the parties during the 2024 Saskatchewan election campaign. Both have also mostly avoided talking about climate change or the environment. The lengthy Saskatchewan Party platform makes almost no mention of environmental issues — the word “environment” only shows up behind “business” or “regulatory” — while the NDP contributes one-quarter of a page of its 16-page platform to “protecting our environment.”
Neither climate change nor environmental concerns were addressed during the hour-long leaders debate earlier this month between the Saskatchewan Party’s Scott Moe and the NDP’s Carla Beck.
It’s not for lack of issues.
Saskatchewan is the second-largest oil and gas producer in Canada and has the second highest emissions per capita. It’s an agriculture powerhouse where questions about the effects of modern farming — wetland draining, habitat destruction and fertilizer contamination — are significant. It’s eyeballing a massive expansion of irrigation at a time of droughts and flooding made worse by climate change. It’s pushing to expand mining of potash, uranium and critical minerals, as well as for investment in small modular nuclear reactors and expansion of its natural gas power fleet.
Neither party has responded to The Narwhal’s multiple requests for comment or interviews throughout the election campaign, including numerous requests to receive standard campaign emails.
Heading into election day, the Saskatchewan Party held a commanding lead in pre-election polls and seemed certain to reclaim the government. Recent polling, however, has shown a surge in NDP support. How that support is divided across the province — between NDP support concentrated in the cities and Saskatchewan Party support concentrated in rural areas — will be key.
As the province prepares to vote today, here’s what the two main parties are (and mostly aren’t) talking about when it comes to the environment.
This is the one topic related to climate change that has played a central role in the election.
Both the Saskatchewan Party and the NDP want to fight the price on carbon, and both say they will continue the policy instituted under the previous Saskatchewan Party government of not collecting the federal charge on home heating. The NDP supported that move in the legislature when it was introduced.
The province now owes tens of millions of dollars to the federal government.
Moe and his party have tried to link the NDP to the federal levy, which results in net refunds for most Canadians, but the NDP have been adamant about rejecting it. Only the Saskatchewan Party specifically says it will fight to have the levy killed entirely.
Saskatchewan is pockmarked by wetlands, with increasing concentrations of lakes as you move north. But its water is under strain, with runoff from fertilizer from agriculture causing algae blooms and starving waterways of oxygen.
The province has a plan that critics say could lead to more wetlands being converted to agricultural land — known as drainage — and is pushing forward with a plan to drastically increase irrigation in the coming years to feed more value-added agriculture (think: turning potatoes into fries or beef into jerky).
The Water Security Agency, a government branch that regulates water impacts in the province, has struggled to implement a comprehensive wetland policy and has faced criticism for failing to properly consider the impacts of draining wetlands for agricultural use.
The auditor general says the agency still hasn’t implemented all recommendations from a report five years ago and critics say the agency is using flawed data to show over 80 per cent of the province’s wetlands remain intact.
The NDP is calling for a comprehensive wetland conservation policy. The Saskatchewan Party makes no mention of wetlands or water conservation in its platform.
The NDP also says it wants to “work with conservation groups to invest in protecting biodiversity, wetlands and native prairie grasslands,” but provides no details.
Neither party has addressed the consequences of wetter wet periods and dryer dry periods across the Prairies that are predicted in climate models.
The Lake Diefenbaker irrigation expansion is the largest infrastructure project in Saskatchewan’s history and is estimated to cost $4 billion if all phases are fully built. The expansion, overseen by the Water Security Agency, would double the irrigable land in the province — first refurbishing unused infrastructure and eventually building new canals to pull more water east into areas that have always relied on the whims of the weather for water.
The Saskatchewan Party wants to see the expansion project move forward, and the government under Moe pushed for the first phase to begin construction next year. The NDP is less clear on the issue, saying it needs more information.
Saskatchewan’s small population has an outsized contribution to emissions in Canada. Its oil and gas industry has the worst methane loss rate for conventional extraction in Canada — the amount of the greenhouse gas released versus captured — according to recent research.
Methane is a more immediately severe greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and nearly all of the province’s heavy oil sites do not measure the methane they emit.
Per capita emissions in the province are the second highest in Canada, behind Alberta, with the largest sector contributions from oil and gas, agriculture and electricity.
The Saskatchewan Party has pushed back against federal efforts to curb emissions, including the carbon tax, voluntary reductions in fertilizer use which releases emissions, proposed emissions caps on oil and gas operations and draft clean electricity regulations that would severely impact a province still reliant on natural gas and coal to produce the majority of its electricity.
While in government, it has promised to achieve net-zero targets by 2050, as opposed to federal guidelines aiming for 2035.
It also outlined a carbon capture, utilization and storage plan heavily focused on enhanced oil recovery — injecting captured carbon into the ground to pump more oil and gas from wells — a method that produces at least as much carbon pollution as it stores and is not supported by federal tax incentives for capturing carbon.
The province, under the Saskatchewan Party, established a tribunal to assess the impacts of federal decisions it sees as a threat to its industries. The party seems intent on staying the course.
“A re-elected Saskatchewan Party government will undertake legal action as required to assert provincial jurisdiction over our natural resources and electricity sector to protect Saskatchewan’s economy,” its platform says.
There is no mention of emissions reduction policies in its platform and the only mention of emissions is touting the carbon sequestration of agricultural practices.
The NDP doesn’t spill much ink about emissions either, but does promise in its platform to “invest dollars through climate initiatives into rapidly building out renewable power, energy efficiency retrofits and lower energy costs for families.”
Taking action on climate change, the party says, should be viewed as a “job creator.”
Saskatchewan was the second-largest global supplier of high-grade uranium last year and has significant deposits centered in the north of the province.
That abundance was part of the Saskatchewan Party government’s push to expand mining for uranium, but also to push for nuclear power in the province, particularly small modular reactors — smaller plants that are, in theory, cheaper to operate but which have not been tested at a commercial scale.
It’s also a central part of the Moe government’s critical minerals strategy that aims to bolster exploration and mining for the building blocks of green energy technology, computers and more. That strategy is primarily focused on uranium, helium and potash, but also includes continued expansion of North America’s first rare earth element processing facility which started production this year.
The NDP has also indicated support for critical mineral exploration and mining but does not offer any policies in its platform on the issue.
The Saskatchewan Party government also pushed for small modular reactors to be built in Saskatchewan, and linked that construction to the province’s uranium sector, but a final decision on whether to build a reactor won’t be made until 2029.
The NDP has said it supports small modular reactors, but wants to see more details on the project in Saskatchewan and blames the Moe government for withholding specifics.
The Saskatchewan Party platform touts its pre-existing critical minerals strategy, while the NDP makes no mention of critical minerals, uranium or reactors.
Farming is also a critical part of Saskatchewan’s economy and identity. It’s no wonder both parties spill ink on the topic, but little of it is tied to climate or the environment.
The Saskatchewan Party focuses on expansion of exports and growing value-added agricultural products (think turning canola into oil), mostly based on what it has already done in government.
It also links its irrigation expansion plans to its agricultural goals.
The NDP says it wants to develop a carbon offset program for ranchers who protect wetlands and native grasslands which act as carbon sinks, while also vowing to crack down on what it says is “illegal foreign ownership of farmland.” There are already rules preventing or restricting foreign ownership of agricultural land, but farmers have struggled with rising land prices driven in part by large investors.
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