Saskatoon civic election poised for unorthodox ending

Despite plenty of criticism and arguments against completing Saskatoon’s civic election on Friday, returning officer Scott Bastian is going ahead with a subdued ending.

All six mayoral candidates had questions to ask after Bastian postponed the election just before 5 p.m. on Monday and decided to have the polls open for 11 hours on Friday.

Bastian said the province allowing elections to be postponed after polls in Saskatoon already opened was just one of many complications that arose on Monday after a weekend snowfall brought the city to a near-standstill.

“We needed to see clarification on the (provincial) order exactly,” he said of his decision to announce the postponement after thousands of people had already trekked through the snow to cast a ballot.

“It took a lot of the afternoon to make sure what we had been planning was in alignment with the order.”

There were 65 polling stations expected to be in operation on Monday. That number will be reduced to seven on Friday after Praireland Park and Ebenezer Baptist Church were added to the city’s leisure centres as polling locations on Thursday afternoon.

Mayoral candidates are all in agreement that there needed to be more places to vote to allow for a fair election.

With candidates fielding calls from people still unable to drive on their own street, candidates like Rob Norris were left wondering how reducing locations to vote makes it any easier on voters.

“We can’t take more than 60 polling stations and have them consolidated down into five and say we’re doing this appropriately,” he said.

Zubair Sheikh feels road conditions will be marginally better on Friday, if at all. He would like to see Bastian postpone the election until next week when more people are able to drive freely.

“Nobody can fight with mother nature,” he said.

Cary Tarasoff feels Bastian should have been more prepared with a contingency plan given the four days of storm warnings Saskatoon received last week.

With Saskatoon not expected to have streets cleared for another nine days, Tarasoff is waiting to be impressed with the cleanup efforts, saying the election is the only reason the city is being forthcoming.

“If there was no election there would be nothing being done right now,” he said. “They’re only reacting because they’re in the light. If they were able to just pretend nothing was going on then everybody would still be stuck and they would carry on. They’re not accountable.”

Don Atchison was also critical of the city’s snow removal tactics, wondering why more people and equipment weren’t being thrown at the problem on Monday morning instead of Thursday.

“Why wasn’t there 200 pieces of equipment ready from day one?” he said. “There is no relationship to the citizens, to management and to council.”

Mark Zielke said these questions present a “lack of planning and leadership” in Saskatoon, adding that the cleanup effort has “exposed” how out of touch administration and city hall is with its own residents.

Charlie Clark said conditions have greatly improved in Saskatoon, hoping that Friday morning will allow even more people to go out and vote.

“Hindsight is 20/20. I am even, for tomorrow, quite hopeful that people will still be able to get to the polling stations much better than they were before,” Clark said.

“We’re kind of in limbo right now because of the delay of the election. We need a city council in place to get back to governing this city — that’s the balancing act.”

Bastian said more than 18 months of planning was already undermined by the spread of COVID-19. Sunday’s blast of snow added to the pressure. With things like securing a location, finding workers, transporting ballot boxes, acquiring PPE and arranging for couriers made adding more polling locations difficult.

“I’m not sure what the ideal situation would be even if we had 65 (polling stations),” Bastian said. “It’s a big task just to add one location.”

Polls are open Friday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Bastian said people should expect long lines wherever they vote.

No matter what happens on Friday, Bastian is confident in his decision to postpone the election to Friday.

“A decision needed to be made, and that’s where I landed,” he said.