Week 3: Moe vs. Beck election debate analysis on Evan Bray Show

The Evan Bray Show hosts a weekly panel this election season to discuss everything from seat predictions to voter turnout in Saskatchewan.

Evan is joined by John Gormley, lawyer, former Member of Parliament and host of The John Gormley Show, and Kevin Fenwick, Saskatchewan mediator and facilitator, former Deputy Minister of Justice and Saskatchewan’s provincial ombudsman.

This week, they discussed the effectiveness of the debate in swaying undecided voters and the potential impact of the Buffalo Party and Progressive Conservatives. The conversation also touched on the carbon tax issue, the role of the Attorney General, and the importance of targeting both the base and moderate voters.

Listen to Week 3 of the panel on The Evan Bray Show

What did you think? What was your overall take of the debate?

FENWICK: I enjoyed it actually, and I wouldn’t mind watching another. I wish there was another. I know it’s not Friday, so it’s not bugs and hugs day, you know, a couple of little hugs. Anyway, I didn’t mind the format. I thought Merelda Fiddler did a great job as the moderator. I thought the questions from all of the journalists were pretty darn good, and I want to give credit, actually, to both Carla Beck and Scott Moe for the relative calm that they showed and the relatively few interruptions they made of each other. So it was it was good listening to. Now, having said that, I agree with you, it wasn’t the most riveting entertainment I’ve ever seen. I don’t think either one of them delivered a knockout blow to pick up on what you said. It’s interesting for me to listen to some of the feedback from friends of mine who were texting me last night that that Scott seemed a little smoother, if you like. But a number of people said to me they thought Carla was a little bit more genuine. So, you know, from pure debate points, Scott may have been the better debater, but Carla exceeded expectations, more than I think most people would say Scott did, so interesting, probably a toss up.

GORMLEY: Agree with everything. Kevin said, no, gotcha moment, both on message. People who watch this debate again largely have made their minds up, you know. And the whole process of debates, of course, are to woo the undecided. So each of the respective parties think they won. You go to social media, where people are crazy anyway, and you know you’ve got who won, who lost. Each of them had an impediment, and I’m not sure they were held back by it. Opposition leaders, and look at Brad Wall debating Lorne Calvert in 2007, have to be really careful, because you’ve got to be critical, but you’ve got to show that you could be the premier. There was cognitive dissonance of some sort going on. Carla Beck was trying to convince me I live in a hell hole. Well, I live in a province that’s been outperforming the past. But she had to be critical, but I didn’t see her pivot enough to say “I am the premier in waiting, here is my plan.”

Scott Moe, on the other hand, had an impediment, and I’m going to get into the world of the whole issue of gender and politics. If you aggressively engage a woman in a debate, you are a bully at worse, you’re a misogynist and a sexist. So you’ve always got in this very sensitive world of defining differences, you’ve got to be very, very careful, because a few of my friends were saying, how come he didn’t call her out? You know, on certain things she said that were incorrect. I said he will not call her out.

John Gormley is a lawyer, former Member of Parliament and host of The John Gormley Show.

Only three moments for me, she was stymied by Murray Mandryk’s question on large farms, small towns, she looked like a deer in the headlights. God, if you were born and raised in Saskatchewan, you know the answer to that question. Then her budget plans are, quote, fully costed and supported by Ron Styles. Ron Styles, who’s on the NDP campaign team. That’s your background. And then there was the little shot “It took Russia invading Ukraine for you to balance your budget.” She said that off mic. And I thought, you know, I don’t know what that means. So I found three weaknesses in her performance. If there was a weakness in Scott Moe’s, he didn’t push back harder on her. But I think he had an impediment.

FENWICK: I agree with John. One of the impediments I want to counter? Just one thing, though, part of the thing that any government has is an impediment that they’ve already been in power for a number of years, in this case, 17, so it’s really difficult for governments to see him genuine and make, quote unquote, new promises when they’re the ones that have been in power. And could have done that. So that is a challenge. I agree that Scott did a good job of not losing his temper. He has a reputation for having short views, and he was able to contain that last night. So that’s a good thing. I want to counter one thing that John said, though, and that’s about Ron Styles. Ron Styles is a lifelong non-political person who has come out of the woodwork because he thinks we need to see some changes in Saskatchewan. This is a former deputy minister of the province and a former head of the of the Crown Investments Corporation. So this guy knows what he’s talking about, and he’s not a lifelong partisan political person, so I think we can put some credence in what he has to say.

GORMLEY: Yes, I would disagree. I was counting the days after 2007 when Ron Styles would be moved on. So I expressed surprise at the time on this radio show. You know, but Ron Styles was able to survive through the government flip in the NDP days. I was not a signatory member of the Ron Styles fan club. So again, you and I will disagree on where we see Ron Styles in all of this.

I think a debate causes leaders to point fingers more and try and attack the other side, as opposed to focus on what the good things that they will bring to the table are. Would you. Agree?

GORMLEY: Oh, absolutely. You know, and what you do on your positive talking points is you reiterate your ballot question and again, with the caveat that an opposition leader also has to appear premier-like and you, of course, want to deflect and contrast or distinguish between you and your opponent. I heard some talking heads in advance of the debate, saying, you know, we may hear promises. And I thought, you know, that would be the first time we ever heard a promise in an election. So, yeah, I’m with you on that one.

FENWICK: I think there were some missed opportunities last night, probably for both of them. Where I think that Carla missed an opportunity was when Scott tried to challenge her on the costing of the NDP financial plan. And from a purely partisan political perspective, if I was her, I think I would have said, “Look, you brought down a budget six months ago that made some predictions. And three months later, you changed it by half a billion dollars. Three months after that, you changed it by another half billion. Nobody who changes their budget predictions by a billion dollars in six months should be lecturing me on whether our program is properly costed.” I think she missed an opportunity to point that out.

Kevin Fenwick is a Saskatchewan mediator and facilitator, former Deputy Minister of Justice and Saskatchewan’s provincial ombudsman.

If the style is something that you are attracted to? Let’s talk a little bit about what we saw last night in terms of style.

FENWICK: I agree with you, and I think style has a lot to do with it. It’s about how you make people feel. Personally, I don’t like the phrase “It’s time for a change.” That doesn’t tell me anything. But I also recognize that when a government’s been in place for a long time, you know, they build up baggage. I think you said last week, it’s like putting stones in the backpack, etc. So sometimes people who are thinking about a change need to look for an excuse to do that, and style might do that. It’s how you feel negatively about potentially the government or positively about the opposition. So yeah, I think it’s huge.

GORMLEY: You know, I’m always mindful of Marshall McLuhan. A lot has changed since the 1950s when he started writing on media, but what never has is TV is the coolest of all the media. You know, on television, you smile with your eyes. You don’t emote the same way you do on the radio. So, you know, the strongest opposition on TV you do when somebody’s saying a whopper is you smile, you shake your head gradually, and you look like you’re dealing with a petulant child. You don’t say, no, no. I found Carla Beck a couple of times looking angry. You know, her neck had that sort of stretched look, where she’d look and go, No, and it sounded like she was really upset with a bad child. That doesn’t work on television. It works really well on radio. So on a style points, Scott Moe had that slight smile, sort of that bemused look, again, channeling the Ronald Reagan approach to TV, which was always to look bemused. So on style points, I give it to Scott Moe.

I want to push you on something from last week, Kevin, we were chatting, and in one of your answers, we were close to the end of a segment, you used the word “grave concerns” when you were talking about the current Minister of Justice, and we didn’t get a chance to dig into that, but I wanted to bring it up because I wanted to hear what your thoughts are and what your concerns are.

FENWICK: Evan, there are very few issues that I will speak at length about on this program, where I talk about my personal opinions. But this is one of them. In Canada, most provinces have two different roles, the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General. In Saskatchewan and several provinces, those roles are combined, but we have to remember they are distinct. The Minister of Justice is a minister like any other minister. They’re responsible for programming and some large P political stuff, etc. But the role of the Attorney General is different. It’s special. In my opinion, the primary role for the attorney general is to uphold the rule of law, to give advice to the Premier and the rest of cabinet on what they can do and cannot do to preserve democracy by preserving that rule of law, to say that nobody, including government is above the rule of law. The Attorney General should be telling the government if they are thinking about breaking the law, for example, like, oh, I don’t know, maybe not paying a carbon tax that’s already been ruled on by the by the Supreme Court as being legitimate. This minister, rather, this attorney general, has apparently advised cabinet that it’s okay to do that. That’s Bronwyn Eyre. There are lots of good people in the Sask. Party. There are lots of good people in the NDP. I don’t I know Bronwyn Eyre personally, but it causes me grave concern to think that the attorney general would be advising the government to break the law. To be saying that the government is above the law that is fundamentally opposed to one of the basic tenants of democracy.

GORMLEY: You know, I don’t entirely. I mean, there was an argument about the applicability of the carbon tax, and again, yes, the Supreme Court had upheld it. But the Supreme Court never weighed in, because it wasn’t asked at the time if you could differentially charge the tax in one part of the country, not charging it in the Atlantic, and anyone using home heating oil, which is four times more, quote, polluting the natural gas. Yes, or you know, can you differentiate regions? You’ll charge it in regions you won’t. So, again, I don’t know what legal opinions the government obtained, either in house from Kevin’s former department, or that they got from outside counsel, but Bronwyn Eyre is an interesting political figure. She has a law degree. She is not a member of the bar, but she wrote extensively on legal issues. She was involved in a number of European legal journals. In terms of IQ, she is, hands down, one of the brightest people you’re going to meet in politics. I don’t include Kevin in this group, but there was a bit of snippets in the bar, because typically, the person who holds both those dual roles of Attorney General, Minister of Justice, is a member of the bar, or recently was, so they’re a practicing lawyer. She’s not. There was a little bit of uppityness from a lot of lawyers, you know, sniff, sniff. You know, how dare this mere non lawyer be the Minister of Justice. That’s not without precedent either in different Canadian governments. So now I go to the highest esteemed Attorney General of all time, the Deputy Premier named Roy Romanow, who personally oversaw a threat to expropriate the entire potash industry in 1975 and the run up to the election, he said potash wasn’t on the table to expropriate. I mean, there was an issue on potash taxation. I go to Chris Axworthy and Bob Mitchell, who led the battle for Saskatchewan against the Fed’s C 68 the registry of long guns. And if I’m not mistaken, Bob Mitchell did talk about differential law enforcement if Ottawa and Alan Rock were going to seize your long guns in Saskatchewan. So I would respectfully disagree with my friend that Bronwyn Eyre is somehow an outlier. Yes, she’s gotten involved in some political decisions, and yes, she upholds justice in the province, but let’s not do the dance of the seven veils. Attorney generals are still a member of the cabinet, and they’re still advancing the government’s agenda.

FENWICK: I appreciate your examples, John, but I think there’s a significant difference. None of those examples that you gave were examples of an attorney general advising the breaking of the law. We have a Supreme Court ruling here with respect to the carbon tax. We live in a democracy. There’s a way to fix that. It’s called an election, if you don’t like what the law says. It’s called electing a different government federally, and the law will change, as it would appear by the polls is likely to happen. The answer is not to say it’s okay to break the law. There’s lots of taxes that I pay that I’m not too crazy about either, but I think if I decided I wasn’t going to pay them, you know, Bronwyn Eyre and the rest of that cabinet would probably send somebody down my lane in order to collect that tax. So this is a significant issue, and it’s a dangerous issue.

Listen to Week 2 of the panel on the Evan Bray Show

GORMLEY: But the differential application of the tax, I mean, is that something that you say is okay? Is it okay to say the Atlantic does not pay the exact tax that you’re going to pay as a Saskatchewanian? Yet the court didn’t weigh in on that?

FENWICK: Yeah, you’re splitting hairs there. That’s not what the law said. The law says we don’t pay on home heating oil, which happens to be used more in the Maritimes. So that’s right. You know, it’s differential in Saskatchewan as well. I happen to heat my house with propane. I’m still paying the carbon tax, so it’s differentially applied here as well.

Do you think that if Pierre Poilievre is the next prime minister he’ll say “Don’t worry about it Saskatchewan and the rest of the provinces, sorry, you’ve been paying it.” Or are we in for some sort of a back check payment that we’re going to have to make as a province?

GORMLEY: Hard to tell. Depending on if and how he dismantles the carbon tax, which is now increasingly, I think, in the effective, in terms of what the goal was, and inequitable to certain families that pay it. If he scraps it, I think the whole thing becomes moot.

FENWICK: I can’t imagine that Pierre Poilievre as the prime minister could say to Saskatchewan, “You know what, you’re fine. Don’t worry about that money.” They’d have to work out something so that we would either pay it back or have something deducted somewhere else. It’s just not going to go away, because there are nine other provinces and three territories who would be screaming bloody murder if it did.

Are there any topics right now, this close to the actual voting and booths being opened, that the leaders of the party should avoid talking about?

GORMLEY: One of the issues, and it was completely overlooked last night in the debate, is the so called Family Rights law, aka pronouns. The province says, look, it’s inappropriate for stuff to go on in classrooms. Kids to change their names, change their genders, without the parents being looped in. So they change the Education Policy. Both the school boards and the radical left wing activists say, “Who cares?” So then they change the Education Act. Now it’s being litigated. It’s been before the Court of Appeal last week. 90 per cent of people believe parents should be notified if a child wants to change gender, change name. 60 per cent of people believe the parents should legally consent. Both of those are provided for in this act. The NDP has made this a hill to die on up till now at the doors, especially with new Canadians, who spend a lot more time with larger families and faith. Tell a new Canadian they have no right to be told their child is changing their gender, that’s going to go down in flames. The Sask. Party wants to avoid it because it’s even divided some of their center right, centrist voting base who says, “Why are you making such a big fuss? Just leave the pronouns alone.” So nobody’s talking pronouns because they all want it to go away and they want school boards to do the right thing.

FENWICK: If I’m Carla Beck, I avoid talking about how I’m different from the federal NDP and the federal NDP policies. And she said that time and time again, and she can point to the evidence that you know that Jagmeet Singh broke with the federal Liberals, and that she’s the one that introduced the no carbon tax resolution in the legislature and all that stuff. But if you talk about federal NDP and Saskatchewan NDP in the same sentence. That’s all people hear. So if I’m her, I’m avoiding that topic, even to defend it.

GORMLEY: Both of those topics uniquely apply to the first rule of politics. If you’re explaining you’re losing. The explanation of the parents’ rights law takes a long time to explain. The Sask party’s losing the more they’re talking trying to distinguish the NDP federally, provincially, it’s a long explanation, you’re losing, so just avoid it.

How much should communication by all parties be focused on your base versus focused on fringe voters who you’re trying to claw into your group and ultimately get their vote?

GORMLEY:  The dynamic of politics in the electoral sense is always move strong to weak. So you fish where the fish are. You go to your supporters. You shore up your base. If your base is not enough to get you over the top, you move more quickly to those who are in the middle. You always will move to those in the middle, because you want to strengthen and grow that base. But unless the base is both solidified and identified, until that happens, you don’t start moving other directions.

FENWICK: Evan, this is the topic that’s puzzled me in terms of the government’s approach with respect to this election. I think I’ve talked about it before. Their base is strong. The question is, are they content winning some of those rural seats with 60 per cent of the vote, rather than 70 per cent of the vote. That’s what they seem to be concentrating on, primarily the base. That is certainly what they’ve been concentrating on for the last four years. I think this election turns on the former Sask. Party people who are kind of in that center-moderate area, the people who fit in what in politics is called the big tent that Brad Wall put together. Scott Moe has moved that tent, that group of people in the base, further to the right, and the tent has got smaller. So this election, I think, is going to turn on. What happens with those more moderates that are not necessarily part of the base?

Kevin, I’ll start with you. Last week you said 32 seat win for the Sask Party. I could hear your reluctance, but I feel like that’s where you landed. Where are you at this week?

FENWICK: If you remember, I also said that I think that the trend is as important as the actual numbers are, and based on what I’m hearing. I don’t think this is just my heart speaking, based on what I’m hearing, that trend continues. I had a good conversation this week with somebody who’s working in the Sask. Party, and they’ve put another small urban into the danger category for Sask. Party. So I’m going this week 31-30 Sask. Party.

John, are you changing? You were at 38 to 40 seat win for the Sask. Party last week.

GORMLEY:  I am boringly consistent for the third week running. I’m saying 38 to 40 Sask. Party seats.

Listen to Week 1 of the panel on The Evan Bray Show