SASK VOTES 2024: What to expect during Wednesday’s leaders’ debate

Carla Beck and Scott Moe have faced off against each other many times in the legislative building, so the leaders’ debate for the 2024 provincial election won’t be different in that way, but this time they won’t have the rules of Question Period to confine them.

The Sask. NDP and Sask. Party leaders will hit the debate stage Wednesday evening in the legislative building to try to gain the support of voters. The debate will be broadcast live on 980 CJME and 650 CKOM, starting at 6:05 p.m.

Daniel Westlake, an assistant political science professor at the University of Saskatchewan, said he isn’t expecting anything too surprising in the hour-long debate. Instead, he said it will likely be a lot of what voters have already heard over the past two weeks on the campaign trail.

Westlake said he expects Beck to try to take Moe to task for his record in government.

“If you’re an opposition party facing a government that’s been in power for 17 years and in the middle of an increase in cost of living, that’s kind of what you’d expect every opposition party to do,” Westlake explained.

He said Beck will likely try to steer things toward where the NDP thinks the Sask. Party is most vulnerable.

“The NDP, I think, would be happy if they could spend most of the debate talking about cost of living, and perhaps access to health care and stuff, and really making it be about the past two or three years as opposed to what’s going to happen next,” said Westlake.

For the Sask Party, Westlake said Moe could end up defending his record and hitting back on some of the western identity issues, like the importance of building natural resources and trying to tie the Sask. NDP to the federal Liberals and NDP.

“If the Sask. Party could get a debate that is focused largely on federal-provincial relations, on the trade-offs between natural resource development and environmental policy, that’s probably more of a win for them,” said Westlake.

He said he expects things to get reasonably heated and for there to be a robust debate, but not for civility to break down and name calling to start, as has been seen in some of the more recent political debates in the U.S. Westlake said the person doing the shouting and name-calling usually starts to look bad in the eyes of voters.

“At some point you stop looking like somebody who aught to be considered as a potential candidate for premier,” he said.

These days, Westlake said most leaders are capable enough to steer the debate where they want to take it, so it gets to be a pretty even tug of war.

“Most of the time (a debate) becomes a venue for leaders to get out their message, which – if they’ve been effective at doing that throughout the campaign – it shouldn’t really change very much,” he said.

If you want to have some extra fun during the debate, print out one of our bingo cards and play Buzzword Bingo during the Saskatchewan Leaders’ Debate.