"The Little Thief From Swift Current"

Dwain Lingenfelter clearly frustrated

In the Saskatchewan Legislature, NDP leader Dwain Lingenfelter recently slip the frustration that he -- and a limited number of Saskatchewan's citizens -- have been feeling with Premier Brad Wall and the Saskatchewan Party government.

In an unparliamentary outburst, Lingenfelter harrangued Wall as "the little thief from Swift Current".

It makes one wonder: precisely what did Wall steal?

Perhaps in Lingenfelter's mind, it's government. And popularity.

In fact, a recent poll indicates that 68% of Saskatchewan's citizens approve of the job Wall has been doing as Premier of Saskatchewan, and that 58% would vote for the Saskatchewan Party in a future election.

That leaves Dwain Lingenfelter and the NDP in a very bad way -- facing the prospect of relegation to the opposition benches for a good, long while.

If one were to believe certain idiots, the Brad Wall government has been an unmitigated disaster for the people of Saskatchewan. The problem is that the people clearly don't agree with that assessment.

Whether Lingenfelter, his party and their assorted harpies care to admit it or not, it seems that the party's over in Saskatchewan for their particular brand of socialism.

Citizens of Saskatchewan have caught on to the fact that something had to be seriously remiss for one of the world's wealthiest regions in terms of per-capita resources to have lagged so far behind its neighbours in terms of economic development.

A study prepared by 49North Resources offers some answers that the NDP and their harpies may not want to hear.

Saskatchewan lagged behind its neighbours in locally-raised capital, as NDP governments introduced disincentives to local investment, then objected when the Grant Devine government acted to remove them.

While Lorne Calvert's NDP government began to exploit policy advantages over competing jurisdictions -- recognizing far too late the limitations of centrally-planned socialism -- these policy advantages have been expanded under the Wall government, and the process accelerated. The advantages speak for themselves:

These policy advantages speak for themselves to anyone well-schooled in the kind of economic doctrines produced by socialists. Faced by the compounding failures of their socialist policies, the NDP themselves cleared the way for freer market success, now to be pursued by genuine free marketeers.

What has emerged is a repudiation of the long-failed economic doctrines of the NDP -- beginning with Tommy Douglas' plans to nationalize Saskatchewan's oil industry under a co-operative model that failed to materialize due to the disincentives coupled with his plan.

(Of course, Douglas' socialism is one that would seem oddly alien to the modern-day acolytes of socialism -- it featured healthy doses of workfare.)

But with the economic failures of the NDP recognized by the party itself, there's no sign that the citizens of Saskatchewan are prepared to turn back to the authors of Saskatchewan's economic under-development any time soon.