Regina Douglas Park is Heating Up II

By Greg Hluska

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that the Saskatchewan Party was holding its nomination meeting for Regina Douglas Park on August 12, 2009.  Well, that meeting has come and gone and the Saskatchewan Party finally has a candidate.  Regina based lawyer, Kathleen Peterson was acclaimed and will be squaring off against Dwain Lingenfelter and Victor Becker Lau in the (hopefully) soon-t0-be-announced by-election.

While I am looking forward to watching this race unfold, I’m feeling a little bit let down by the preliminaries.  The Saskatchewan Party’s site contains a particularly troubling quote that may signal the tone for this election.  Peterson was quoted as saying, “The NDP vision is focused on the past, with leadership that represents a time in Saskatchewan’s history when both the economy and population were shrinking.”  I don’t think that the Saskatchewan electoral system needs negative campaigning, especially when there are so many constructive things to say about our constituency.

I live in Regina Douglas Park and am especially interested in hearing about some troubling trends in our constituency.  Our area has been particularly hard hit by the condo-ification of Regina and when I vote, I will vote with housing in mind.  We are a young constituency, so I am also quite interested in hearing how our candidates feel about higher education in our province.

The most interesting part of the whole statement is that almost exactly two years ago, a poster named Kathleen Peterson wrote the following on a CBC web page:

This sort of message does not resonate with me. I do not like it when politicians try to “frighten” me instead of talking about their own policies. To me, this says that “the Sask Party is even worse than us, so you better vote for the lesser of two evils” — hardly a good reason to vote for any party. I am insulted by the implication that I am so uninformed and so simple in the head that I need to be “scared” into voting for the incumbent party. The NDP need to change the record — this one is getting boring.

While there is no way to know if they are, in fact, the same person, I would be inclined to cast my vote for the Kathleen Peterson who posted on the CBC’s site.  She made some brilliant points that resonate strongly with me.  While they make for great sound bytes, negative politics are incredibly boring and are likely part of why so few Canadians choose to vote.

Please candidates, run for office on your policies, not on  your personal attacks.  Once you are elected, you will have plenty of time to insult your colleagues during question period.