The western Wall

The western Wall

Media elite reporting on Saskatchewan brings comical results

Brad Wall has been re-elected the premier of Saskatchewan by a landslide.

The final results were not available by the time this newspaper went to press. But put it this way: Tommy Douglas, Canada's first official saint (the second being Pierre Trudeau) never received more than 54% of the popular vote in that province. An opinion poll last week put Wall's Saskatchewan Party at 66%, with the man himself at a stratospheric 83% in personal approval.

Here's another statistic for you: 4.1%. That's the new jobless rate in Saskatchewan, as of Friday. That's down from 4.6% last month. So now it's barely half that of Ontario. Saskatchewan is a have province. Ontario isn't anymore. There's news out here.

It's tempting for the consensus media to ignore Saskatchewan. It has barely a million citizens, and most people in the centre of the universe will never go there it's flyover country for our media elites. So you won't learn anything about Saskatchewan by reading the Toronto Globe and Mail or watching the CBC. But you'll learn a fair bit about the media themselves.

Take the Globe's unintentionally funny story yesterday about Wall's looming win. Here's their headline: "Wall's lead unhurt by wheat-board feud."

The Canadian Wheat Board forces prairie farmers to sell their wheat only to the government but lets Ontario farmers sell their wheat to whomever they choose. The Globe is puzzled that Wall's opposition to the wheat board's bullying hasn't hurt him. Because everyone on Front Street in Toronto knows that the wheat board is what farmers want.

Perhaps we will see another headline from the Globe about how Wall's stubborn refusal to deliver half his speeches in French surprisingly did not hurt his electoral chances, either. Or how shocking it is that Wall didn't lose the election, with his inexplicable opposition to having Saskatchewan duck-hunters register their shotguns.

The Globe is on a bit of a roll, reporting news about the prairies from downtown Toronto. Last month, when Alison Redford­ that is, a woman ­became Alberta's new premier, the Globe ran a banner headline, "Alberta steps into the present." Yes, Alberta has won the approval of Toronto's opinion elites ­ Alberta, home of the Famous Five suffragettes; Alberta, home of the first woman magistrate in the British Empire. Yes, those Alberta dinosaurs now have the grudging respect of the Globe, which has yet to appoint a woman editor-in-chief. Sometimes the Toronto narrative about the west is so strong, mere facts can't get in the way. After the 1999 election in Saskatchewan, Paul Wells gave his assessment in the National Post. The NDP "makes it look so easy,"he wrote. "Saskatchewanians wonder how long Roy Romanow's dynasty can last," and "New Democrats everywhere wish his luck would rub off."

Really? You wouldn't know that the Saskatchewan Party had just won the popular vote in that election, and pushed Romanow's governing NDP into a minority position ­ enough to make Romanow call it quits. At least yesterday when Heather Hiscox, a CBC reporter, said this election was a "close race," she said it before the landslide had happened, not after.

Oh well. Let the Globe and the rest of the consensus media nurse their fantasies about the prairies. Judging by how few Saskatchewanians watch the CBC or read the Globe, no-one out here even cares.

EZRA LEVANT, QMI AGENCY