You might not have known it, but Saskatchewan held a provincial election this past week, which turned out to be largely a re-hash of its last election in 2011. The Saskatchewan Party, led by Premier Brad Wall, maintained a strong majority government. For what it’s worth, in the run-up to election day we sent out a questionnaire to candidates of all parties in multiple ridings and attended as many candidates’ fora as we could in order to get a sense of where each party stood on issues related to climate change and climate justice. You can see our highlights on the graphic below. As the graphic makes clear, Saskatchewan has re-elected a government with an abysmal record on climate change and seemingly little concern for an issue of grave importance to this province, to Canada, and to the rest of the world. Disconcertingly, though, while the Sask Party clearly scored lowest among all parties in this year’s election, no one party stood out in viably addressing this critical issue. The highest grade we were able to bestow was a middling C+.
If you would like to see candidates’ answers in more detail, along with greater analysis from CJS, please take a look at our PDF here: Election grades. A big thanks is owed to Mark Bigland-Pritchard, who led this effort.