IN THE ROBINOPTICON PART 1: The SILA cosmology
To the men and women from the Saskatchewan Independent Living Association who crowd around the tiny table just to the left of the entryway of the Robin's Donuts and play gin rummy or something all day: I think I know what you're thinking when you stare at me every morning when I stop in to grab a coffee, but you're mistaken. I am not the Devil walking among you. Please stop staring at me like I've come for your souls. I'm there for a jumbo coffee, one cream, waffle sleeve and correct change. Is it the red shirt?
I.T.R. PART 2: The Elwin Hermanson billboard
Those of you who read and remember my entries will recall that there used to be a gigantic ass on a billboard visible from Robin's Donuts. The ass wasn't gigantic by nature but by representation, but that hardly matters when you're driving to work in the early hours and a gigantic ass bursting with rock 'n' roll attitude threatens to distract your eyes from the road. Eventually the advertisers slapped up Censored posters to cover up the offending ass, and its power was harnessed. Now the ass is gone and the fishlike charmless face of Elwin Hermanson, leader of the know-nuthin' Saskatchewan Party, grins palely down at traffic.
Hermanson is a politician decanted from the sweatiest nightmares of NDP members: a rural fundamentalist with the rhetoric (but not the policies) of a populist, a family farmer with a few notions on how to get this province back to its full glory, back when... um... well, who knows? Back in those glorious days when the sun shone in sepia. When social assistance, visible aboriginal people and maybe even the motor car were mythical beasts. His platform? To increase the population of population by 100,000 (a little over 10 percent) in the next ten years. I have a few slogans in mind: "Fuck, Saskatchewan, Fuck!" or "Pump-a-Thon 2010".
Barring an injunction to be fruitful and multiply, though, Hermanson's plan to keep people in the province and draw more in is simply the latest sack for a soft mewling mass of the usual right-wing ideas: tax cuts for people, tax cuts for small business, tax cuts for big business, cuts for crown corporations, and of course, "Invest[ing] in the priority areas of health, education, community infrastructure and highways". Good luck with that, Elwin. Let's hope you've got enough tax revenue to hand out bottles of aspirin to the hordes of go-getters that will surely overrun our entreprenurial Eden once we become a cut-rate resource-poor Alberta. Bring on the call centres and the stink of hog barns.
The most interesting aspect of the Grow Saskatchewan plan is what it neglects to mention. Here's the knotty truth about this province: the overall population is declining but the First Nations population is projected to be the dominant ethnic group within a few decades. And when I say ethnic, I'm talking about all subdivsions of sweating, lusting, smiling and buying humanity, honkies included. Even in the ten years I've lived in this province, I've seen the urban demographic slowly heave over. Regina is losing its pale pasty face. In under thirty years the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College has grown from an enrollment of 9 students to a yearly average of 1200.
That's a pretty healthy growth rate, wouldn't you say? Grow, Saskatchewan! If you read the Sask Party's handbook or scan its website, though, you won't find a mention of this demographic change. Just pages 16-17 in their 2002 handbook, a mix of warm platitudes and poorly hidden paranoia that characterize Western Canadian racism. You can detect the mingled contempt and fear in the Grow Saskatchewan platform, or the achingly bad Sask Party commercials featuring white families packing their bags and waving goodbye to their salmon-housed neighbourhoods. Farewell, white family! Best of luck in the money paradise of Alberta! Will you come back if this plate of whitefish we call a politician ends up as the next premier of Saskatchewan? 'Cause, you know, he probably will.
Retracted on 2003-07-30::6:10 p.m.
parode - exode