There was a time when Saskatchewan politics was about something. You might recall it. There was a time when its politics broke new ground and it carved out a national reputation as a small province that thinks big.

Long ago, Saskatchewan was the birthplace of a prairie populist experiment in social democracy called the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, which eventually morphed into the New Democratic Party. It introduced publicly funded health care, first with hospital coverage and then more broadly with universal, publicly funded medicare that insured doctor services. The summer of 1962 was a momentous and controversial time that attracted international attention, especially when doctors withdrew their services for 23 days before they reached an agreement with the government. It was a seminal moment that laid the foundation for the establishment, later in the decade, of Canada’s current national system of medicare.

In the 1960s, there were also big debates about how to maximize benefits from the province’s significant natural resource wealth. A left-right struggle emerged on the merits of public or private ownership of resource development. Under a decidedly free-enterprise provincial Liberal government, private investment flowed into the province to establish a potash mining sector. Then, in the 1970s, an NDP government embarked on an agenda of public ownership, which led to creation of government-owned resource companies for potash, uranium and oil and gas. There was even a government land bank. In the 1980s the cycle took another dramatic turn, as a Conservative government privatized or scrapped those same resource companies.

There were other moments when the debate revolved around the shape and fate of the rural economy. It was a time of partisan debate between orderly marketing versus greater market freedom. Politics was framed by issues of whether to preserve statutory freight rates for grain or, alternatively, eliminate the “Crow Rate” and incentivize greater agricultural competition and diversification. The government land bank created in the 1970s acquired farmland ostensibly as a transition mechanism to sell back to a new generation of farmers. It too was abandoned by the the Conservative government.

Those were the days.

In the October 2024 Saskatchewan election, the Saskatchewan Party government won its fifth consecutive majority. Starting in 2007, the Sask Party has won each time with more than 50 per cent of the vote. It has become a dynasty equalled only by the 20-year reign of CCF-NDP governments from 1944 to 1964. Admittedly, this time the Sask Party won eight seats fewer than last time: 34 seats in the 61-seat provincial legislature, with 52.5 per cent of the vote. A resurgent NDP won 27 seats, up from 14, with 40.2 per cent of the vote.

Beyond the NDP’s almost complete dominance of the two major cities of Regina and Saskatoon, the Sask Party maintained its vise-like grip on rural Saskatchewan. In small urban and rural constituencies, the Saskatchewan Party–NDP gap in the popular vote was much more pronounced, with the Sask Party amassing more than 70 per cent of the vote. No party has ever held such a dominant position in rural Saskatchewan for so long. Even during the 20-year reign of the CCF-NDP, only twice did it reach 50 per cent of the total vote.

Overhanging it all is the electoral map. The stark rural-urban divide, where the NDP dominates Regina and Saskatoon and the Sask Party rules rural Saskatchewan, creates a huge governance challenge. The 26 seats in the two cities represent more than 500,000 people, almost half the provincial population; the Sask Party was able to win only one of those seats. How to bridge the two solitudes of Saskatchewan politics has now become a significant factor in shaping its public policy.

For the NDP, the challenge is how to make inroads back into rural Saskatchewan, where the CCF-NDP once dominated large regions of the province. The NDP has never recovered from the transformation of the rural economy from smaller family farm units, the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool and orderly marketing to the large corporate farms and open markets of today. The numbers don’t lie. Thirty years ago, there were 70,000 farms in Saskatchewan; today there are fewer than 30,000.

It is important to consider the context and details of the campaign itself, which was focused largely on health and education. Most striking was the lack of any significant defining or wedge issues separating the parties. Their platforms were, in many respects, distinctions without a difference. In fact, outside observers could be excused if they felt confused about which party had what priorities.

The NDP campaigned on tax cuts, specifically elimination of the provincial gas tax for six months and elimination of the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and groceries. The Sask Party promised to reduce income taxes and not raise other taxes. Both parties promised to increase funding to health care and education, with the NDP promising more. They both promised measures to address crime. The NDP promised to balance the budget by 2028–29, while the Sask Party, which has run budget deficits for the majority of its 17 years in office, said it would balance the budget by 2027–28.

Neither party offered any innovative programs. This was most evident in health care. There was no vision beyond spending more to address what might be called a “health crisis.” As is the case across the country, Saskatchewan’s health care system is under severe strain, with overflowing emergency rooms, long waiting lists for surgeries and a severe shortage of family doctors. Other than promises to hire more doctors, nurses and other health care workers, no one was willing to tackle reforming the delivery of care, which countless experts and those working in health care say is critical. Nor was it clear how to train and attract the people needed in the competitive reality where every province is desperate to do the same.

The campaigns for both parties were utterly silent on climate change. Nor was there any significant focus on off-reserve Indigenous-related issues in urban areas, particularly how to address poverty and the need for better educational outcomes.

The conclusion is inescapable. The two parties’ “Tweedledum Tweedledee” campaigns are a sad residue of the fierce ideological debates of decades past. It’s impossible not to notice how much times have changed – and most specifically, how the centre of Saskatchewan politics has moved to the right, with both parties agreeing on the main issues and arguing over small differences.