One gets the burning desire in Western Canada 鈥� and particularly in rural Saskatchewan 鈥� to send Ottawa a loud message it can鈥檛 ignore.
One can even understand the need to hit Ottawa and/or the federal Liberal where it hurts the most, politically speaking.
But in our zeal to send a loud message to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, maybe it would be smart to slow down a bit and put some thought towards how we should approach matters. The last thing we need to do is something that actually hurts ourselves.
That would seem the wise approach for Premier Scott Moe and his Saskatchewan Party government as it floats out the notions of this province having its own tax collection system and immigration policies.
Perhaps they don鈥檛 sound like the worst ideas a government has ever come up with.
This government鈥檚 stated goal of the Moe government to grow the province by 100,000 jobs and to 1.4 million people (roughly adding 225,538 people) by 2030.
Meeting these lofty and noble goals will require policy nimbleness. After all, the lion鈥檚 share of the 170,000 additional people in Saskatchewan in the past 14 years have been due to new Canadians 鈥� the result of a solid immigration investment program put in place by the former NDP government and wisely kept and nurtured by the current Sask. Party government.
For this reason, one gets why the provincial government would want more control on how it developments its immigration attraction policies. And given that there is a precedent for what Moe is proposing, getting more control from Ottawa make that much more sense.
鈥淲e have the template in Quebec that we can replicate here in Saskatchewan,鈥� Moe told reporters.
鈥淓ssentially what the province of Quebec has.鈥�
Quebec has managed to get special dispensation from the federal government so that it can put forward its own plans for immigration that are based on economic, family and humanitarian considerations.
Perhaps on a similar vein, Moe also spoke of his idea in the 鈥渧ery preliminary鈥� stage for the province to collect its own income tax 鈥� an idea similar to the one what United Conservative Party Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is now contemplating.
But maybe it鈥檚 about here where we should reflect on whether these are good ideas are in our best interests or something we just doing to make a costly point.
As a political strategy, neither collecting our own taxes nor having significantly more control over our own immigration hits Ottawa very hard.
Or at least, it certainly wouldn鈥檛 have the same impact as Alberta suggesting of opting out of the Canada Pension Plan in favour of an Alberta program similar to the Quebec Pension Plan. (Although that notion has a whole series of other areas of potential pitfalls for this or any other government venturing into the dangers of running its own investment fund.)
What it would most certainly do, however, is burden Saskatchewan taxpayers with having to fill out two tax forms like they do in Quebec. It would also burden taxpayers with setting up a whole other bureaucracy when governments are trying to find ways to cut costs and red tape.
Similarly, monitoring more immigration and investment would also require additional provincial resources. And more monitoring would clearly be needed.
Just take a look at some of the problems at Regina鈥檚 Global Transportation Hub with the Global Trade and Exhibition Centre, where Chinese investors are making serious allegations about what鈥檚 happened to their investment. It could get messy, with the government caught in the line of fire.
It鈥檚 great to consider new ideas and talk about more autonomy.
But we do need to take a serious look at whether these notions are really and truly in our best interests.
Murray Mandryk has been covering provincial politics for over 22 years.
