The Politics of Saskatchewan relate to the Canadian federal political system, along with the other Canadian provinces. Saskatchewan has a lieutenant-governor, who is the representative of the Crown in right of Saskatchewan; a premier—currently Scott Moe—leading the cabinet; and a legislative assembly. As of the most recent provincial election in 2024, the province is divided into 61 electoral districts, each of which elects a representative to the legislature, who becomes their member, or MLA. In 2024, Moe's Saskatchewan Party was elected to a majority government. Regina is the provincial capital.
As of the most recent federal election in 2021, Saskatchewan elects 14 members to Canada's 338-member Parliament.
Politics in Saskatchewan have historically been shaped by the province's heavily agricultural and mineral resource-based economy. Politics have also been influenced by an enduring sense of western alienation within Canadian politics, tying its political history in with its western Canadian counterparts in British Columbia, Manitoba, and especially neighbouring Alberta. The province still has a unique political history, and is notable for having elected the first social democratic government in Canada in 1944, when Tommy Douglas' Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) won its first of five consecutive majority governments. Under the CCF, the province pioneered universal medicare within Canada and was known for government ownership of key economic sectors. In the twenty-first century, politics in the province have been dominated by the conservative Saskatchewan Party and the federal Conservative Party.
Legislature
The Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan is the deliberative assembly of the Saskatchewan Legislature in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada. Bills passed by the assembly are given royal assent by the King in Right of Saskatchewan(represented by the Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan). The legislature meets at the Saskatchewan Legislative Building in Regina.
There are 61 constituencies in the province, which elect members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) to the Legislative Assembly. All are single-member districts, though the cities of Regina, Saskatoon and Moose Jaw have been represented by multi-member constituencies in the past.
The legislature has been unicameral since its establishment; there has never been a provincial upper house.
Political history
From founding to the Great Depression Saskatchewan entered Confederation on September 1, 1905, alongside Alberta, with both provinces being carved out of the North-West Territories. Territorial premier Frederick Haultain had advocated for the creation of one large western province, which he wanted to call Buffalo. However, the federal Liberal government under Wilfrid Laurier, wary of the potential power of a large western province, opted to create two provinces on the western Prairies instead. Moreover, as had been the case with Manitoba in 1870, the federal government withheld natural resource rights from the new provinces, instead paying grants to the provinces—a situation that remained a point of contention until the Natural Resource Transfer Acts gave Alberta and Saskatchewan their resource rights in 1930. Not happy with these developments, Haultain served as the leader of the Provincial Rights Party from 1905 until 1912 and vied to become Saskatchewan premier. The party had been the territorial Conservative Association, and would return to the Conservative name in 1912. Despite Haultain's efforts, the early political history of the province was dominated by the Liberal Party. Liberal Walter Scott was Premier from 1905 until 1916, and remains the second-longest tenured premier in Saskatchewan history.
The Liberals achieved their dominance through close associations with farmers, especially through the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association, and the large immigrant communities that were populating the Prairies in the early part of the twentieth century. Moreover, Saskatchewan Liberals positioned themselves to fill important roles in the federal Liberal cabinet; for example, premiers Charles Dunning and James Gardiner both became key cabinet members in William Lyon Mackenzie King's governments, including the latter as Minister of Agriculture. This reality staved off the impact of the Progressive Party movement, which with the United Farmer parties of several provinces, disrupted the Canada's two-party system and won power in both Alberta and Manitoba in the 1920s.
Before 1944, the only interruption in Liberal rule came after the 1929 election. Although the Liberals won the most seats with 28, they were short of a majority government. James T.M. Anderson, whose Conservatives won 24 seats, secured the support of the remaining members to form a coalition government, which was known as the "Co-operative" government. Anderson ran a largely nativist campaign, and was known to have been closely associated with the provincial branch of the Ku Klux Klan, which supported his election. Anderson became premier at the outset of the Great Depression, and conditions became so severe on the Prairies that not a single Conservative won a seat in the following election; in fact, only two Conservatives were elected again before 1975—one in a 1953 by-election and one in 1964.
The Depression and the CCF The Prairies were ravaged by the Great Depression, where severe economic recession was joined by dust bowl conditions to create disastrous conditions. During the 1930s, which became known as the "Dirty Thirties" on the Prairies, approximately 14,000 farms were abandoned across the region, and Saskatchewan was by 1939 the most indebted province in the country. In 1935, the On-to-Ottawa Trek, an attempt by thousands of unemployed workers to make their way from western Canada to Ottawa, was violently stopped by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Regina.
The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation party emerged that decade as a populist socialist alternative, which was well-positioned to critique a political and economic system in crisis. The CCF was founded in Calgary in 1932, bringing together farmer, labour and socialist elements. The following year in Regina, the party adopted its platform, which became known as the Regina Manifesto. The party first fielded candidates in Saskatchewan in 1934 under the "Farmer-Labour" banner, and the party won the only five non-Liberal seats, to become the Opposition. Running as the CCF in 1938 Saskatchewan general election, the party doubled its seat count to 10.
The CCF achieved a breakthrough in the 1940s, just as the Second World War and other factors were easing Depression conditions. Tommy Douglas succeeded George Hara Williams—one of the CCF's founders with a background in the United Farmers of Canada—as CCF leader and led the party to a majority government. The CCF government was a more interventionist government and helped direct the province's economic development lay the foundation for a robust welfare state that ensured a universal standard of public services to residents. Under the CCF, the province created new crown corporations for insurance, transportation, utilities, and other services, while working to modernize the province through infrastructure development.
The party's crowning achievement was the institution of universal medicare in 1962. The CCF pitched the 1960 election as a referendum on medicare, and secured its fifth consecutive majority mandate. However, medicare still was controversial, especially among medical professionals, and the 1962 doctors' strike in response to medicare legislation threatened to stop its implementation. The strike lasted approximately three weeks before an amended medicare act was passed in August. This act laid the foundation for Canada's 1966 Medical Care Act, which expanded medicare nationwide—by then, Douglas had become the leader of the federal New Democratic Party, which held the balance of power in Lester Pearson's minority Liberal governments.
The postwar era brought about increasing urbanization in Saskatchewan as farms—formerly the foundational unit of the province since its inception—became larger and more capital-intensive, and many farmers sold their land and moved to cities. This process of rural decline would become a fixation of governments of all stripes in the years to come. In this period, while agriculture remained a major part of the provincial economy, mineral development took on a larger share of the economy.
Elections from 1905 to 1964
+ Elections to the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan (1905–1964) — seats won by party GovernmentLiberal"Co-op"LiberalCCFLiberalParty 1905 1908 1912 1917 1921 1925 1929 1934 1938 1944 1948 1952 1956 1960 1964 Liberal 16 27 45 51 45 50 28 50 38 5 19 11 14 17 32 Provincial Rights / Conservative / PC 9 14 8 7 2 3 24 1 Progressive 6 6 5 Labour / Liberal-Labour 1 1 Co-operative Commonwealth Federation 5 10 47 31 42 36 37 25 Social Credit 2 3 Unity (Communist) 2 Soldiers' vote 3 Independent 1 9 3 6 1 Liberal-PC 1 Total 25 41 53 62 63 63 63 55 52 52 52 53 53 54 58
Notes In 1917, three MLAs were elected to represent Saskatchewan residents serving overseas in Belgium, France, and England during the First World War. The Independent label includes candidates who ran with affiliations to parties. An "Independent Conservative" and an "Independent Pro-Government" were both elected in 1921, while an "Independent Liberal" was elected in 1925. In 1948, Alex H. McDonald was jointly nominated by the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties as an anti-CCF candidate; upon election, McDonald joined the Liberal caucus, and he remained a Liberal candidate in future elections. The 1929 election resulted in a coalition government when the Liberals, who were short of a majority, failed to secure the confidence of the Legislature. The Conservative Party won the second most seats and were supported by Progressive and Independent MLAs to form what was termed the "Co-operative government", with Conservative leader J.T.M. Anderson as Premier.
Shifting divides: 1960s to the 1990s After five straight electoral victories and a drawn out, bitter dispute over the implementation of medicare, the CCF, now under the leadership of Woodrow Lloyd, lost the 1964 election to Ross Thatcher's Liberals. The Liberals presented themselves as a free enterprise alternative to the socialist CCF. Although Thatcher, who had started his own political career with the CCF, railed against socialism—frequently equating it with communism—his Liberals proved unable to overturn medicare, although they did introduce limited user fees. They also downsized what they labeled a bloated civil service, and during this period, the province saw many of its civil servants join the federal civil service as Pearson's government expanded the federal welfare state. Those civil servants became known as the "Saskatchewan Mafia". Several were also recruited by Louis Robichaud to join the New Brunswick civil service.