Starphoenix

letter

Oct 21, 2004

Sask.’s conservatism big turn off for youth

By Aylwin Lo

The following is the personal viewpoint of the writer, a former Saskatchewan resident now living in Ontario.

Randy Burton’s column, Federal NDP’s fortunes fading (SP, Sept. 18), identifies a few reasons for the party’s poor Saskatchewan showing in this year’s election: the electoral system, an unpopular provincial NDP government and the party’s clash with rural social conservatism.

Burton suggests the NDP’s views are shifting toward those of “eastern urbanites” or “young urban people” and away from the views of rural Saskatchewanians

Forgive me if my evidence is anecdotal, but I feel obliged to argue Burton’s argument is upside-down.

I’m a young (under-30) expatriate Saskatchewanian. I was forced to attend university outside of my home province because of backward, inflexible policies at the University of Saskatchewan. I spent two years of high school overseas, so it demanded that I take the Test of English as a Foreign Language.

I was shocked and offended as a Chinese-Canadian – and you know we’re rare in Saskatchewan – who had grown up trying to shake that stereotype my entire life. The university offered no flexibility, despite my elementary school record and the 90s in Grades 11 and 12 English.

I accepted an offer at the University of Waterloo instead. Now that I’ve completed my post-secondary education, I still feel a strong affinity for my home province. Yet I am also strongly resistant to returning.

Why? One reason is that my family no longer resides in Saskatchewan, but my affinity for the Prairies runs deeper than that.

To be flatly honest, it’s because I fear Saskatchewan. The news from home is never good: police officers are dumping homeless Natives on the edge of town; Regina’s mayor is approving a Heterosexual Pride Day that insinuates homosexuality causes sexually transmitted diseases and “broken hearts”; The Globe and Mail is reporting about “Harlem on the Prairies.”

Every federal riding in Saskatchewan, except for one, now is represented by a Conservative.

My reading on these events is not that Saskatchewan has been deserted by the NDP for more urban climes. Rather, it is that Saskatchewan appears to be becoming a less and less welcoming place for people of diverse backgrounds.

Blame that on mainstream media bias toward covering negative news, blame it on deserters like me.

But the fact is, until Saskatchewan manages to shake its image and identity as a conservative province, it isn’t going to retain its youth. We’re going to keep moving away to urban centres, where we feel welcome and where we feel we can grow. And we’re going to become the kind of young urban dwellers whose support the NDP seeks.