Broadly, we’re always looking for pitches covering provincial and municipal elections, grassroots activism, rural stories, Indigenous rights, arts and culture, economic justice, ecology, gender equity, harm reduction, and more.

Submission Guidelines

• We welcome pitches from unpublished writers, seasoned freelancers, front-line activists, and anyone with a compelling story.

• Pitches should be sent to amielle@briarpatchmagazine.com.

• Include contact information, an estimated word count, a list of recent publications (if applicable), and a short writing sample.

• Submissions should be aimed at a progressive, non-specialist audience and avoid unnecessarily complicated language.

• Once a pitch has been accepted, we’ll go through 2-4 rounds of collaborative edits that will last over several weeks.

Rates

$100 for profiles, short essays, and reviews (less than 1,000 words);

$200 for feature stories (1,000-1,500 words) and photo essays;

$300 for research-based articles and investigative reportage (1,500-2,000 words).

BY SAMUEL DUNSIGER

Mirela Puszkar, who has ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder, worked for three years as a catering assistant at Munch Café and Catering in Regina. During that time, she learned a lot about herself.

“It was a great experience,” Puszkar says. “It gave me the confidence to be able to advocate not just for myself but for others experiencing disabilities.”

In Puszkar’s first job she worked as a dishwasher. She enjoyed the work but struggled with the combination of her disability and the fast-paced kitchen environment. She notes that she received little to no support.

When she started working at Munch soon after leaving that job, she faced similar struggles at first, but was able to access accommodations in the form of extra time to complete tasks, a quiet workspace, and using checklists for catering orders. “It was a great experience because well, I’ve never really experienced [support like that],” she says.

Employment opportunities for everyone
Munch Café and Catering was started by Gwen Herman and Emily Tarr in 2015 as a way to bring equal employment opportunities to people with disabilities.

“People with disabilities were only being paid a fraction of the proper wage,” says Rick Morell, executive director of Munch. “We create a space where people with cognitive disabilities are meaningfully employed.”

The company began as a catering service with three employees. Now, the company has grown to 11 staff members, nine of whom have cognitive disabilities, and there are plans in place to open up a full-service café.

“For most people, we’re their first job,” Morell says. “We try to help them gain the skills and confidence needed to participate in the workforce.”

Morell adds that the company also has a job development program to support employees in finding their next career opportunity when they decide to leave Munch. “We try to help them find a job in a company that maybe doesn’t have any disabled workers or [where] maybe they have one or two,” he says.

Build by the community, for the community
Munch Café and Catering isn’t the only company in Saskatchewan that’s working to normalize hiring people with disabilities. Listen to Dis’, also based in Regina, is a disability-led community arts non-profit established in 2006 that empowers disabled people to become artists.

“One of our main objectives is to create opportunities for disabled people to participate as creative, committed hobbyists or amateur artists and to develop as emerging artists in Saskatchewan,” says Traci Foster, founder and artistic director of Listen to Dis’. “We really try to advocate for the voice of disabled people to be amplified.”

Foster herself is a disabled artist, identifying as multiply disabled, as she lives with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, fibromyalgia, dyslexia, and ADHD. She launched the organization as a way to encourage other people with disabilities to express themselves through art.

“I founded the organization because I identified a real need in the community, a void really,” she says. “When I began, there were no opportunities for disabled people to participate in emerging professional art development in Saskatchewan. I would not have founded the organization if I wouldn’t have had challenges finding my way as an artist.”

Being a disability-led organization, Foster notes that “all of us on the leadership team have been disabled, some visibly disabled and some non-visibly disabled,” adding that the organization also hires other disabled artists as contractors.

With a disabled staff and leadership team, the organization integrates accessibility into their working practices, which include flexible work arrangements and work-from-home procedures. “Even if we could, we would not have an office where it was mandatory for people to show up,” Foster says. “It doesn’t work that way if we’re working from under a truly accessible lens.”

Foster cites the example of her symptoms often flaring up during the winter, which prompts her to work from her bed with her laptop. “That wouldn’t be seen as odd or as an obtrusion,” she says.

A deeper understanding of ‘inclusive hiring’
For disability advocates like Adam Swalm, when inclusive businesses like Munch Café and Catering and Listen to Dis’ hire people with disabilities, it’s “more than just employing someone.”

“When people with disabilities are included in a workplace, it helps push back against stigma,” says Swalm, who is an inclusive employment facilitator at Inclusion Saskatchewan. “When people see someone every day, talk to them, get to know them on a personal level, they really start to see past someone’s disability and see them for who they are as a unique individual.”

Swalm says there are often misconceptions associated with being an inclusive business, such as the perception that being inclusive simply means hiring inclusively: “This is a shallow understanding of the term. Inclusive employment means inclusive workplaces for all your employees and good-faith engagement in the project of inclusivity more broadly.”

There’s also the perception that accommodations are costly, intrusive, and that they lower productivity. Most accommodations, Swalm says, are simple things like reorganizing the employee’s physical workspace, an additional computer monitor, or allowing breaks when needed.

Swalm adds that there’s a business case to be made for hiring people with disabilities, who are known to have higher levels of creativity, innovation, and problem-solving, due to their resilience. He points out that employers often find that their employees with disabilities find more efficient ways of working and improving standard processes.

The proof is in the proverbial pudding, as a 2020 report from Accessible Employers suggests a link between the hiring of people with disabilities and improved business outcomes. Similarly, a 2023 study by Accenture, in partnership with Disability:IN and the American Association of People with Disabilities, found that companies that actively hire people with disabilities outperform their peers.

“I think this happens because people with disabilities are so used to having to navigate through all of these inaccessible places and tasks in their daily lives that other folks don’t think about,” Swalm says. “So they’re just used to finding efficiencies where they can.”

He also believes there’s a link between disability and greater employee retention: “Folks with disabilities have a harder time finding a job, which means that they’re more incentivized to outperform and retain that job.”

The 2020 report from Accessible Employers corroborated this link, finding that staff retention was 72 per cent higher among employees with disabilities than their able-bodied peers.

Funding aid not enough, but penalties are severe
Yet the stigma around hiring people with disabilities persists, resulting in disabled folks being underrepresented in the job market. The employment rate for people with disabilities in the province (49.4 per cent) is higher than the national average (47.1 per cent) according to Statistics Canada, but there continues to be a gap in employment – 21.2 per cent, to be precise – between people with disabilities and their non-disabled peers.

To help bridge the gap, the province provides the Saskatchewan Assured Income for Disability (SAID) program for people with disabilities in need of income support, but according to Swalm, “it’s not even close [to] where it needs to be.”

Funding is dependent on a number of metrics including where an individual recipient lives, if they’re in a relationship, or if they have children. A single adult in Saskatoon (Tier A, which receives the most funding) receives $1,159 a month in income benefits and an additional $885 to help cover their accommodation costs. Additional funding is available but varies according to a recipient’s disability, utility costs, and other factors.

“[SAID] isn’t enough to cover the rising cost of living, and recipients can only earn a certain amount before their benefits are clawed back,” Swalm says. The program’s parameters mean that single recipients are only allowed to earn an extra $7,500 a year before they start seeing their support reduced. “This traps people in a permanent state of poverty.”

This restriction puts those with disabilities at a bigger disadvantage because it means that if they want to pursue long-term employment, they risk losing that government support. Yet, simultaneously, because of the stereotypes and the realities of living with chronic disabilities, people with disabilities might not be able to work consistent hours.

The Employability Assistance for Persons with Disabilities program funded by the province provides support for job seekers in the form of job search support, such as job coaching, assessments, and training, as well as funding for employers to provide accommodations. Other provincially funded organizations include Inclusion Saskatchewan, SaskAbilities, Spinal Cord Injury Saskatchewan, and Cosmo Industries. All of these organizations support people with an array of disabilities: Spinal Cord Injury Saskatchewan supports people with physical disabilities, while Inclusion Saskatchewan and Cosmo Industries support people with intellectual disabilities.

More than a job: finding independence
These organizations support disabled job seekers in finding employment while also working with employers on inclusive hiring and the recruitment of people of disabilities.

“Our supported employment is more than helping job seekers get a job,” says Theresa Paydli, supported work manager at Cosmo Industries. Their program supports about 400 job seekers per year, with clients obtaining various jobs, from custodians to chefs to labourers.

“It’s about creating mutually beneficial relationships between a job seeker and a business,” she says. “When businesses hire through Cosmo, they are hiring dedicated individuals who are truly excited to give their best.”

Paydli highlights that, in addition to finding opportunities for disabled job seekers, the program is also focused on helping them maintain employment. “One of the components of our program is that support is ongoing which ensures both the job seeker and employer succeed long-term.”

While Swalm notes that there is a broad range of services that exist to support people with disabilities in finding and keeping work, he also acknowledges that “there just isn’t enough funding to create the capacity for all of the folks who would otherwise be accessing these services. It’s going to take a lot of changes to actually address the stigma around disability.”

Foster points out that more businesses need to integrate accessibility into the centre of their mandates and missions “so that it’s not an add-on, but it’s something that’s considered right off the top.”

But for that to happen, it starts with breaking down the stigma around hiring people with disabilities. For Morell, the key is to have more people with disabilities employed so that people see how trustworthy, capable, and reliable they are.

“We’re trying to create a society where people with disabilities are working side-by-side with others,” he says. “In terms of breaking down people’s negative attitudes, it’s about working together and spending time together.”

In fact, while many disabled people do use “disability” in their terminology, Morell doesn’t usually use the word with his team: “We use the term ‘cognitively different’ because that’s really what it is,” he says. “Everybody I’ve ever employed was different. They all learn differently, they all have different capabilities, different things they like to do. The key is to give them the training and put them in a job where they can do well. That’s the kind of mentality we’re trying to promote.”

For Puszkar, who now serves as chairperson of the board at Munch Café and Catering, her experience gave her the confidence to work in the kitchen. She also started to speak up about disability issues in the city and the province, the confidence for which she credits to her job at the café.

“Being able to find a voice on these issues has helped me tremendously, and I have Munch to thank for that,” she says. “They have been a great support for not just people like myself but for many others who have a disability in one way or another. From my early days to now being the chairperson, I have been able to find my footing in advocacy.”

BY SARAH O. SWENSON

From “accidental activist” to intentional advocate and community champion, Regina’s Florence Stratton was recently honoured for nearly 60 years’ worth of good trouble.

Stratton was announced as the winner of the Ursula Franklin Award of Excellence from the Canadian Voice of Women (VOW) for Peace during the organization’s 2026 Peace Awards ceremony on Saturday, March 7, 2026.

“I was honoured and humbled, and I’m hoping as a result [of the award], peace and justice will have more force behind them,” says Stratton.

According to its website, VOW “launched the Peace Awards in 2014 from the inspiration of outstanding contributions for a more peace-filled world made by” Ursula Franklin and the other four women for whom the awards are named. The organization calls Ursula Franklin “an outspoken feminist, an academic, and a prominent, much honoured public intellectual who tirelessly promoted a world of justice and peace for all.”

Accidental activist
Stratton got her “accidental” start in activism during her time as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin in 1967. The Vietnam War was underway and while leaving class one day, she found herself immersed in tear gas. Local police had been called in to remove a group of students protesting Dow Chemical’s recruitment interviews on-campus.

“These younger students were coming out of this building and had been tear gassed, and the police were whacking their skulls with batons. Then I [saw] these students pushing a police car into the lake, so I went and joined them,” she recalls.

“Fortunately, I wasn’t caught for the trouble. I’m certainly intentional [in my activism] now, but it did start as an accident,” she laughs.

Stratton’s social consciousness continued to grow after graduating, when she relocated to Sierra Leone in 1968, joining the Canadian University Services Overseas to teach at Njala University.

“I owe a big debt to Sierra Leone and my friends and colleagues there,” says Stratton. “That’s where I really learned what settler colonialism is. I always thought the British Empire was something wonderful until I learned otherwise. Settler colonialism is ongoing here; who is unhoused in Regina? It’s the Indigenous peoples, and that’s because of settler colonialism in its current phase.”

She stayed in West Africa for 19 years, teaching at Njala, before moving to pursue a PhD in African literature from the SOAS University of London. She followed that up with two years as a volunteer at the Catholic Workers in New York City.

Stratton returned to Canada in 1994 and has been working tirelessly for peace and justice ever since.

Connecting to make peace
In 2007, Stratton and another local activist, Catherine Verrall, started the Making Peace Vigil. Every Thursday at noon for 13 years, regardless of the weather, the group held a peace banner on a busy downtown corner in Regina and handed out pamphlets on peace and justice issues.

“Thirteen years without missing a week. We were there every Thursday, but if Christmas fell on a Thursday, then we did it on Wednesday or Friday,” Stratton recalls. “There were about 15 people there on most occasions. On special occasions, there would be more … We handed out more than a hundred pamphlets every week.

“It’s been a long time [since the vigil ended], but occasionally a total stranger will stop me in the street and say ‘hey, are you guys going to be handing out your pamphlets in the street?’”

Stratton created and arranged for the printing of the pamphlets. Topics included critiques of Canada’s involvement in wars around the globe, NATO, Canada’s military spending and involvement in the nuclear industry, settler colonialism, climate change, and ending homelessness.

“Occasionally somebody would say ‘oh, I don’t agree with this,’ but the people who really didn’t agree with us just took to ignoring us. Mostly the interactions were very positive though, we had a good reception,” she says.

COVID-19 brought the weekly downtown vigils to an end in 2020; however, Stratton compiles an email mail-out in place of the in-person vigil, sharing lists of upcoming events, rallies, and demonstrations, as well as links to articles, petitions, and upcoming webinars related to peace and justice issues.

“Everybody has got a bit older, so we just didn’t get back on the street for the vigil, which is too bad, but there’s many other things, lots of work to do still,” says Stratton.

No military recruiting in high schools
Stratton was a key organizer in the Study War No More campaign. A military training program was added to the Grades 11 and 12 Regina high school curriculum for the 2014-15 year. One of the classes, Basic Military Qualification 30L, involved training in handling weapons and was taught in the Regina Armoury. The course would grant students two credits toward graduation as well as a controversial $2,000 cash incentive.

If the program was deemed successful, the plan was to roll it out to high schools across the province.

“Our campaign against this was very vigorous, with pamphlets and even a petition,” says Stratton. “We went to the legislature and confronted MLAs and wrote about 20 letters to the editor and got a lot of media attention.”

Ultimately, nine students completed in the pilot program and only five students enrolled for the next year, and the program was cancelled.

“We’d like to take a bit of the credit for cancelling it, but in the end, the students just didn’t sign up,” she says. “Good on the Regina high school students; they saw straight through the bribes.”

For people, not businesses
Another project that saw success was No Business in the Park, a campaign to prevent businesses from building offices in Wascana Park. Conexus Credit Union managed to build their office, but the No Business group prevented further commercial building, including a planned office for Brandt Industries.

“If they had gotten in there, the park would have ended up being full of more buildings,” says Stratton. “I’m sorry that Conexus got in there. I think they need to give their building to the university and get the eff out of there. This is one of the biggest urban parks in North America and they’re messing with it.”

Stratton’s advocacy has also included participation in Regina Get The Lead Out (a group working toward affordable lead line replacement and public education on the issue), and End Poverty Regina, which lead to Stratton and 10 others being arrested in an act of civil disobedience when the Regina Police Service demolished an encampment for the homeless at Regina’s City Hall in July 2023.

Most recently, Stratton has been a member of the Regina Citizens Public Transit Coalition, which successfully lobbied the City of Regina for free bus fares for children under 13. The coalition is now working with Better Bus Youth and other youth groups in advocating for fare-free transit for local high school students. Unfortunately, the group’s efforts were unable to prevent city council from hiking transit fares during its recent March 25 council meeting.

Despite some of these recent setbacks, at 84 years old, Stratton has no desire to slow down.

She has recently been participating in a group called Sunday Funday – a recurring community gathering organized by young Regina activists to help houseless folks access whatever they might need – and Stratton is just as passionate about this group as she has been about all of her past activism. She believes the group is doing important work tackling the most pressing issue of the day: houselessness.

“It is so awful to see people come into Sunday Funday and they have had their finger amputated because of frostbite – and it would not be nice to be unhoused even in the summer!” she says. “It is just so, so terrible that we have done this. What kind of people are we? It’s not like this isn’t a rich country … We will carry on the struggle for a better world.”

Stratton doesn’t mince her words for those with the power to change things. If she has one message to share, it’s this: “No money for war, more money for houselessness.”

BY J. ARREGUI

Beginning in May 2025, Saskatchewan’s last wildfire season was one of the worst on record, with 504 fires burning approximately 2.9 million hectares of land (the area of 128 Saskatoons), forcing over 30 communities to evacuate 16,000 people. The estimated costs of these fires to the province is $500 million, with the fires inducing a projected $427 million provincial budget deficit.

As the catastrophic impacts of decades’ worth of burning fossil fuels escalate, residents will experience more frequent and devastating fires, along with floods and droughts. Why then, with this evidence, would any government make the conscious choice to continue investing in the source of such destruction? Who would willingly take money from – and make deals with – people and industry where the product results in more loss and suffering for communities? The answer lies in understanding our political economy: a global fossil capitalism and how it manifests itself here in our home.

Fossil capital at the helm
Using wealth accumulated over decades through fossil fuels, fossil capitalists – the class composed of boards of directors, CEOs, and industrialists – have relentlessly worked to destroy collective power, placing blame on the public, and tightening their grip on power at all political levels. By denying climate change’s links to the burning of fossil fuels, these individuals have reaped trillions in profit while actively destroying the planet.

Saskatchewan is not immune to the efforts of these fossil capitalists. The Sask Party has spent nearly two decades promoting climate denial and actively dismantling climate action, while misleading the public with claims of fossil fuels’ security and economic necessity. However, the Sask Party is not alone in greenwashing and minimizing the crisis. Some of the loudest and most popular voices include Ken Coates, who works to greenwash and propagandize for the fossil fuel industry through think tanks and media pieces, and John Gormley, infamous provincial media personality and former politician who rants about climate-change obsessed governments.

Much of this network was exposed by CBC Saskatchewan and the Investigative Journalism Foundation in late 2024, revealing the actors who manipulate the public’s opinion on fossil fuels, climate change, and the economy. Their investigation revealed how the Energy United campaign, an alleged “grassroots” campaign for oil and gas, was created by the Maple Leaf Institute, which is led by a team with strong ties to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) and the Sask Party. The institute’s four directors – Tim Harold McMillan, Cole David Schulz, Samantha Yaholnitsky, and Dale Richardson – had, within the last 10 years, either influential positions with the CAPP or direct decision-making positions with the Sask Party while in office.

This corporate-government relationship showcases exactly how the industry subsumes governmental and media institutions. Former Sask Party politicians and staffers streamline propaganda that manipulates the public and dictates policy in favour of vested capital interests. Simon Enoch, director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, concludes that this network reflects “the Saskatchewan government’s talking points […] [they are the] exact same arguments from this government time and again.” These networks have real consequences: city councillors in Regina were harassed and threatened by the CAPP and their allies as council tried to pass a ban on fossil fuel advertising with their climate change plan in 2021.

Money where the interests are
More importantly, propaganda and influence are available to those with large amounts of wealth. Political donations play an enormous influence in Saskatchewan’s politics, with the Sask Party receiving $6.7 million in corporate donations since 2018. Currently the only limit on political donations in Saskatchewan is that donations over $250 must be registered and not anonymous, meaning individuals and organizations from anywhere can donate to political parties in the province. This has created what Duncan Kinney, then-executive director of Progress Alberta, called a “wild west” for political donations that began in 2006.

Major corporate contributions have been made by oil and gas, banks, and construction companies, totalling $3 million in out-of-province donations (primarily from fossil fuel–rich Alberta) between 2006 and 2018. In the most recent 2024 provincial election, corporate donors injected the Sask Party with $1.6 million, totalling one-third of the party’s donations and 70 per cent of all corporate donations made to all provincial parties. One of the largest donors was the Semple family, founder of Brandt Industries. Brandt’s affiliate, Brandt Corporate Services, donated $50,000 to the Sask Party in 2024, with thousands more from individual Semple family members, According to The Breach, the Semples are long-time advocates for fossil fuels, with Brandt providing equipment and services for pipeline construction, and they have used their financial and social connections to the Sask Party to establish themselves “as the only game in town” for government contracts.

But the Semples are just one of many financial patrons to the Sask Party. Unsurprisingly, almost all Sask Party donations come from large provincial resource extraction, infrastructure, and media juggernauts.

• Robert Andjelic, an agricultural landlord with over 225,000 acres of land in the province, donated over $20,000 in 2023 and $10,000 in 2025.

• The Mosaic Company donated $35,000 in 2024 and a total of $113,000 since 2016.

• NexGen, the largest mining company in Saskatchewan and which boasts former premier Brad Wall as a board member, has donated $32,000 since 2018 and is currently exploring one of the largest uranium deposits in Saskatchewan.

• Rawlco, the Saskatoon based radio company, has donated over $100,000 since 2016, and has platformed both Wall and Gormley.

• Legal and law firms, such as McKercher LLP (which has donated $147,000 since 2016), have donated a total of $490,000 since 2016.

Rounding out this list are numerous “holding companies” in the financial and banking sectors, fossil fuel companies such as Enbridge and TransCanada Pipelines and their project partners such as Ledcor, and dozens of transport and trucking companies. To consistently see large donations from such companies begs the question: what are these companies getting in return?

It’s not just large businesses with obvious ties to the oil and gas industry who are putting their dollars where their interests are. Chambers of commerce and business associations, organizations that represent small businesses in our province, also pay donations to the Sask Party and oppose climate action at the local level. These organizations often argue that the “costs” of climate action are not worth the price or that it’s bad business. The figureheads of organizations like these have even argued that governments shouldn’t address climate change at all, as North Saskatoon Business Association’s (NSBA) Keith Moen proudly did in 2023, and have advocated for exploiting our stressed water supply or opposing the construction of biking infrastructure in favour of maintaining a parking lot.

The leverage these business organizations hold at the local level is twofold. First, they are constantly able to hold their economic position as a trump card – if any policy impacts their members’ bottom line, they threaten decision makers with economic breakdown. Second, they have the capacity, through these organizations, in both money and time, to influence and lobby local politics in their favour. The average person does not have the same resources to engage in the political action that has to take place from Monday to Friday, between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., but someone like Moen, through the NSBA, can.

Do qualifications matter anymore?
Another source of government and corporate alignment is found in the appointments made to SaskPower’s board of directors. The board is stacked with climate denialists, such as Cherilyn Jolly-Nagel – who opposes emissions reductions in agriculture and has downplayed the impacts of climate change – and fossil fuel advocates like Chief Delbert Wapass – who, through the Indian Resource Council, said pipeline protests were “beholden to hidden financial interests” and pushes for oil and gas pipelines. Jason LeBlanc, a Convoy leader and climate denier, is the reeve of the RM of Estevan No. 5, a key advocate for coal, and an opponent of renewable development. Finally, we see familiar name and climate denier John Gormley, whose appointment from radio host to director is puzzling.

These appointments reflect cronyism and create an energy policy that not only ignores climate change, but focuses on private gain and public loss. For example, the carbon captured from Boundary Dam, hailed as the catalyst for the province’s decision to continue burning coal, is used for enhanced oil recovery (not storage) by oil company Whitecap Resources. Whitecap has not only donated $14,000 to the Sask Party since 2019, but it is also where, once again, former premier Brad Wall appears – this time on the board of directors.

This political patronage network effectively functions to close the door to any transition from fossil fuels to renewables. It ensures fossil fuel extraction and consumption and allows Sask Party insiders and large corporate donors to the party to grow even wealthier. Policies and positions are then bought and crafted by extraction companies and their allies to support their profit-making at the public’s expense, by covering up the health impacts of oil, directly manipulating youth and schools with propaganda, and shrinking the workforce while extracting more oil and making record profits.

These capitalists can afford to sink thousands of dollars and hours in shaping our economy to their advantage, while we rarely have much left over after we’ve worked through the entire week and paid for shelter, food, water, power, and electricity. The power inequity is enormous.

Donations permit this class to create a political and economic arena in Saskatchewan that is to their benefit. Without any intersectional class-based political organizing, Saskatchewan residents’ ability to effect change is limited to voting, which itself is dwarfed by the influence of fossil capital. The alternative options – such as grassroots organizing and legal battles – are strained by the colossal inequity in resources and institutional stonewalling. This inequity also presents itself in the enormous amounts of energy the fossil industry consumes, with industrial energy (including heating and electricity) consuming 60 per cent of Saskatchewan’s output versus 8 per cent for residential consumption. Emissions follow suit: the oil and gas sector belches out 36 per cent of Saskatchewan’s emissions, agriculture 21 per cent, and electricity generation 18 per cent. However, responsibility is framed as equally on all of us, when in reality, the corporate-extractivist-industrial capitalists of this province are the largest polluters, consumers, and manipulators.

A bleak, dark hope
Fossil capital seems omnipresent in everyday life: heating and cooling homes, fertilizing food, and enveloping us quite literally in plastics. Responses to this paradigm oscillate between naive optimism and cowardly apathy: Pollyanna perspectives of a green technological deus ex machina to nihilistic and misanthropic “doomer” stances of surrender. Mainstream climate politics have fallen short, centred on optimism, gradualism, and frictionless actions, or simply begging the fossil capitalists to stop.

Rather than binary optimism or pessimism, there is an alternative in what philosopher Mara van der Lugt calls “hopeful pessimism,” saying “If there is hope, it’s a dark, bleak hope, full of rage and grief and pain for what is being lost – but infused also with insistence, perdurance, determination […] This is not optimism: if anything, it is a hopeful pessimism.” This position nurtures a politics of resistance and determination – a politics that will certainly involve more friction and discomfort yet is able to weave the experiences of the coal miners in Estevan and the water defenders in the Cumberland Delta not as narratives at odds with one another but as threads of the same tapestry. This politics begins by establishing trust and building community across political and physical geographies, which can create the bonds of solidarity that nurture class and ecological consciousness.

Understanding the network of wealth, patronage, and political cronyism that underpins and guides many decision-making processes makes the values of the Sask Party, the fossil fuel industry, and their joint media network very clear. It becomes evident that profit comes before people and these individuals look out for themselves and their own elite circles. It is clear that the people of the province do not determine the who, what, when, where, or why of the economy or of the climate. It is not our values and vision that shape our future.

It is only by linking our values, praxis, movements, and struggles that we can change the economic and social relations that have created this network. We can then focus our limited time and resources toward building power to combat that held by the fossil capitalists and their massive donations, captured media, and bought politicians. It is now up to us to craft our collective power together, to take control of our own future, to manage our energy and resources, and to save current and future generations from further immiseration and catastrophe.

This piece was originally published in the Spring 2026 issue of Sask Dispatch.

BY EVELYN ULLYOTT HAYES

It’s a long journey across Saskatchewan from fabric artist Elaine McArthur’s home in Regina to towns including Rosthern, Watrous, Humboldt, and Estevan. She started her journey in November 2025 and will be on the road until April 2027, braving frigid winters and gravelly country roads.

But McArthur’s handcrafted doll, Junior Girl’s Jingle Dress Buddy, never loses her cool or her happy pink smile.

Taking art to the people

This collection of Powwow Buddies by Regina-based artist McArthur, a member of the Ocean Man First Nation, will be travelling with the exhibition Labours of Love, Under Lamplight to eight rural Saskatchewan communities. The show, launched by the Organization of Saskatchewan Arts Councils (OSAC), features 22 different artworks by Indigenous artists from across the province, including birchbark biting, beadwork, ribbon skirts, and carvings. Rooted in the intersection of contemporary aesthetics and traditional Indigenous artistic practices, the exhibition “emphasi[z]es the extensive labour involved in the creation process, often infused with familial stories, teachings, and practices passed down through generations,” according to OSAC’s website. “These expressions of love for the practice and culture are condensed into the final artworks, representing hours of devotion and labour.” Visitors are invited to “turn the lamplight on” and reflect on the time, knowledge, and cultural belonging that each piece represents.

Established in 1968, OSAC is “a non-profit arts and cultural organization that enables community arts councils and schools to tour and hold live musical and theatre performances, visual art exhibitions, workshops, and special events across Saskatchewan.” The organization is particularly focused on bringing art to more than 80 rural communities across the province that often don’t receive the range of art exhibits and performances found in Regina and Saskatoon. The organization’s website states that they “bring people and the arts together,” adding that it is the hard work of “local arts councils and schools [that] keep the arts alive.” That hard work allows residents to experience live music and theatre performances, visual art exhibitions, workshops, and other special events.

And those efforts are paying off. Rural engagement with the arts is thriving in Saskatchewan; according to an October 2025 report by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and Business Data Lab, a whopping 70 percent of the province’s art organizations are located in rural communities, the highest proportion in Canada. But behind that impressive statistic is a tough reality. Across such a large and diverse province with a geographically dispersed population, keeping those art organizations alive – and getting exhibitions, performances, and programming to the communities that need them – requires overcoming unique obstacles and no small amount of innovation and collaboration. So, what does it actually take to bring art to rural Saskatchewan?

Finding the funding
As with many cultural institutions, funding is always a challenge. The sheer distance that has to be traversed to reach rural and northern institutions brings with it several well-known financial barriers. Zoë Schneider, visual arts program manager at OSAC, says one of the biggest obstacles the organization faces in bringing art to rural communities is “distance and financial logistics. Shipping costs are always rising, and we have a large landmass to move art across.” Shipping art pieces, mounts, supplies, and materials from Regina to the Gallery on 3rd in Watrous means covering 175 kilometres, and going to the Chapel Gallery in North Battleford is a journey of 395 kilometres. Bringing exhibitions to these far-flung areas is a multi-step process. Each piece of artwork has to be secured in a wooden crate – usually custom-built in-house by a gallery or commissioned from an external vendor. The art must be cushioned with layers of foam and corrugated plastic, or coroplast, to protect the priceless pieces during a bumpy drive across the prairie. Then there’s the price of shipping and handling itself. As Schneider says, “Fine art shipping is expensive, even more so between small communities.”

It’s not just the art that needs to travel, but also the artists themselves. OSAC member institutions are encouraged to enhance new exhibition openings by hosting opening receptions, inviting school groups for guided tours, and delivering related workshops. When exhibitions require artists on hand for this programming or installation assistance, someone has to make that journey. “We need to support our artists to drive – they can be full-day drives to get to another venue in the province,” says Jennifer Fitzpatrick, cultural services director at the Humboldt Museum, which is supported by SK Arts funding. For example, a Regina-based artist travelling to North Battleford has to cover roughly 800 kilometres – more than eight hours on the road round trip – for what might be a single-day event.

All of this travel, whether for art or artists, costs money, which brings up another challenge: ensuring artists are fairly compensated for their time and expertise. The national standard for royalties for exhibition of artists’ work and professional service fees is set by Canadian Artists’ Representation / Le Front des artistes canadiens (CARFAC) – a kind of national minimum wage for artists. The required fee for a single work by an artist on display in a small institution (one with an operating budget of less than half a million dollars annually) is $514, and it goes up to $2,574 for a solo show. Professional service fees for a speaking engagement or presentation are $541 for a half day and $757 for a full day. That’s no chump change, especially in an economy reeling from post-COVID-19 inflation and tariff-induced uncertainties.

Emma Morris, executive director of the Museums Association of Saskatchewan, voiced the importance of paying artists an appropriate wage: “You should be paying your artists like you pay your plumbers.” But, she adds, recent economic trends have made this more and more difficult for small institutions with already stretched budgets. “Our budgets and the funds we have available for art in the province are not rising at the same level that the CARFAC fee schedule is,” she says.“The result that we are seeing [is] that it’s actually resulting in museums being able to hire fewer artists.“ This can be a lose-lose situation: fair wages for artists mean fewer exhibitions, fewer workshops, and fewer opportunities for rural communities to experience art.

Searching for helping hands
Beyond these funding challenges, there are a few unique logistical hurdles that are presented by the rural nature of some galleries. The Gallery on 3rd is an art gallery in Watrous that exhibits and sells work by artists local to the Watrous and Manitou Beach area, holds workshops for students and seniors, and hosts travelling exhibitions. In 2026, the gallery will host two major travelling exhibits from OSAC: Labours of Love, Under Lamplight and Omentum by John Brady McDonald.

Toni Ambrose, the chair, visual arts, of the Watrous and Area Arts Council (WAAC) explained that a big problem rural galleries like the Gallery on 3rd face is staffing. The gallery is almost entirely run by volunteers. “We don’t really hire people; we’re volunteer-based,” explains Ambrose. “We hire a student in the summer for two months, but volunteerism is probably our main concern.” In a town of 1,808 people, it can be challenging to rustle up enough people power to keep a gallery or museum running. Unable to recruit volunteers to keep the space open in the mornings, the Gallery is currently only open from 1 to 4 p.m., Thursday through Saturday. While the summer student position can be funded through grants like those from SK Arts, recruiting volunteers with availability during the day, an interest in the arts, and the technical know-how for tasks like operating point-of-sale systems, billing, and providing interpretation of the artworks proves challenging. “It’s an ‘always’ problem,” says Ambrose.

Getting the word out about exhibits and programming is another struggle. Speaking on what she wishes people knew about what’s available at rural art galleries, Ambrose says the gallery would like more people to be aware of it, but advertising costs money. While big museums and galleries have dedicated marketing and communications staff to mount comprehensive promotional campaigns, including print and signage advertisements, rural institutions have fewer avenues to promote themselves. The Gallery on 3rd and the Watrous Manitou Beach Heritage Centre advertise through posts on social media like Facebook and posters around town and rely heavily on tour groups that visit nearby Manitou Beach for visitorship numbers. Without the budget for widespread advertising or the population density to generate organic word-of-mouth buzz, rural galleries have to work harder for every visitor. Ambrose adds that “if we can get just one more new person through the door, it’s really great!”

Prioritizing rural communities
The good news is that the financial barriers to access ing art in rural communities haven’t escaped the notice of funding organizations that provide grants for exhibitions and programming. SK Arts, which was founded in 1948 as the Saskatchewan Arts Board, is the oldest funding agency for public arts in North America and the second oldest in the world after the Arts Council of Great Britain. SK Arts’ CEO, Lisa Bird-Wilson, explains that the organization has a province-wide mandate. This means that “when decisions are being made with review of applications, for grants, etc., there are considerations that are applied in the scoring that take into consideration applications from outside urban centres.” She adds that “there’s a strong desire and there’s a commitment to ensur[ing] that our programs and services are able to reach as widely as possible.”

One of the ways the organization works toward this goal is through a partnership with OSAC to present pieces from their 3,800-work strong permanent collection specifically to rural communities. Exhibitions such as Labours of Love, Under Lamplight, which has already been to communities from Assiniboia to La Ronge, stay on the road for around three years at a time.

SK Arts also disburses monetary grants and micro-grants to artists, studios, galleries, and other cultural institutions. In 2024 and 2025, SK Arts distributed $6.6 and $6.7 million, respectively, in grants for artistic endeavours across the province. Of this, almost one-third was awarded to initiatives outside of Saskatoon, Regina, and Prince Albert. The organization hopes this number will increase in the coming years. Wider distribution of funding to rural communities forms one of the pillars of their current five-year strategic plan and they’ve added points to the rubrics used to assess grant applications to prioritize rural applications as well as targeted staff engagement in rural communities to facilitate co-operation and access.

Supporting the arts makes cents
The long-term success of initiatives like these, and the rural art programs they support, are clear. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce and Business Data Lab reports that in 2023, “Saskatchewan’s arts and culture sector [contributed] $2.2 billion in GDP and support[ed] 20,000 jobs” as well as generating $216 million in tax dollars. But the benefits go beyond just the financial. “Our province has really, really deep roots in the visual arts,” Morris says, “and I think it has a huge impact on not just our tourism, but our sense of identity and our well-being, and who we are, how we see ourselves, and what we want to portray to the world.” Bringing Indigenous art to small towns goes a long way toward reconciliation and building bridges between communities. Morris says, “We talk a lot about representation, and ensuring that nobody’s story is being told without them.” Fitzpatrick adds, “We hear continually how important that access is to arts in rural communities.” Explaining the importance of her artistic work and the exhibit they’re a part of, McArthur explains that she started creating the dolls to give Indigenous children a toy that would accurately represent their lived experiences. “Most dolls wear stereotypical clothing made popular by Hollywood,” she says, while her dolls’ regalia is created using authentic techniques used today. “They are modern and yet carry the traditions of powwow regalia and beliefs.” She adds that “the intricate work also helps children learn to properly care for their own regalia, something that we teach our children from a very young age. It gives them pride in their culture and in themselves. They can identify with the category they dance, and we can also use the dolls to teach non-Indigenous children about one aspect of our culture.”

From Regina and Saskatoon to the smallest farming town, art continues to reach every corner of Saskatchewan. As Morris puts it, “Art is really vital to Saskatchewan people. It always has been.”

This piece was originally published in the Spring 2026 issue of Sask Dispatch.

BY J. ARREGUI

In a summer in which the climate crisis continued to grow, with devastating fires decimating our forests and communities, smoke filling our lungs, and drought choking our crops, on June 18, 2025, the Saskatchewan Party threw literal fuel on the fire. They quietly announced that they would be extending coal-fired power in Saskatchewan beyond the federally-established 2030 shutdown deadline - a coal power phase-out begun under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government in 2012 – doing so in a private letter to Crown employees with no official announcement to the public. The decision is not only remarkably reckless, but also a violation of Canada’s Criminal Code, as pointed out by former Liberal Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault in 2023. Scott Moe responded “come get me,” a continuation of the Sask Party’s politics of animosity toward Ottawa as a way to deflect responsibility and accountability.

It is not only petty federal-provincial antagonism driving this decision. Looking at the politics, policies, and individuals connected to the Sask Party since their election in 2007, their dedication to coal power should come as no surprise. The party has connections to fossil fuel capitalists, resource barons, and right-wing reactionaries, all of whom have pushed us to stay dependent on fuel that is destructive on an existential scale.

Sask Party leading us further into climate catastrophe
In Saskatchewan, the campaign to deny climate change – and our disproportionate contributions to it – can be traced back to the election of the then faux-centrist, now strongly right-wing Saskatchewan Party in 2007. The Sask Party has spent the last 18 years peddling a disingenuous climate platform, as they lead us further into the inescapable repercussions of their continued inaction. They have failed to meet any self-imposed emissions targets; wasted public funds on failed court battles opposing federal climate policy; justified Saskatchewan’s carbon emissions because there are “much dirtier products in other areas of the world”; sabotaging efforts toward and refused to invest in renewable energy to reduce emissions and provide inexpensive, reliable energy for our province; latched onto dying concepts such as “clean coal” and “sustainable” or “ethical” fossil fuels; and fear-mongered among workers in the fossil fuel industry, promising economic collapse should Saskatchewan switch to renewable energy.

After 18 years of greenwashing, delay, and denial, the Sask Party remains committed to total inaction on climate change, actively stonewalling and preventing meaningful action. Premier Scott Moe, formerly the Minister of Environment, continues to push the same script as his predecessors in government, opposing federal clean electricity regulations and the 2030 coal phase-out, policies aimed at establishing clean, reliable, and affordable electricity. He has loudly and falsely claimed that zero-emission electricity generation by 2035 and a goal of net-zero by 2050 is “unrealistic and unaffordable,” even though specific pathways for Saskatchewan to achieve a clean, affordable, and reliable grid by 2035 exist for the government to follow. The provincial government has opted to simply ignore all evidence of feasible clean energy sources, choosing instead to continue burning coal. To say this is irresponsible is an understatement; it is criminal.

Minister of Crown Investments Corporation Jeremy Harrison says the rationale for continuing to generate coal power, which he adds we are “blessed” to have, is based on the need for “reliable and affordable power generation along with energy security.” In the same letter, Harrison makes a note of the alleged intermittency and unreliability of renewables, more of the same tired and deceptive rhetoric that has been in play since 2007.

Green energy: fiscally and environmentally responsible
Reliable and affordable power generation does exist, through renewable energy, storage, and grid infrastructure. In contrast to coal power, which is being phased out even in petrostate economies like Alberta, renewables are the fastest-growing and cheapest investments in electricity and energy currently available. They’re vastly outpacing projections in costs and implementation, while creating zero emissions to generate energy.

Our province isn’t “blessed” with coal; it is cursed with its devastating impacts on our health, environment, and, if we aren’t proactive in pivoting, to the economy. The true Saskatchewan blessings are in renewables, with world class wind resources and the highest solar potential in Canada. A common argument is that our cold climate, which has been consistently warming, is no place for renewables. This purposefully ignores that wind and solar generation are possible year-round, especially with appropriate winterization, investment, development, and storage.

Even with billions in subsidies and infrastructure, coal, oil, and gas don’t make financial sense when compared to renewable electricity, making further investment into coal costly and reckless. Globally, solar power is now 41 per cent cheaper and wind power 53 per cent cheaper than the lowest cost fossil fuel, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. Nationally, this could mean renewable investment opportunities of $14 to $20 billion per year for wind, solar, and storage, with the potential for 250,000 to 350,000 full-time equivalent job years. The figures speak for themselves: with the most fossil fuel-intensive grid, Saskatchewan’s average electricity price is 21 cents per kWh, nearly double the rate of Manitoba’s predominately renewable power, with a price of 11 cents per kWh.

The Saskatchewan Party has refused to pioneer or invest in renewable energy solutions for 18 years, instead working on carbon capture, gas plants, and now, more coal. The economics of the coal decision are so obscene that Brett Dolter, a professor of economics at the University of Regina, compared it to “Blockbuster Video doubling down on building new VHS-rental stores in an era of Netflix ... It is a waste of Saskatchewan ratepayers’ and taxpayers’ money.”

A billion dollar disappointment
An even larger waste of resources has been the province’s investment in unreliable, unproven, and ineffective carbon capture at Boundary Dam Power Station. The province has proclaimed the success of carbon capture and storage, claiming it is capable of capturing up to 90 per cent of emissions. In reality, Boundary Dam has only captured, on average, 57 per cent of its goal of one million tons of CO2 per year over 10 years. This disappointment lines up with numerous warnings that carbon capture is not the silver bullet for climate woes that our leaders claim it to be. It is frustrating to imagine the progress in renewable energy, grid upgrades, connections, and storage options that could have been invested in and developed over the past 10 years instead of banking on a single billion-dollar project directed at appeasing our provincial coal barons. The province claims that Boundary Dam generates enough power to service up to 100,000 homes. In contrast, the Seven Stars Energy Project, a wind energy project underway in the Weyburn area by Six Nations Energy Development LP and Enbridge, will reportedly power the exact same number of homes with zero emissions, for an anticipated “hundreds of millions” of dollars, well below the billion dollars or more for carbon capture.

The province’s poor financial management doesn’t stop at money already spent; it also includes growing future costs of climate inaction. Scientists have long stressed not only the climate costs of pursuing coal, but also the unmanageable looming financial and social costs pursuing it will rack up. Saskatchewan politicians frequently cite the six-figure union jobs that would be lost in a transition away from coal. Conveniently ignored is the fact that workers in those high-paying jobs will not be able to hold on to that money if climate change continues accelerating. Inflation created by fossil fuel markets and their artificial scarcity, as critically examined by professor Jim Stanford, robs workers of their wages and allows the industry to pass costs down to all of us at the gas pump, the grocery aisle, and on utility bills. Damage from increasingly frequent extreme weather events like fires, floods and storms, and the costs to our infrastructure, roads, homes, health care, and water and food supplies are passed on to us through taxes or loss of services. The feedback loops that are created are not only climatic, but also social and economic.

Writing about environmental costs in the form of increased insurance prices, Gemma Boothroyd points out that weather events that were once happening every fifty years are now occurring every three to five years, resulting in “Saskatchewan’s average insurable losses (insurance companies’ anticipated payouts) [having] soared by 302 per cent over the last 30 years compared to the period prior”. This will increasingly impact everyone except the extremely wealthy, who aim to insulate themselves from disaster. “Their extreme wealth and privilege… make them obsessed with insulating themselves from the very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic and resource depletion”, as writer Douglas Rushkoff summarized in his exploration of billionaires and their impacts on society. Our quiet Prairie province is not immune to this exploitation and downward spiral. Every inch of our land, water, air, and labour will be pillaged for profit, not for our own benefit despite what may be promised, but for powerful capitalists.

The logic behind the Sask Party’s decision to pursue coal cannot be reconciled with goals of affordability, reliability, or security, or for economic, health, or climate reasons. In fact, all existing evidence indicates that this decision will be expensive, destabilizing, and harmful, indicating that the Sask Party’s true goal is climate delay and denial at great cost to us all. Rather than undertaking any true leadership, which involves making hard short-term decisions for long-term benefits they may not get to see, they continue to appease those with money and prestige. They have dug in their heels against any meaningful or effective climate action, whether policy or technology, kicking and screaming at the thought of giving up fossil fuels in favour of clean energy.

Environmental concerns are labour concerns
In the face of the province’s coal decision taking us a colossal step backwards, climate organizers must examine the reality of our situation: climate pedagogical efforts meant to persuade decision makers and the public have failed to create the necessary mobilization behind policies or keep even lukewarm climate-centered political actors in power, as observed in the recent federal election and the push for climate policy reversals. Mainstream climate politics have often centred on de-politicized and frictionless actions: technological solutions, individual responsibility, overdependence on technocracy, and public policy lobbying. Writers and researchers, such as geographer Holly Jean Buck, acknowledge the challenges of transforming our fossil economy into a green one, highlighting the need for carbon removal technology to be implemented at some scale as part of that transformation. However, instead of advocating for frictionless solutions, they are clear that these technologies must be worker- and community-led and under public ownership.

To build a worker-led transformation of our economy to combat climate change, we must examine the systems behind climate change, the political economy of fossil capitalism, and capitalist control of production. This systemic lens encompasses the material elements of climate change – how things are made, by whom, for whom, with what – as well as the class divisions, networks of wealth, ownership, patronage, and profit, and how they intersect to create Saskatchewan’s fossil economy. Examining the power and class relations behind the Sask Party’s coal decision allows us to organize with precision and efficacy, unlocking pathways to action that directly confront the dominant actors and leverage our power against them. These pathways require climate organizers to collaborate with capitalism’s historic nemesis: the labour union.

Historically, unions were allies in environmental movements, dating back to union-led environmental efforts in 1940s America, as well as Canadian union-involved efforts against pollution in the 1960s through 1980s. However, this dynamic was devastated by the shift from Keynesian to neo-liberal capitalism in the 1970s, pushing unions toward narrower workplace goals of wages, job security, and benefits, while abandoning larger social and environmental causes in times of austerity. The effects can still be seen today in the unions closest to the climate crisis and energy production in Saskatchewan, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), who have strongly supported the province’s decision to burn coal due to its alleged benefits for workers.

Fortunately, groups are working toward renewing labour alliances around climate goals – organizations such as Blue Green Canada, which brings together unions like the United Steelworkers and Unifor with climate-focused groups like Environmental Defence, build the relationships necessary to create a worker- and community-led transformation of the economy – one that reduces emissions to zero and eliminates the false dichotomy of jobs versus climate.

In stark contrast to IBEW Saskatchewan, in September 2025, IBEW Canada joined climate and environmental organizations such as the David Suzuki Foundation to make direct and public calls for an east-west electricity grid powered by renewable energy. Unions outside of the energy sector are also involved, like the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, whose “Delivering Community Power” plan reimagines the post office as a dynamic community-based institution that addresses climate change and delivers services beyond mail delivery. Just transition and sustainable jobs frameworks outline real paths forward in which workers are both foundational creators and beneficiaries of a new zero-emission economy with the support of environmental and climate organizers.

Here in Saskatchewan, connecting with workers and residents in areas that rely heavily on fossil fuel jobs has been constructive. In 2018, Climate Justice Saskatoon visited the coal communities of Estevan and Coronach to better understand the impacts of a coal phase-out, while working to create solutions that align with local realities on the ground. Importantly, climate justice organizers involved in that project understood the necessity of establishing rapport with workers and residents who may not be perfectly aligned with the cause: “building relationships with people who disagree with us has a built-in tension…but we saw an opportunity to connect with communities being left behind… and we realized that if our stories, as climate justice activists, cannot contain or reflect their lived experience, we can’t expect them to care about our perspective.”

Factoring in the lived experiences of workers and community members and building relationships with unions directly implicated in the coal decision are essential to countering the capitalist divide-and-conquer strategy imposed to drive a wedge between labour and climate movements. Even though all evidence points to coal being a poor choice of power source for everyone, that wedge still exists here in Saskatchewan.

Banding together for the future
Unions have gained many victories while aligning with climate activism and the pursuit of “socially useful work” over profit, both historically and in the present day, and workers in both IBEW and UMWA undoubtedly want what’s best for their communities. This means there is a path to reimagining work – rather than working to create profit for bosses and capitalists, we can work to combat climate change and fossil capitalism while nurturing a future for our grandchildren.

Climate and environmental organizers must engage with unions, effectively communicate the shared goals of labour and climate, understand the struggles of rank-and-file members, and engage in those struggles as much as possible to develop the trust and solidarity required. Something as simple as walking the picket line in solidarity can be crucial. Matthew Huber’s seminal work, Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet, makes the clearest argument for a working-class approach to defeating fossil capitalism and mitigating climate disaster: “the path forward for climate or anything else starts with rebuilding a fighting, democratic and powerful labor movement”.

If climate and labour are divided, both movements will fail and Saskatchewan’s fossil economy will contribute to the uninhabitability of our planet and our own immiseration. However, if climate and labour can unite in Saskatchewan by earnestly entering dialogue, understanding our mutual struggles, and combining our objectives to build trust and solidarity, we will have the power to transform our economy for workers and the planet.

The path forward will not be easy. Building relationships between unions and environmental and climate organizers will take time and resources, both in short supply. Friction-based politics result in moments of disagreement and discomfort, but solidarity isn’t built in a day and we must accept that there are no shortcuts to organized power – the exact type of power we need to confront the fossil capitalists as a united labour-environmental front to fight for our dignity, our home, and our future.

As fossil fuel, mining, and land barons work to exploit our land, labour, and loved ones, we must continue revitalizing labour power and wield it in tandem with climate action. Climate action means health care, education, access to clean air, safe food and water, and jobs that provide value beyond the dollars they create. Politicians and capitalists will not save us – only we can, with our collective and organized power. Together, the climate and labour movements in solidarity can build an economy that works for us and our planetary shop floor.

This piece was originally published in the Winter 2026 issue of Sask Dispatch.

BY SHAHEENA SHEIKH

In Saskatchewan’s early labour history, asking for fair pay or safer conditions could mean arrest – or worse. Without legal protections, workers had only each other.

Three exemplary events have had a defining impact on Saskatchewan’s labour history: the 1931 Estevan strike, the 1944 Trade Union Act, and a 2015 Supreme Court ruling. Each of these helped give Saskatchewan workers the protections they now benefit from, but, as Andrew Stevens, associate professor at the University of Regina points out, “The right to strike is meaningless if you don’t use it.” If we forget where we came from and what was fought for, we are at risk of freely giving up every hard-won right.

The spark before the law: the 1931 Estevan coal miners’ strike and riot
In early September 1931, a group of coal miners in Bienfait, Saskatchewan stopped work. Their demands were straightforward: better wages, safer working conditions, and improved workplace safety. Miners were underpaid, worked in dangerous conditions, and faced employer and local resistance municipal law makers and law enforcement.

The workers were supported by the Mine Workers’ Union of Canada, which was affiliated with the Workers’ Unity League, an effective agitation organization founded in 1929 and heavily involved in most Canadian strikes between 1930 and 1935. As the strike continued toward the end of the month, tensions rose in the area, especially between the strikers and mine operators, who were losing patience.

On September 29, 1931, around 300 to 400 miners, along with their wives and children, travelled from Bienfait to Estevan to hold a peaceful march. They aimed to raise awareness and gain support. Instead, they were met with fiercely armed police, who had been called in after the town council had voted that morning to declare the parade illegal. As the march moved through Estevan, the RCMP opened fire. Three miners – Nick Nargan, Peter Markunas, and Julian Gryshko – were killed, and several others were injured or arrested. The following day, 90 RCMP officers stormed Bienfait and raided the miners’ homes, arresting 13 strikers and the union leader.

The event became known as the Estevan Riot despite the fact that the violence was one-sided, the miners armed only with banners. The RCMP’s use of lethal force shocked many, though public opinion was divided. While some newspapers and politicians blamed the violence on so-called “outside communist agitators,” others criticized the excessive police force and the working conditions that led to the strike.

While the RCMP officers involved were not charged in the incident, the mine owners did agree to concessions. On October 6, miners won an eight-hour work day, a minimum wage of $4 a day, a reduction in rent for miners’ houses, and an end to the company store monopoly. The owners, however, refused to acknowledge the union until the Second World War. The riot was instrumental in the movement for labour protections in Saskatchewan. It showed how peaceful demands could be seen as threats – and how vulnerable workers were. When Saskatchewan became the first province to legally recognize union rights in 1944, the hard-fought rights won in Estevan were part of that success.

The legal turning point: the 1944 Trade Union Act
Just over a decade after the violent suppression of the Estevan coal miners’ strike, Saskatchewan made history – this time not with force, but with legislation. In 1944, under then-Premier Tommy Douglas and his Co-operative Commonwealth Federation government, the province introduced the Trade Union Act, a groundbreaking law that would help shape labour rights in Canada.

Before the Act, workers who tried to unionize often faced job loss or blacklisting, with no clear process to resolve disputes.

Saskatchewan’s Trade Union Act changed that. It was Canada’s first to protect bargaining, affirm union rights, and limit employer interference.

The Act spurred union membership, strengthened bargaining, and offered a path to resolve conflict through legal channels. Other provinces followed, and the model shaped federal law.

The law was not without critics, particularly business groups who saw it as giving too much power to unions. But for many workers, it marked the first time they had real protection and a seat at the table. It helped stabilize labour relations and prevent violent confrontations.

Though subsequently amended, its legacy endures. Core rights such as unionizing, filing grievances, and bargaining stem from this legislation. It marked a turning point – not just for its immediate impact in the 1940s, but the framework it left for future workers.

A constitutional right: the 2015 Supreme Court Ruling on the right to strike
By the early 2000s, Saskatchewan was no longer the national model of labour reform it had once been. In 2008, the newly elected Saskatchewan Party government introduced Bill 5 (the Public Service Essential Services Act) and Bill 6 (the Amendments to the Trade Union Act). The legislation significantly limited the ability of public-sector employees, including teachers and nurses, to go on strike by designating broad categories of work as “essential.”

Critics said the Public Service Essential Services Act gave the employers (in the case of public-sector employees, the provincial government) the power to deem which employees were “essential,” with no adequate process to dispute employer-dictated categorizations. If abused, the Act would allow employers to designate all employees as “essential,” effectively halting any strike action. In response, the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour (SFL) launched a legal challenge. In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada delivered a landmark decision: the right to strike was protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In SFL v. Saskatchewan, the court ruled that the government’s legislation violated the freedom of association guaranteed by section 2(d) of the Charter.

The ruling made clear that meaningful bargaining includes the right to strike, for all workers. The provincial government had to amend its law, passing new legislation in 2015 that removed the old definition of “essential services” and created an independent tribunal to resolve disputes. It also introduced mediation arbitration if essential services limits made a strike ineffective. These changes were meant to bring the law in line with the Charter, but unions noted concerns about how accessible and effective the new system would be in practice.

Saskatchewan’s labour rights: not thriving
So what has all this struggle been for? What is the state of workers’ rights now? Nearly a decade after the Supreme Court ruled in favour of workers, Stevens acknowledges it was a positive win – but workers in Saskatchewan are not using all the rights available to them.

“Keep in mind that the number of work stoppages had tanked in the decades leading up to the Sask Party’s Bills 5 and 6 in 2008,” says Stevens. “Even in a province that, at the time, possessed some of the most favourable labour legislation in Canada, very little was happening in an otherwise quiet labour relations environment. The right to strike is meaningless if you don’t use it.”

He also warns against thinking the 2015 Supreme Court case was a slam dunk win. There are provisions in the labour codes at the “federal and provincial level [that] still allow governments to curb collective action by referring matters to arbitration,” explains Stevens. “Ask port workers, posties, and rail unions what it meant to have federal officials suspend their strike action. This is perfectly legal and constitutional.”

In Saskatchewan, some of the most prominent strikers are teachers, who have “made meaningful gains because of collective action,” says Stevens, referencing the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation (STF) work action that saw teachers working for nearly two years without a contract in place. “It’s possible that, had STF members not agreed to binding arbitration on the class complexity matter, they might have been able to achieve even more had they maintained a picket line,” speculates Stevens. “It was clear that membership engagement and mobilization was delivering the goods and moving the needle on issues that the government had refused to meaningfully negotiate.”

Stevens is concerned that all of us have forgotten that strikes are meant to be inconvenient. A strike aims to powerfully demonstrate how integral employees are to the success of a business or organization. He points to the case of the Unifor Local 594 members at the Co-op Refinery Complex in Regina in 2020, who were undermined by replacement workers (scabs). “Without laws prohibiting scabs from continuing operations, employers can keep businesses running, rendering a right to strike moot.”

In that instance, the employer went so far as to demand the imprisonment of union leaders and members who blockaded a back entrance to the plant. The City of Regina was also complicit, greenlighting a scab camp, and local police acted as private security for the business, routinely patrolling the boundaries of the facility. Stevens points to a comment by Scott Banda, CEO of Federated Co-operatives Limited at the time, that sums up some of his deepest concerns. Banda stated that “there’s the right for the union to picket in a peaceful way and there’s the right for the business to operate.” To that, Stevens responds that “strikes are just performative if they can’t confront the power of an employer.”

“Overall,” Stevens says sadly, “I don’t see much change.” He points to Evraz, a steel and pipe facility with a location in Regina, whose record for serious injuries and fatalities raised safety questions yet drew little labour response. In Moose Jaw, too, hotel workers have been walking the picket line for over 600 days, with no end in sight and little support from the labour movement at large.

Stevens’ perspective draws a sharp contrast between legal victories and lived realities. While the 2015 decision marked a new chapter in Canadian labour law, its power ultimately depends on how it’s used – and whether workers feel supported enough to exercise it.

The present labour climate in Saskatchewan
Even with the right to strike now constitutionally protected, the realities facing Saskatchewan workers suggest that recognition alone is not enough. How those rights are used – and how governments and employers respond – has become just as important.

Saskatchewan’s labour environment still reflects deep structural challenges. Under the Sask Party, first elected in 2007, the province has introduced policies that make it harder for workers to unionize or take collective action.

“The Sask Party [has] carried on the conservative tradition by making it more difficult for workers to unionize and for them to engage in strike activity,” says Stevens. “It’s not just about the constitutional right to strike. There are now more obstacles for unions to follow just to be in a legal strike position. That’s all very constitutional. Employers now have more rights when it comes to intervening in a union drive. That was deemed acceptable by Canada’s top court.”

“We’re in a period of relative quiet right now, but let’s think about the hate directed at Unifor 594 workers when they were locked out,” he says. “These were oil and gas workers, but it didn’t stop their union from being cast as some Eastern elite organization, or from self-identified farmers who threatened to bomb the picket lines. That’s where we’re at right now. The all-out assault on union rights has stalled in Saskatchewan, but economic conditions might end up doing the hard work for employers.”

The legal ability to strike may exist, but without accompanying protections – such as anti-scab legislation or meaningful limitations on employer retaliation – many unions face uphill battles when they exercise it.

Stevens also highlights deeper issues being overlooked, including general working conditions and challenges posed by automation, specifically AI, and a just transition.

“We’re just not talking enough about how climate change and the just transition will impact Saskatchewan workers and their unions,” he says. “There’s not enough talk linking labour issues with other socio-economic challenges like homelessness, growing rates of poverty, addictions, and housing affordability. Nor are we talking enough about organizing new workplaces in under-represented industries.”

He stresses that the province has some wonderful union leaders but wonders about “the labour-focused economic development strategy needed to confront Trump? Where are unions when it comes to right–wing populism and separatism? Efforts to prevent the contracting–out of work? Labour involvement in living wage campaigns?”

His concerns speak to a broader disconnect: while individual unions continue to represent their members in the workplace, the larger social and economic forces shaping workers’ lives – such as automation, climate change, income inequality, and housing instability – often go unaddressed.

Today’s challenges go beyond wages and include who shapes the economy, who feels safe, and whose voices matter. And while the province once paved the way and helped set the standard for labour rights, residents of this province have not collectively stepped up to carry that work forward.

What’s missing, Stevens argues, is a unified labour strategy that responds not just to employer demands, but to the full range of issues workers face. Without that, legal victories like the 2015 ruling risk becoming simply symbolic, a right in theory but never in practice. As Stevens notes, “Collective action gets the goods,” but that can only be true if the collective remains active.

Saskatchewan’s labour journey moved from protest to protection to constitutional rights. The moments of progress in 1931, 1944, and 2015 were significant, but rights can erode without strong support structures. For example, the Supreme Court struck down Saskatchewan’s 2008 Essential Services Act specifically because it lacked impartial review mechanisms and alternative dispute resolution like arbitration, meaning employers could unilaterally dictate who was deemed “essential” and stifle bargaining rights. And although the government later introduced a tribunal and mediation–arbitration system, unions have warned these may not be sufficiently accessible or timely to fully protect workers in practice.

Stevens’ observations that “the right to strike is useless unless you use it” is a warning that underscores the ongoing tension between recognition and reality. Today, workers’ rights face quiet but persistent challenges unless all of us, collectively, defend them. The labour movement’s legacy lies not just in law, but in the will to keep pushing.

This piece was originally published in the Winter 2026 issue of Sask Dispatch.

BY ETHAN KLEIN

When the Saskatchewan Party won their record-tying fifth election in 2024, they did so with a party platform that seeks to deliver a strong economy and bright future for the people of the province. In their platform were promises of increasing affordable housing, improving community safety, and providing tax cuts for mom-and-pop businesses. This is all to be done in an effort to make Saskatchewan a province where people can thrive and invest their futures. While this messaging is not exclusive to the Sask Party, they have emphasized delivering on one of the most important facets of modern society: investing in jobs.

To the Sask Party’s credit, between 2023 and 2024 they invested approximately $300 million into what they call the “Saskatchewan Labour Market Strategy,” with funding to create jobs (particularly in the natural resources sector) as well as pre-employment and adult essential skills training. As of April 2025, the province under the current government also boasts one of the lowest unemployment rates (4.3 per cent), trailing only the Yukon (3.9 per cent) and the Northwest Territories (3.7 per cent). Neighbours in Manitoba sit a whole percentage behind Saskatchewan, with a 5.3 per cent unemployment rate.

With a federal unemployment rate of 6.9 per cent the Sask Party is, by all appearances, doing a better job (no pun intended) than most provincial governments at keeping people employed. However, merely being employed is not the same thing as having a good job. Objectively speaking, having a “good job” means wages that can keep up with the rising cost of living, and having access to job-related benefits such as health insurance and pensions. For about 33 per cent of the people in this province, having one of these “good jobs” that delivers these aforementioned benefits means having a job with union representation. This is because provincially, union-represented positions pay 20 per cent more, with access to expanded health-care, parental, and retirement benefits being roughly twice as prevalent.

This isn’t to say that non-unionized workplaces can’t have decent wages and benefits; it is every union’s duty and an overall goal of the organized labour movement to help ensure individuals have jobs that can meet their needs for a balanced and sustainable life. And it is here, with union-represented positions and the benefits of organized labour, that the Sask Party’s policy messaging about valuing and investing in good jobs diverges from its practice.

A new party for the people
“At their inception, [the Sask Party] were the new kids on the block,” says labour activist Jesse Todd on the Sask Party’s founding back in 1997. The Sask Party was a conglomeration of Progressive Conservative and Liberal MLAs, formed as a response to Roy Romanow’s New Democratic Party (NDP) – which had been elected with resounding majorities since 1991. While the NDP has historically benefited from strong support among unions and by extension the labour movement, “Romanow had been an austerity-driven, cost-cutting premier,” says Charles Smith, a professor of political studies at St. Thomas More College. “His finance minister Janice MacKinnon ... had taken a hatchet to the public service.” In material terms, this meant cutting well-paying jobs and necessary services across the province and forcing striking nurses back to work in April of 1999. These actions didn’t sit well with voters of all stripes, and people looked to the Sask Party for answers. Todd remembers that at that time, the Sask Party “had the shiny new logo, colours of the Saskatchewan flag, really trying to be the party of the people … I think there was that hope among people that things will be different. Things will change.”

In the 1999 provincial election, the Sask Party (under the leadership of Elwin Hermanson) won 25 to the NDP’s 29 seats, making it clear voters in the province were eager for change in government. In 2003 the Sask Party edged their seat count up to 28, nearly matching the NDP’s 30. Finally, in 2007, Sask Party leader Brad Wall flipped the party, bringing its iconic green and yellow into the majority government.

The Sask Party and other priorities
While many might have hoped this shift in government was the start of bringing back well-paying jobs in the public sector and other essential services, from the beginning the Sask Party had its own agenda for workers and workers’ rights.

Smith elaborates: “I think in [the Sask Party’s] DNA is this sort of hostility toward the organized labour movement and what it represents historically into the current era. For example, one of the first things [Wall] did as premier in 2007 was implement a series of anti-labour reform bills.” These bills were known as Bill 5 (the Public Service Essential Services Act) and Bill 6 (the Trade Union Amendment Act) and were perhaps the two most impactful pieces of legislation affecting both unionized and non-unionized workers.

Bill 5 sought to expand the category of “essential services” to thousands of union jobs across the province that were ordinarily excluded from this category. By applying this label to these new sectors, the Sask Party government then sought to restrict the right to strike for these expanded “essential services”, thus robbing them of a negotiation tool, which is sometimes crucial to win fair contracts.

Bill 6, on the other hand, eliminated the tradition of Saskatchewan workers being able to form a union via card-check certification. This bill affected workers under provincial jurisdiction, which was, and remains, the vast majority of SK workers. Former president of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour (SFL) Larry Hubich explains: “What we used to call ‘card majority’ – you would get an automatic certification if you could sign up 50 per cent plus one of the members eligible. And you could get an automatic [union] certification without a vote.”

In practical terms, the old way meant the process for a workplace to form a union was streamlined, effectively requiring that eligible employees need only “sign up” to join a club. However, the introduction of Bill 6 required the additional step that a formal vote be conducted in order to unionize. According to Hubich, this means that “the boss is able to have a scrutineer there and watch … who is going in and voting.” In Hubich’s view, this extra step violated a degree of anonymity from the voting process and infringed on “workers exercising their constitutional right to freedom of association and form[ing] unions in the first place.” As a possible result of this policy, Saskatchewan remains one of several provinces since 2007 to see their unionization rate decline overall.

Lesser known attacks
While the Sask Party’s passing of Bills 5 and 6 has garnered considerable attention when it comes to changes in Saskatchewan’s labour code and attacks on good jobs, Todd recounts that in 2014, the Sask Party implemented a broader change for all working people. “They basically bundled up all the labour legislation in Saskatchewan through the Saskatchewan Employment Act … It’s a massive document and they hid all these little things throughout the document that chipped away at workers’ rights, even for non-unionized workers.”

Hubich adds to this point. “There used to be a provision [in the original labour code] that said the employer was required to give you, in certain sectors, two consecutive days of rest. Now it’s one.” Another change Hubrich noted was that previously, employees couldn’t be scheduled for more than eight hours in a 24-hour period without being compensated for overtime. Changes made by the Sask Party allow the employer to set what that 24-hour period is.

For the nearly 70 per cent of non-unionized workers in the province, these changes to the labour code have left workers with less self-determination in their workplaces. Workers as a group are “fighting like hell to just maintain the things over the last several decades that we’ve earned,” says Nathaniel Cole, strategic advisor to the SFL.

Cole also points to other non-legislative changes the Sask Party has made when it comes to engaging with the labour movement and organized workers. In the case of organizations like the SFL, Cole believes they currently “are not seen as an organization [by the Sask Party] that requires consultation on labour issues.” Speaking about his time as head of the SFL, Hubich concurs. He “watched that relationship … deteriorate” between the labour movement and the Sask Party once Wall came to power. Hubich recalls that he would continuously try to reach out to Wall’s office to discuss key issues, but never heard back. “Brad Wall was not interested in working with anyone in the labour movement.”

Exit Wall. Enter Moe.
After Wall’s departure in the middle of his third term in 2018, Scott Moe took over as Sask Party leader and premier of the province; a position he kept after his party’s win in the 2020 provincial election.

With this change in leadership came a noticeable shift in Sask Party politics. Cole describes this period as “a rollback of some of the sophistication in [the Sask Party’s] politics. [...] With the departure of Brad Wall began the departure of some of those moderated or commonsensical or less ideological members of both the caucus and leadership team in the legislature in those inner circles.” Cole speculates this occurred because “Wall’s Sask Party was a bigger tent, united not in ideology but in function – to prevent the NDP from being re-elected, [while] Moe’s Sask Party [was] unabashedly in lock-step with present-day Canadian conservatism.” Specifically, Cole points to former Sask Party MLAs Mark Docherty and Glen Hart, both of whom “were rather open about their differences” with the state of the party. This was seen most readily in their endorsement of opposition leader Carla Beck of the NDP during the 2024 provincial election. Docherty and Hart were vocal about their distaste for Moe’s out-of-touch politics. In particular, Cole mentions Moe’s use of the “notwithstanding clause” in 2023 in order to pass Bill 137 – a bill many in the province know as the “school pronoun policy.”

The bill required that students under the age of 16 who wished to be referred to with specific pronouns must receive parental consent before school employees could fulfill the student’s request. To pass Bill 137, Moe used the notwithstanding clause to circumvent a provincial court order not to implement the law before the court reviewed its constitutionality. Cole believes this set a troublesome precedent of pushing provincial policy past the courts in an effort to attack basic rights, including but not limited to in the workplace. He argues that “the ‘notwithstanding clause’ in Canadian history has overwhelmingly been used to suspend the rights of workers.”

Recent examples include Ontario Premier Doug Ford forcing striking education workers back to work in 2021, as well as Quebec Premier François Legault’s ban on wearing religious symbols in the public sector. In other words, there is increased concern among the labour movement that the use of the notwithstanding clause may embolden Moe’s government to implement unconstitutional legislation within the province in the future. Whether that means enacting back-to-work-legislation or additional restrictions on freedoms of expression, remains to be seen.

In any case, Moe’s government has continued to find other means of manoeuvring against the workers who make the province run day to day. One example was the party’s striking down of Bill 606 in 2022. This legislation, presented by the NDP, would have required employers throughout the province to provide 10 days of paid sick leave to their employees.

Sask Party in decline?
Over the last two electoral cycles, the Sask Party has seen a slow but steady drop in support, with the NDP picking up three provincial seats in 2020 and coming close to threatening a Sask Party majority in 2024. And while many in the labour movement see an NDP government as more honest about putting policy into action when it comes to increasing good jobs and workers’ rights, it is equally important to understand what needs to be done before 2028.

When asked about some of the groundwork being laid in the lead-up to 2028, Hubich points to the SFL’s Speak Up Saskatchewan, which since 2023 has been the SFL’s “home for campaigns, advocacy, and political action” and where communities can “unite and demand better from Scott Moe and the Sask Party.” This has included taking part in actions such as petition signing and circulation and mobilizing for various pro-worker causes.

Todd emphasizes that in the interim it is also important for the labour movement to “celebrate the small victories,” while continuing to do the work of ensuring good union jobs remain in Saskatchewan. To do this, he believes it will require “looking beyond traditional allies” like formal trade and public-sector unions to push back against a Saskatchewan Party determined to talk about creating good jobs while slowly removing the regulatory underpinnings that support them. Todd recounts how unions and non-profit, grassroots, and volunteer organizations all came together in opposition of the Sask Party’s Bill 137. Despite the bill’s eventual passage into law, court battles against the legality of the Act continue thanks to the resiliency and hard work of traditional labour movement actors and those individuals and community organizations sharing common interests and goals. As Todd sees it, “inviting folks into the house of labour” is what is necessary in order to meet the current moment and fight for a good economy and bright future for all.

This piece was originally published in the November/December 2025 issue of Sask Dispatch.

BY BECKY ZIMMER

Jeffery Straker remembers the first time he actually made money playing music.

Starting off with a tip jar in piano bars in Toronto, the Punnichy, Saskatchewan-born singer-songwriter remembers the connections he made with people as he watched them from his piano stool.

Besides being the first time he got paid to make music, seeing how people reacted to his musical talent was what made him keep going, he says, not that he knew at the time how he would grow into the singer-songwriter he is today.

“You really got to see up close, whether people were sitting in the chairs at the end of the piano, or standing around the piano, you could see their reactions to songs, and you could see what songs and how songs moved people. That intrigued me.”

Hard to define “success”
After 20 years, Straker now performs over a hundred shows per year across Canada, has performed throughout Europe and Latin America, and has recorded 10 albums. The latest, Great Big Sky, won him “Contemporary Singer of the Year” at the 2025 Canadian Folk Music Awards.

So what does Straker have to say to anyone wanting to get into singing and songwriting in 2025? Very little, since the “way in” for the music industry is very different now, he says.

“I think people are singing songs [...] on TikTok. I don’t know what they’re doing, but I started playing all these tiny shows all over the place, and people would gather. It almost sounds old-fashioned now.”

Straker had a good job in Toronto when he first started performing, and the switch to music was a slow but definitive one. He was seeing results from “hacking away” at it after work in the evening, so Straker started working half-time to spend more time as a singer-songwriter and began seeing more and more success.

After recording his first album, Songs from Highway 15, in 2006, he “cut the cord” from his regularly scheduled paycheque.

“I sang those songs anywhere I possibly could. Like my phrase I used was that I would sing for the opening of an envelope because I would sing anywhere,” he laughs. “And I gave myself a year. I gave myself a very defined limit. I was like, ‘I have to have something happening in a year or this isn’t going to happen.’”

Making dollars and sense
Straker is not alone in grappling with the question of how to make a living as an artist.

According to a report commissioned by the Cultural Human Resources Council (CHRC) titled How are Canada’s artists doing? Analysis of a survey of affordability and working conditions in early 2024, 66 per cent of artists made below $40,000 from their arts and culture work in 2023 and half of the survey’s respondents consider themselves self-employed. The poverty line in Canada for a single person ranges from $21,014 to $30,526, depending on whether the person is living in a rural area or a large urban centre.

Alexa Hainsworth has always been interested in making fashion art and still dabbles in it from time to time, but her primary work as the member services coordinator at the Saskatchewan Craft Council has her representing over 300 Saskatchewan artists, from basketry to woodworking and everything in between.

The art engine feeds itself, she says, with craft artists making art, selling art, and putting that money back into their art. As for making a stable living, Hainsworth says that very few people are doing that in the crafting arts but she knows that many in the industry are working multiple jobs to subsidize their creative process. People are getting used to this multitasking in a capitalist world, she says, since the cost of market fees, supplies, and living have gone up, while artists continue to defend the value of their work.

All of this can be extremely stressful and exhausting, especially with personal and family lives on top of it. Artists need to give themselves the permission to step away, whether to switch gears and look for inspiration or to get out of the business altogether, she says. If they still have the energy, drive, and inspiration, Hainsworth is seeing an advantage for artists with a full range of skills – and a bit of luck, in getting their work in front of the right people.

“If they’re lucky enough, they will buy studio space and rent that space to make income. They will teach classes, and then they will spend time in the studio creating and then driving across the country to attend or lead workshops, or sell their work at markets.”

According to the CHRC report, 71 per cent of respondents have more than one job.

An oversaturated market
Saskatchewan Craft Council member Kevin Hogarth has been shooting photographs in Saskatchewan full-time since 1982, when he shot whatever and wherever he could. If a young person walked into his studio today saying they want to be a photographer, he’d have one word for them, he says: Don’t. Surviving on photography alone is nearly impossible right now.

“If somebody’s interested in being a photographer, I strongly suggest [they] get into graphic design, layout concepts, social media, and photography, and that’s what they have to do. They have to do it as a combined effort.”

When COVID-19 began, Hogarth lost 80 per cent of his commercial clients. One client’s reasoning was that they had to balance budgets with no funding available for creative projects. Even though he was a small business owner, Hogarth didn’t receive any federal or provincial funding either. But there was a silver lining, he says: he has gone back to film photography as a creative outlet. With the growth of digital technology, the introduction of AI, and easy access to cameras, photography has changed since he first began, he says.

“[Modern photography] is getting near a form of perfection. So I have a show right now that I’ve blown up images to 40 inches by 80 inches, just to expand the grain in the images.”

New artists are coming onto the market and charging substantially less for their work, pricing Hogarth out. However, he doesn’t expect they are making a sustainable living at it.

Straker says that’s the million-dollar question. “Or perhaps the $10-dollar question,” laughs Straker: “how do you put a price on your art?”

A balancing and juggling act
Jillian Ross and Brendan Copestake own Jillian Ross Print, a collaborative print making studio in Saskatoon that supports artists in printing and distribution.

Art has to be sustainable, they explain, a balance between artist grants and generated revenue, so makers’ space and selling space have to be both part of this artist community.

Jillian Ross Print currently operates out of the couple’s double garage studio, but they are on the verge of moving in to the Caswell Bus Barns development, slated to open in the Caswell Hill neighbourhood of Saskatoon in early 2026. They anticipate that the move will encourage people to come visit. ”We have an open-door policy so people can come in and see how it’s done,” says Ross.

Copestake applauds the work of Creative Saskatchewan, an economic development network for Saskatchewan creatives. They help artists create sustainable art-based business practices and getting their work out to potential buyers, something he and Ross have benefited from firsthand. Grants are important but they are “supposed to lift you up and let you go,” he says. It needs to be a balance of financial support but one that helps you create a thriving business.

“They’re all about opening up markets and giving you funding to travel your artwork internationally, across the border, and across the province. They help fund artists on production grants to produce something to sell.”

That is a sustainable practice, says Ross, and in turn it creates jobs in the art industry.

Emphasizing the value of handmade
Jillian Ross Print offers a communal space to get artists working both together and independently, having conversations, and creating a network of people to learn from. Now that they have started the move into the Caswell, they are already seeing the benefits of more space in a central location, especially for artists needing both a makers’ space and a sales space.

Galleries are few and far between on the prairies, says Ross, so creating a learning and mentorship space where artists can get their work in front of more people is the goal. The garage wasn’t always the best place to do that – the informal atmosphere was not the most inviting for walk-in traffic. They have already created their own public gallery space with more than double the square footage in Caswell and a more public-facing space to invite people in.

“You need not only room for production, but room for showing people work, so that they could actually understand it’s for sale. It’s being made. This is what it looks like framed. This is what it looks like unframed.”

When art is tangible, like a scarf, a photograph, or a sculpture, consumers buy things they feel a connection with, says Hainsworth. That’s a challenge for crafters, who are always competing with new technology and the cheap mass-produced items that people are more likely to be able to afford from Walmart than unique handmade pieces from their market stall. Pricing the work is the biggest hurdle artists have to overcome, says Hainsworth, and artists have to become educators as well as creators.

“[They’re] making sure their customers understand the value of what they do. That there is more soul in owning a one-of-a-kind piece versus the lead-painted mug from another country.”

Buy their work
For Straker, he connects with an audience when he’s performing live, but in 2025, that now extends to online spaces. Unfortunately, Instagram likes or YouTube views don’t always translate into ticket or album sales. Straker wants people to understand more deeply how necessary it is for them to actually show up to keep him creating music and keep him on the road performing. He wishes there was a polite way to tell people this is how the business model works: if you like an artist, buy their art.

“You’re listening to all my songs for free on Spotify, you’re seeing all the videos I post on Facebook. I’ve never seen you at a show,” he laughs.

If we want to keep seeing Saskatchewan artists tell our stories, the best way to support them is simple: buy their work.

This piece was originally published in the Winter 2026 issue of Sask Dispatch.

July 4, 2018 will forever stand out to me as one of those days that alters completely the course of your future, a date you can point to on a map of your life and say with a rare certainty, “here. It happened here.” That was the day that I got an email from Briarpatch editor Saima Desai, saying that she wanted to pick up a story I had pitched her – the first story I had ever pitched in my life. It was exciting and nerve-wracking to have the opportunity to write such an important story for a magazine that I had read and admired since I was a teenage socialist and I approached that story feeling the full weight of responsibility that came with it.

I had only ever intended to write that one article. At the time my heart was, and to a large extent remains, with literary fiction and non-fiction. But shortly after that first article, Saima asked me if I would write again, this time for the Sask Dispatch, and this time about the strike at the Saskatoon Co-op. I knew little about co-ops at the time, other than that they were an important part of the social and economic infrastructure of small town Saskatchewan, and that to buy gas anywhere else was to break my grandmother’s heart. That story turned out to be one of my favourites, not only because it turned out well and continues to help explain how co-ops have become an important site of struggle in the province, but also because it marks the beginning of a shift in my relationship with Saskatchewan. I spent a lot of time reading and researching that story, delving more deeply and with more intention into the history of the province, interviewing activists and farmers (and activist farmers) who had made cooperatives a part of their life’s work, and I came to a fuller understanding of the aspects of the province worth defending and emulating, and the ways that those things have been deliberately undermined by conservatism.

Saskatchewan has always been a place where almost limitless possibility and unfathomable violence live alongside one another. It was bought with the genocide against the Indigenous people who have lived on these lands for millennia, and it was sold as a territory filled with endless opportunity for the settlers who were urged to make their home here. It is frequently a difficult place to live, and it can often be a difficult place to love. Working as the editor of the Sask Dispatch for the past two years has helped me to love Saskatchewan more deeply than I would have thought possible. Despite the entrenchment of conservative politics and the ongoing violence of settler colonialism, Saskatchewan is home to countless people who are dogged in their commitment to pushing this province to be what it could be. They are fierce and uncompromising in their pursuit of justice and liberation. I’ve been privileged to meet many of these people, to interview them about their work, and to edit their words. These are the people who make Saskatchewan home.

Working as the editor of the Sask Dispatch has been one of the great honours of my life. I’m proud of the work that I’ve done here and I'm thankful for those who have read and shared Dispatch articles over the years. I’m also thankful to the donors who have helped keep the Sask Dispatch fiercely independent, and I encourage everyone who appreciates the work the Dispatch is doing to join me in becoming a monthly donor. I’m endlessly grateful to the writers who have trusted me with their words and thoughts, for the activists and organizers who shared their stories with me, and to the Briarpatch community, who have always been ready with wisdom, advice, and valuable insights into this province and its people. I am especially grateful to Saima, who believed in my abilities before I did, whose thoughtful and conscientious edits have helped me hone my skills as a writer, reporter, and editor, and whose leadership I trust and respect immensely.

While I don’t yet know what comes next for me, I’m excited to hand off the editorship of the Sask Dispatch to Emily Klatt, a thoughtful and capable journalist and editor who understands the challenges that this province faces and who will no doubt help the Dispatch flourish. I’m looking forward to seeing the Sask Dispatch grow with her.

In solidarity,

Sara Birrell

Outgoing Editor

Job Description

The Sask Party burning it all down

Bilderschreiber via Flickr

Saskatchewan is, for reasons both environmental and political, often a challenging place to live. But over the past several months, the situation inside the province has degraded to the point that it is almost unbearable. Since the provincial government prematurely ended the public health order requiring masking in all public spaces on July 11 in a news release grimly titled “Living with COVID-19,” the numbers of the sick and the dead have skyrocketed. October is now on track to become the deadliest month since the pandemic was declared more than a year and a half ago. As of Thursday, 143 people have died this month - nearly 40 each week. More than one-quarter of new cases in the province are in children under the age of 12, and three children in the province have died, accounting for 16 per cent of all child COVID deaths in Canada, even though the province’s children account for only 3 per cent of the youth population. 

Scott Moe, who may well replace Grant Devine as the most reviled and despicable premier the province has ever seen, has callously refused to implement new restrictions, despite physicians in Saskatchewan begging him, and the incompetent health minister Paul Merriman, to do so. Moe claims that the case numbers are dropping, but that’s almost certainly because the amount of testing has declined, and not because there is less COVID in the population. Last week the armed forces were deployed to the province, which is a medical disaster zone, to help airlift COVID-19 patients to Ontario because the province’s ICUs no longer have the capacity to care for them. Life-saving surgeries have been postponed and cancelled, and people have or will die because of this, probably many of them. On October 20, the province’s chief medical officer, Saqib Shahab, cried during a live teleconference as he presented COVID modelling for the province.

No empty beds here

Concordia University via Flickr

And on Thursday, we all found out why. There has been speculation over the past weeks and months about why Moe has been committed to doing absolutely nothing to protect the lives of Saskatchewan residents. That he is playing to his base, that he is appeasing the antimask crowd, that he is trying to keep “the economy” open. But on Thursday Moe said that he wasn’t sure when the two hundred and seventy-five healthcare services that have been cut will be brought back, but suggested that privatizing certain services might free up some “folks.” It seems clear now that at least part of the reason that the Sask Party – which has been committedly and doggedly fileting the province like a fish for a decade and a half, carving it up and selling the choicest pieces – has been allowing people to die long, agonizing, and unnecessary deaths, is in order to privatize certain services and to undermine the quality of the public healthcare system. 

Moe has killed through negligence before, but to suggest that what is happening here is negligence is to be too generous. Scott Moe, and his entire cabinet, know that what they are doing is killing people. They know that there are terrified people who were awaiting transplants and cancer surgeries and bypasses, who would have certainly lived if they had been able to have those surgeries, who may now die unnecessarily and in utter anguish because of the choices that are being made in this province every day. This is beyond negligence. It is social murder. It is the deliberate decision to allow an untold number of people to die in order to advance political aims. It is a level of depraved indifference that is almost unspeakable, and it is made all the worse by the dissonance between the devastating conditions facing Saskatchewan people and the premier’s blithe tweets and statements about retail trade increasing by 4.2 per cent in August or his “optimism” for the province’s future.

Housing is a human right

Daniel Moskowitz via Flickr

And it’s not just the pandemic. Saskatchewan, under the catastrophic leadership of Minister of Social Services Lori Carr, rolled out a new social services program that has had brutalizing consequences for poor people. Over the past several weeks, Regina has seen the growth of a tent encampment, called Camp Marjorie after a mother and community member who died because of the province’s unchecked drug toxicity crisis, grow from one tent to more than 60, because so many people are being evicted due to the inadequate funds provided by the SIS program. And despite Murray Mandryk’s absurd column where he argued that Saskatchewan – a place where police have used the cold as a method of extrajudical execution of Indigenous men within living memory – is a place that “would not let our cattle freeze, much less our people,” it is abundantly clear that the Sask Party does not care if Saskatchewan people freeze to death, and they may even desire that as an outcome because it means fewer people attempting to navigate the byzantine social services system to access whatever meagre supports exist. And while the provincial government continues to intentionally and methodically violate the dignity and humanity of the people who live here, they talk about investing more money in police and prisons, to stamp out “crime.”

And the government is not alone in this assault on the people of this province. Many of our own neighbours are deeply and viciously invested in causing us harm. At a rally on Wednesday to call on the Sask Party to immediately reverse the devastating changes to the welfare system, anti-maskers gathered in a counter protest, bearing heinous signs and taunting members of their own community. And the comments sections on stories about Camp Marjorie contain some of the vilest, most inhumane comments about the value of the lives of our brothers and sisters that could possibly be made. People talk about leaving here for good, and they talk about feeling like they are losing their minds from the gap between what is happening and what is being acknowledged. 

This is a deep, dark moment in a province that has had its share of dark moments. And there is little hope of structural changes in the near future. There is still organizing going on on the ground. People are doing the work that they can do to support their communities, and that matters, that is saving lives. But in a place where the elected leadership is refusing to acknowledge the acute suffering that is happening in every corner and community in this province, it’s important to acknowledge that the physical, emotional, spiritual, and social suffering that people are experiencing is real. If people are feeling bad, if their mental health is tanking, there is good reason for that. We are in a period of prolonged collective suffering, and while I would encourage you not to despair, and to look for those who are helping, and do what you can to help as well, you’re not wrong to be afraid, or furious, or to feel like you’re losing your grip. It’s as bad as you think it is.

Saskatchewan needs more independent journalism. But without the backing of corporations like Postmedia, we rely on your support to keep producing high-quality journalism that challenges the mainstream media consensus. Donate now to help us sustain and expand our work.

Flickasam via Flickr

Mass death has been normalized

You are going to die. This is not a threat (or an accusation). It is a simple fact. You are going to die, and I am going to die, and everyone alive on Earth in this moment will, eventually, die. Everything that we do, the love we fall into and the children that we have, the friendships that we nurture, all of these things we do in spite of the fact that we will die, and the people we love will die as well. In between we do what we can to make our lives and the lives of others richer, fuller, more meaningful. We write poetry and learn to play the harmonica and we stand in front of paintings and wonder if we are feeling the right things, if we are making the meaning we were meant to make. We splurge on threads of saffron to add to seafood paella that we feed to our loves. We wake up early to catch the sunrise and we run in the wet sand at the beach and we do whatever we can do to snatch meaning from a life that sometimes feels like a gift and sometimes like a terrifying wilderness.

We understand (sometimes abstractly, sometimes in anguish and all too well) that death will come, and we do what we can to prevent it. We nourish one another. Some of us throw ourselves into raising awareness of rare diseases, some of us fundraise for cures, others among us devote our lives to medicine, to education. We advocate to get police off the streets and out of schools and to ensure lifesaving care for trans kids and to improve maternal mortality rates. We do what we can to give one another as much life as we can, as much time as we can. We do these things because our lives and the lives of others are precious to us. They are everything. There is nothing else. And when we are out of time, when the end comes in spite of it all, in spite of our deepest desires, in spite of the depth and the breadth of our love for each other, we mourn. 

But how will we mourn the COVID dead? How do we, as a community, make sense of 27,325 deaths in this country, of the 630 deaths that happened here, in the province we call home? And how do we mourn those who have died and continue to die from drug toxicity? How do we mourn deaths that keep coming? How do we mourn needless death? How do we mourn death that we might have done something to stop? How do we mourn deaths that were caused by our neighbours, by our leaders? How do we mourn precious lives lost when the fact that they were lost is proof that to some, they weren’t that precious at all? 

I am filled with grief and rage and it has been hard, so hard, to find an outlet for it because everyone I know is in mourning. It’s hard to give ourselves permission to rage and to mourn and to ask others to bear witness to our rage and our mourning when so many are suffering similarly, or even more acutely, than we are. This is not sustainable. The way we are living, the way we are bearing the liberties that those who hold power are taking with our lives, with the lives of our loves, is not sustainable. I have nothing more than that, only to say that you deserve more. You deserve more care. You deserve more love. You deserve more respect. You deserve a government that will spend whatever it needs to spend to ensure that you do not die needlessly before your time. You deserve time and space to mourn everything that has been carelessly taken, and I am sorry that I don’t know when the time will come when you can do that. Your life is precious, and the lives of your children and your elders are precious and I am so sorry that they have not been treated that way. I’m sorry that all the things you have done to make meaning, all the saffron you have bought and the paella you have made and the footprints you have left and the people that you have loved have been treated as less than they are worth.

The mass death we are experiencing is unnecessary, but it is not without cause, and the cause is racial capitalism. We are living in a social and economic system that extracts what it can from the bodies of the people, particularly racialized people, and then discards them. We are experiencing mass death because it is profitable for those in power to allow us to die. It is not the result of carelessness from elected officials. It is not due to ignorance. We are experiencing mass death because those who hold power in our society: the wealthy and the white, have consciously, knowingly, intentionally made decisions that lead to mass death because our human lives mean less to them than their profits. Every time someone in this province dies of COVID or an overdose, that death was the result of decisions that those with political power made with full awareness that their decision would lead to the loss of precious lives. We are suffering because we have been made to suffer. None of this had to happen.

I ask how will we mourn our dead because mourning our dead makes us human. Mourning our dead affirms that their lives - and ours - were and are worth living, worth every sunrise, every inconvenience, every hurt. Mourning our dead is a refusal to accept their loss as a necessary sacrifice. It’s hard, when the losses are relentless and so, so unnecessary, when the fight is so urgent, to take time to mourn, but mourning is worthwhile. We must make space in our lives - and in the fight - to grieve and to bear witness to the grief of others. We can’t let ourselves become numb to the enormity of these losses. Each unnecessary death is catastrophic, each death is the end of a universe, each death leaves an unfathomable hole in the lives of those who loved the one now gone. For their sake and for our own, let us ask how will we mourn our dead? And what are we willing to do, what are we willing to demand, what are we willing to seize so we won’t lose even one more?

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Valerio Donfrancesco via Flickr

Palliative care for humanity

On Monday the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a devastating report on the current and projected state of the global climate. After years of warnings that humanity was on the verge of climate change, the IPCC’s report made clear what many already knew: climate change isn’t coming, it’s here. And while the report doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to pointing the finger at humans, the IPCC was much less willing to identify the capitalist and imperialist structures that are truly responsible for the situation that we’re in, a sign that we still, as a society, struggle to face the facts of this crisis. 

Saskatchewan has the highest per-capita emissions in Canada, coming in ahead of even Alberta, like the province is a trapezoidal coal-spewing dungeon lodged underneath hell’s literal basement. Not only is the province one of the leading greenhouse gas emitters globally, but we’re feeling the effects of climate change ourselves. Large parts of Saskatchewan have burned this summer, with the province recording more than double the number of fires than in an average year. The places that aren’t on fire are seeing air quality advisories and record numbers of smoke days, and the prolonged drought situation has led to a dire crop forecast for farmers and the funny-not-funny warning that “hay crimes” may be on the rise. 

David Evans via Flickr

Journalists and organizations have, and will continue to, write about the report, what it means, and what needs to be done if we are to stop the situation from worsening. One thing that is talked about less commonly, is palliative care for humanity. 

When the subject of palliative care is brought up, it can arouse a lot of emotions, particularly anger towards whoever has raised the subject, be they physicians, family members, or the patient themselves. The phrase suggests a surrender to disease. It can seem, at first glance, as submission to despair. But palliative care doesn’t mean giving up. It is a hard shift in the way we live with disease. It means recognizing that we are living with a serious, life-threatening illness and that that illness may kill us. Palliative care requires accepting the seriousness of our condition, and doing what we can to alleviate the symptoms that we are experiencing and that we anticipate experiencing. It means frankly assessing what we have lost and will lose and making a plan for how to live joyfully and with as little pain as possible in spite of those losses. For people living with cancer or organ failure or another life-threatening illness, palliative care can mean pain management. It means spiritual and social care. It means guidance on how to have difficult and painful conversations about the reality of your condition with loved ones. It means taking honest stock of your options, giving up on unrealistic expectations or useless treatments and finding a new way forward. 

It means accepting that your life will never be the same. 

Jim Forrest via Flickr

Palliative care for humanity will look similar to this. In addition to fighting for divestment from fossil fuels and the end of capitalism and imperialism, we need to create spaces where we can gather and mourn what we have lost, and what we will lose in the future. We need to learn how to manage the pain we are in as individuals and collectives, to hold space for the rage and the grief and catastrophic anguish that we feel. We need to reflect on the remedies we have been pursuing and abandon the ones that are no longer realistic. There is no template for these kinds of discussions, but we need to develop one. We need to learn to speak frankly with one another, even when those conversations are extremely distressing. We need to anticipate the failure of systems that have not yet given out, and develop a plan and a strategy for what we will do when those systems inevitably do fail. We need to create local seed banks and information-sharing networks that can survive long-term power outages or the loss of internet connectivity, and we need to teach one another how to grow food, build and repair shelter, perform first aid, and other things that we have for too long treated as commodities for purchase. We need to anticipate how we will keep community members safe when we lose power for long periods, or when natural disaster inevitably strikes. We need to learn to live alongside this illness, because it will be with us for a long time, longer than the lifespan of anyone reading this newsletter. Perhaps ironically, the only way for this illness to be survivable is for us to recognize and accept the gravity of it. This may kill us. 

There are important things that need to be done on the provincial, international, and national levels. Palliative care doesn’t mean abandoning all hope of arresting this crisis. People will need to continue to fight - fiercely - for the end of capitalism and colonialism. Ending the extraction of oil and gas only becomes more important with each passing day. Land Back and a commitment to restoring good relations between peoples and between humans and the environment is an imperative of our time, not only because it is necessary for the stability of the climate and the future of human existence, but because it is necessary for our spiritual and psychological health. It is the only ethical way forward. But as we work to restore proper relations, we also need to be preparing for the worst, and that work is work that will need to be done on a local level. The system we live in right now cannot (will not) care for everyone, and the worse the climate gets, the more people will need care. Look to the structures, like neighbourhood associations and community centres, that exist in your communities and try to determine how they can be used to prepare people for the coming struggle. How can they be used as communication hubs in the event of long-term outages? How can they be used as centres to educate people on how to grow food, survive natural disaster, and resist the police state? How can we build better, more resilient communities that will make life worth living as our current way of life collapses? If no such structures exist, what do you need to build them? We can’t rely on anyone but each other. 

Project Community Care via Flickr

For all its faults - and there are many - Saskatchewan also has a long history of cooperating in times when the rest of the world was inaccessible or indifferent to us. When people have survived in this region it has been because of other people. And when people have starved in this region, it has been because of other people, too. Humans can survive this, can even come out better for it. But we can only do that if we accept the totality of the threat that we are facing. And while humanity itself can survive climate change, if the correct actions are taken swiftly and decisively, many, many individual humans will die because of it, no matter what we do now. If we take a palliative approach to our survival and accept that death is in the cards, we can mitigate the suffering that is coming, and we can lay the foundation for something better. But we can only survive this if we accept that we might not survive this. 

Saskatchewan needs more independent journalism. But without the backing of corporations like Postmedia, we rely on your support to keep producing high-quality journalism that challenges the mainstream media consensus. Donate now to help us sustain and expand our work.

We took the donations and hit the ground running.

In addition to launching our newsletter and website, these are just a few of the things we’ve published this year: 

• a letter from the late Cory Charles Cardinal, the organizer of the prisoner’s hunger strike in Saskatchewan; 

• original reporting on those protecting the North’s endangered peatlands; 

• reporting and analysis of progressive victories in municipal politics;

• Mapping the connections between anti-queer speakers at city council meetings in Regina;

• Learning from the fight to prevent the sell-off of Crown lands in the province. 

We’ve even partnered with Journalists for Human Rights to put on a series of free journalism workshop series for the public, and to publish solutions journalism stories like this one about urban gardening. 

But we’re not ready to slow down yet.

Right now the Dispatch is a part-time enterprise, and that puts barriers on our ability to report on all the stories that matter. That’s why we’re looking for readers to become Sask Dispatch monthly supporters. We need 50 people to commit to monthly donations to help us work toward creating a permanent, full-time role for an editor/reporter. This will help us do more original reporting, work with more emerging and established writers, and grow the Dispatch’s reach. 

No one else is doing what we’re doing.

The Sask Dispatch is unique in the province. Completely independent, explicitly anticapitalist and anticolonial, the Dispatch offers high-caliber writing, reporting, and analysis on Saskatchewan, from Saskatchewan. And right now, there are more stories to be told than we have the capacity to tell. But if we can build a base of supporters, we can do more reporting and reach more people. 

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Since the last time Dispatches from the Left went out, two stories continue to dominate headlines across the country. One is the ongoing discoveries of unmarked graves at the sites of former “residential schools,” including here in Saskatchewan. And the other is the escalating climate crisis, which, over the past month, has caused over one hundred humans to die from extreme heat, led to the deaths of perhaps one billion sea creatures on the west coast, caused infrastructure to fail, and ruined or potentially ruined millions of dollars in crops. Superficially these stories seem to have little to do with each other, but the dispossession and death of Indigenous children and climate change are intimately linked.  

Climate change is colonialism. Diane Greene Lent via Flickr

As the Truth and Reconciliation report tells us, the genocidal policies of the Canadian government, policies in which residential schools played an enormous part, were about gaining control of land and resources. In Saskatchewan, the violent dispossession of Indigenous people has been a way of gaining land for the railroad, for farm settlements, and, to this day, for pure profit. The violence against Indigenous people that was committed to gain control of the land has also been perpetuated against the land, with grave consequences for the environment. The grasslands of southern Saskatchewan are one of the most threatened ecosystems on the planet, and they, like northern Saskatchewan’s peatlands, are key players in managing climate change. 

The profound importance of repairing the harm caused by Saskatchewan’s violence against Indigenous people and its broken relationship with the land is part of the reason why two recent stories about the management of land in the province are so important. Saba Dar’s story for the Sask Dispatch, called “Selling off Saskatchewan” is about the way the province continues to sell off Crown land to the highest bidder, despite the fact that Indigenous people have an inherent right to that land, and despite the fact that privatizing it has devastating consequences for local culture, biodiversity, and the global environment. Katie Doke Sawatzky’s story “Sharing Treaty Land” in Briarpatch is about the Treaty Land Sharing Network, a grassroots group of landowners in Saskatchewan who are “committed to implementing the Treaty relationship” and sharing access to their lands with Indigenous people. Both stories reflect the violence at the root of the settlement of Saskatchewan, and both offer visions for the possibility of restoring better relations. There can be no reconciliation without the return of land, nor is there any solution to climate change that does not restore habitats to the management of Indigenous people. 

Elevators symbolize both displacement and community. Kevin Carruthers via Flickr

Saskatchewan is a complex place with a complex history and culture. More than one thing can be true about this place at once. The province is, and always has been, home to deeply entrenched racism and colonial violence. It would not exist without that violence. It has also been home to a culture of cooperation and interdependence. It would not exist without those things. Acknowledging the harms that exist here and doing the work of repairing them can’t be done without accessing that history of cooperation and interdependence. The first white people to come to what would become Saskatchewan could not have survived without the diplomacy, interpretation, guidance, food preparation, and more that was done by Indigenous people, particularly Indigenous women. Without those good relations, they would have died. The settlers who live in Saskatchewan now will not survive the future of climate change if we do not do what needs to be done to restore good relations. And that means restoring land. 

Take one symbolic gesture and call me in the morning 

On July 5 the Saskatchewan Medical Association announced a Saskatchewan chapter of the PaRx program - a “national nature prescription service” that would see healthcare providers write an actual prescription for getting outdoors for patients who are suffering from stress or anxiety or other mental illnesses. This is a bold step forward from the dark days of the past, when doctors were only able to recommend getting more fresh air. Whether you find the idea of being prescribed a dose of nature charming or insufferable is a personal preference. However, the program’s apparent lack of insight into the structural barriers that prevent people from spending extended periods of time in nature is a pretty good indicator of the disconnect between healthcare providers and health systems and the material conditions of the general public. Not to mention that this kind of program is likely wildly overestimating how enthusiastic individuals who are suffering mental health symptoms acute enough to get them to the doctor’s office will be to have a physician write “go outside :)” on a prescription pad and send them on their way. 

Fresh air is no cure for society. Michael Ellis via Flickr

Just as the overwhelming majority of people are aware that smoking is bad for them and vegetables are good for them, ignorance of the fact that fresh air is healthy is really not the primary barrier that prevents people from going for a hike. The things that keep people indoors, away from the lake or the creek or the forest or even the urban park, are largely structural. Many people don’t have access to transit that can get them to a lake or river or hiking trail, and Canada’s fixation on the car has made many places unsafe for pedestrians and cyclists to travel. People who work long hours don’t necessarily have the time or the energy (even if they have the desire) to spend hours enjoying nature. People who are racialized or gender non-comforming or otherwise visibly a member of an oppressed demographic may not feel comfortable or safe in public spaces due to racism and overpolicing. All too often in this country, going for a walk has proved unsafe and even deadly for queer people and for racialized people. 

What would be more meaningful than a prescription for the outdoors would be for physicians to turn their considerable privilege and influence towards fighting for things that will improve the material conditions of people’s lives. Things like higher wages, public housing, nationalized childcare, free transit. Physicians should be recognizing the threat that racism, queerphobia, and policing pose to public health. They need to be incorporating a structural analysis of power into their practice. Doctors should understand the influence economic insecurity, climate anxiety, racism, and state violence have on patients. It’s not enough for them to know a good treatment if they aren’t willing or able to address the cause of the complaint at its root. People don’t need to be told to go outside, just as they don’t need to be told that fresh food is healthy for them. What they need is for the barriers to access to be eliminated. 

F*ck them kids

This seems to be the Sask Party’s sentiments for youth under the age of 12. The province lifted all COVID-19 restrictions on July 11th, even though the province failed to meet the vaccination targets they had set out as a guideline for reopening, and even though children under 12 haven’t been vaccinated at all. Now, as throughout the pandemic, parents of young children have largely been left to figure out how to keep their kids safe on their own in the absence of good public policy or guidance.

Families need more support. Daniel Moskowitz via Flickr

Much COVID policy from the past year and a half seems to be based on the (incorrect) early belief that children didn’t get sick from the virus. And even though it’s now known that kids can catch the illness, transmit the illness, become extremely sick from the illness, and even die from the illness, decisions about how to go forward are being made without them in mind. After 16 months of stress and isolation, while many are celebrating the return to “normal,” parents of young children (as well as immunocompromised people and anyone with the good sense to know this is far from over) are grappling with what boundaries they have to place on their own lives to keep their kids safe. Many are also feeling increased anxiety about what September will look like, given that transmission in schools is a significant concern that isn’t being addressed at all. 

The dominant society - both people and power structures - in Saskatchewan isn’t particularly interested or invested in the wants and needs of children and their parents beyond their role as demographics that can be marketed to. This disdain for children and their mothers, along with the racism and misogyny that are foundational in this province, is what allows such high rates of teen pregnancy and child poverty, and such low wages and such high costs for daycare and housing. So it’s natural that the province would do nothing to ensure the safety and health of children under 12, or to protect their parents from the social and economic consequences of having sick kids. The old adage is that it takes a village to raise a child. The structure of our society often denies that village to parents unless they have the means to purchase it. This has never been more true than throughout the pandemic, when those raising children abruptly had the few social structures that exist to support them ripped away. And now, as the province declares the pandemic both over (no more public health measures) and not over (because it’s not over), people raising children are staring down a second summer and return to school with even less guidance than before. 

Now would be a great time to see communities organizing in support of parents and guardians to put pressure on policy makers to protect the health and safety of kids. Individuals should also continue to observe physical distancing and masking out of respect for the fact that a large and vulnerable segment of our population remains completely unprotected from the virus. There’s been a lot of discussion about “learning loss” among kids, but a more important loss has been the way children and those raising them have been alienated from the larger culture by COVID-19 responses. 

Saskatchewan needs more independent journalism. Because let’s face it, who else is going to give you this content? But without the backing of corporations like Postmedia, we rely on your support to keep producing high-quality journalism that challenges the mainstream media consensus. Donate now to help us sustain and expand our work.

It’s been awhile since this newsletter has gone out, and there are many stories that have happened in between now and the last edition. And yet, every Canadian story, every Saskatchewan story, is root, trunk, and leaf, the story of colonization. It would be absurd to start talking about the latest stories from Saskatchewan without addressing first the news out of Kamloops in the last week of May, when a mass grave containing the remains of 215 children was found on the grounds of a former residential school. Although the discovery was reported as news, it was well-known among the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc that the bodies of children would be found there. Those who were surprised, hadn’t been paying attention.

Jared Martineau via Briarpatch Magazine 

It has been six years since the TRC report told this country that more mass graves would be found in provinces from coast to coast, and there is no excuse for not knowing. But it’s a common cycle in Canada: Indigenous people speak clearly about the crimes committed against them, these crimes are ignored until the evidence becomes too blatant to ignore, then the government and the public express shock and surprise (this is not our Canada!), hands are wrung, expressions of sorrow are made, perhaps an inquiry is ordered, or elected officials are bullied into lowering flags to half mast, then Canadians go back to life as normal, and few, if any real changes are made. Rinse, repeat. 

There is a tendency among Canadians to refer to residential schools as a “dark chapter.” This is convenient and comforting. It allows us to acknowledge that something happened (virtuous), and that that something was very bad indeed, while breathing a sigh of relief that that chapter, at least, is closed. But residential schools have not ended, they have only changed form. While the 215 children who were discovered in an unmarked grave on the former site of the Kamloops Residential school were buried decades ago, Indigenous children are still dying in the care of the state, in numbers too high to be borne. Last year, more children died in care in Saskatchewan than in any year since 2008. All but one of those children was Indigenous. Almost one-half – 49 per cent – of Indigenous children in Saskatchewan live in poverty. Three-quarters of prisoners in Saskatchewan are Indigenous, almost all of them residential school survivors or children of survivors. Many of them have children of their own. It is a brutal, enforced cycle that makes every effort to suppress and extinguish Indigenous voices, Indigenous joy, Indigenous excellence, and Indigenous family. The country we live in is the way it is by design, not by oversight, not by carelessness, but by intention.

Indian Residential Schools Survivors Society British Colombia via Facebook

For settlers, this is done in our name. Even for those who abhor colonialism and capitalism and the state, these killings (and even when they are “natural,” they are still killings) are done in the process of claiming more land and more resources for us. It’s done for our comfort, for our security, for our prosperity. If we are to be serious about decolonization and reparations, if we are to be serious about being human, we need to recognize these atrocities as belonging to us, as things we are responsible for owning and repairing. This is the house we live in. It was built for us, passed down to us, and it is being maintained in the same way that it was built.

Part of the reason Canadians are able to move through this bizarre and infuriating cycle of denial-belief-outrage-denial is, of course, white supremacy and settler colonialism. These are two worldviews that nurture and reward the denial of their violence, only occasionally allowing for belief/outrage as a kind of release valve before swiftly closing ranks (look at the expressions of shock and surprise – “this is not our Canada!” following the cruel murders of a Muslim family in London only days after the discovery of the mass grave and only four years and one province away from the attack on a Quebec City mosque that inspired the Christchurch shooter). The idea of Canada that is fed to us (and to the world) from the time we are very young is an idea utterly detached from reality. Canada is a facade, a mythic society of polite, friendly peacekeepers whose national identity is largely tied to corporate brands. It’s a remarkably fragile facade that can easily be seen through by anyone who is even vaguely conscious, and yet the facade is so pretty, and the truth so monstrous, that many settler Canadians prefer to simply not look. Because if they do, they will realize that everything good about this country – the breathtaking landscapes, the abundant resources, maple syrup itself – is stolen, and everything reprehensible that is left belongs to us. 

Settlers owe. We owe and we owe and we owe. Like any massive debt, it is frightening to owe this much, especially in a culture which loves to argue that you don’t owe anyone anything and no one owes you. To realize that you owe seems like fundamental failure because it means that somewhere along the way, you messed up your perfect balance sheet. It’s frightening and that is simply too bad. It’s long past time for Canadians to claim our bad kin, and to claim our debt, to accept that this is very much our Canada. Refusing to do this is a monstrous act of cowardice. Complicity is too weak a word for it. To refuse to take responsibility is to actively participate in a conspiracy to let more people, more children, die in exchange for the comfort of believing a lie so toxic it is hastening the end of the world. 

Camp Justice for Our Stolen Children via Facebook

Reading the TRC and MMIWG reports and understanding the treaty agreements on the territory you live on is a duty for settlers. To understand more about what it means to decolonize these lands here is a list of additional readings. Thanks to Mike Gouldhawke who compiled many of these:

• Our sister publication, Briarpatch Magazine, published the Land Back issue in September 2020.

• This Red Paper from the Yellowhead Institute in October 2019.

• Reckoning with the Genocide and Denialism of the Canadian State by Aziz Choudry

• Another Word for Settle: A Response to Rettachments and Inhabit

• Calls to Action Accountability: A 2020 Status Update on Reconciliation by Eva Jewell and Ian Mosby

• Reconciling the Apocalypse by Erica Violet Lee

SUPPORT LINES FOR SURVIVORS AND INTERGENERATIONAL SURVIVORS: 

IRSSS Toll-Free Line: 1-800-721-0066 

24hr National Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419 KUU-US 

Crisis Line: 1-800-588-8717 

Tsow-Tun-Le Lum: 1-888-403-3123

Minimum wage increases

The government of Saskatchewan has benevolently granted low-wage workers a 36 cent raise, bumping up Saskatchewan’s minimum wage to $11.81 an hour. The whopping increase – which works out to an extra $57 a month, before taxes, for a full-time worker – means that Saskatchewan will no longer have the dubious distinction of having the lowest minimum wage in the country (we still hold the record for highest rates of gonorrhea, teen pregnancy, and HIV and hepatitis infections).

The Bees via Flickr

The meagre increase leaves the minimum wage in Saskatchewan well below the living wage. It’s an affront to the dignity of low-wage workers, and it’s a clear indicator that the government doesn’t care about the high rates of poverty and child poverty in the province. A common refrain whenever the abysmal minimum wage is brought up is to “think of the mom and pop capitalists!” whose salt-of-the-earth dream of owning their own combination bait shop/aerobics centre will die if they have to pay their workers more than a fistful of nickels. It’s not a right to own a business, and if Scales and Squats is doomed to fail if you pay employees a decent wage, then it deserves to fail. No one should be sacrificed on the altar of small business.

There’s often talk about a “livable wage” and while it is GOOD to pay employees a livable wage, there’s also a risk of getting stuck at a livable wage in the same way we have gotten stuck at $15 – which was a reasonable wage when Fight for $15 started nearly a decade ago, but is woefully inadequate now. That instead of a thrivable wage, where workers can earn enough to own a home and buy nutritious, delicious food, and save some money, and buy themselves flowers and vintage pogs, employers will bow just enough to the pressure to pay employees exactly the amount they need to survive, and no more. And of course, it’s better to get paid what you need to survive than not to, as so many workers are, but survival is a low bar. People are already getting paid next to nothing, why shouldn’t movements start asking for everything? 

(Unsettlingly) hot girl summer

Although the past week has brought some rain and cooler temperatures to parts of the province, for the most part late spring has been hot as hell and dry. Last week more than 20 communities in Saskatchewan set or tied heat records, and more than that recorded temperatures of 30 or higher. The early heat wave was unsettling in a province where the average June temperature is between 16 to 23 degrees. Most of the southern part of the province is experiencing extreme drought, and the north isn’t faring much better. Climate change is fairly easy to deny here. Temperatures fluctuate wildly from season to season (and day to day) as part of business-as-usual. The inconsistency can be taken as a sign that all is well, thank you very much. There are no intense hurricanes, no coral bleaching, and it’s been dry for so long it’s getting hard to remember what normal precipitation looks like. 

Seems fine! Via Agriculture Canada

But so far this year, the province has only seen 40 per cent of its average annual precipitation (those of you who have been watering your useless lawns, just know you’re being judged) and it’s simply not possible to argue that the weather patterns we’re seeing are unrelated to climate change (we can say that here because this is a newsletter). The news tends to report on the weather as one would expect: “it’s hot! It’s dry! Here is a photo of some sweaty, beleaguered people lined up for ice cream!” Rarely, if ever, do reporters acknowledge the psychological toll that “wrong” weather takes (it’s not bad weather, exactly. It’s hot and sunny, the kind of weather you dream of in the winter when it’s cold and also sunny). But for many people, abnormal weather patterns can provoke anxiety, as they wonder how much worse it will get, and are reminded of the complete lack of action on climate change that is propelling us closer and closer to the droughtpocalypse. There is the stress felt by those who make their living off the land, who worry that there won’t be enough rain for a harvest. There’s PTSD experienced by people who have survived wildfires that can be exacerbated by the kinds of conditions that lead to more fires. There’s all those dead fish.

Sweaty, beleaguered people lined up for ice cream. Robert Catalano via Flickr

There are things to do, of course. Stop watering the stupid lawn, organize and push for climate action in your community. Train yourself not to become addicted to water, à la Mad Max. But sometimes the evidence of climate change, right there in the air and in the (lack of) water and in the freaking heat, feels bad. It’s scary. It’s ever present. And the pandemic was a good reminder that personal choices will not be enough to curb the crisis. Sometimes it’s okay to just feel spooked by the weather.

Saskatchewan needs more independent journalism. Because let’s face it, who else is going to give you this content? But without the backing of corporations like Postmedia, we rely on your support to keep producing high-quality journalism that challenges the mainstream media consensus. Donate now to help us sustain and expand our work.

From “What is Solutions Journalism” with Saima Desai, Kimberley Hartwig, and Sara Birrell:

What is Solutions Journalism?

From Janine Windolph’s workshop on Storytelling in Indigenous Communities:

Storytelling in Indigenous Communities

Two stories on why the Discourse™ around conversion therapy in Regina was trash, by John Cameron and Cat Haines:

Denin Lowley via Unsplash

https://briarpatchmagazine.com/saskdispatch/view/mapping-the-connections-between-anti-queer-anti-trans-speakers-at-reginas-conversion-therapy-ban-council-meeting

Jaye Kovach

https://briarpatchmagazine.com/saskdispatch/view/open-letter-to-mayor-masters-and-the-regina-community-wellness-committee?fbclid=IwAR0UZ30tDxwFnylSVlDXUDMqdx5E3u5tGTiTaX_KrSp1zzZQBTHM4CRR6go

Reporting from Aasa Marshall on how Swift Current became a safe haven for refugees of Manus Island’s notorious prison camp:

DIAC Images via Wikipedia Commons

https://briarpatchmagazine.com/saskdispatch/view/finding-asylum-in-swift-current

Enjoy the summer!

Martin Brummel via Flickr 

Children dying in care of the state

Saskatchewan social services has released the numbers of deaths of children in provincial care last year and the numbers are bleak. 36 children died under the province’s watch in 2020, the highest number since 2008. The government can’t yet say whether any of these deaths are related to the pandemic, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that more than 3,000 children were taken into state care in 2020, and 36 of them didn’t live to see the end of the year. 

Certain contexts need to be considered when taking in these horrifying numbers. One is that a staggering 86 per cent of kids in care in Saskatchewan are Indigenous, as were all but one of the children who died. This is critical to understand for a couple of reasons. For one, it’s a frank indicator that the state violence against Indigenous people has not ended since the closure of the last residential school in Saskatchewan in 1996, but simply changed forms, with the government continuing its campaign of removing Indigenous children from their families and placing them where their lives are at risk. This was a major point put forward by the Justice for Our Stolen Children camp, which asserts that Indigenous children are not simply being removed from dangerous circumstances, as the state claims, but are being kidnapped from their homes by the state, which then places them in dangerous circumstances. Every effort and expense must be made to ensure that Indigenous families can stay together and live their lives without the constant threat of colonial interference. This means that, among other things, the prison industrial complex, which removes Indigenous parents from their children’s lives, must be dismantled, the drug toxicity crisis, which disproportionately affects Indigenous people, must be addressed, and safe, accessible housing must be made freely available. 

Camp Justice for Our Stolen Children via Facebook

And for another, it’s an indicator of what many abolitionists say, which is that it’s not enough to replace the police with social workers (or healthcare professionals) as these groups, acting in service of the state, perpetuate many of the same indignities and violences that the police do. Death is only the most obvious traumatic impact of a life in foster care. Children who do survive the system are at increased risk of ending up criminalized, and the psychological trauma of foster care is unquantifiable. Because of austerity, public policy, and institutional racism, Saskatchewan is, for many children, a grim place to grow up. 26% of children in the province are living in poverty. That’s 73,000 kids without the financial means to thrive. It doesn’t have to be this way, and abolition is a way out that offers alternatives to incarceration, criminalization, and state brutality against children and adults. 

Regina residents plan day of action for harm reduction

Saskatchewan’s second epidemic, the drug toxicity crisis, shows no signs of abating, with the province reporting 39 apparent overdose deaths in the first four months of 2021. That’s a higher rate than last year, when 379 people died, and a staggering increase from 2019, when 177 people lost their lives to drugs. While the province has allocated $2.6 million for addictions services (less money than they allocated to ice surfaces in community rinks), they have so far disregarded evidence-based approaches to harm reduction that have been brought forward by advocates and the Saskatchewan Health Authority. This includes funding for safe consumption sites, like Prairie Harm Reduction, which allows drug users to use under the observation of medical professionals, who can intervene in the case of overdose or drug toxicity.

       Ekaterina Cabylis

Overdose and drug toxicity deaths are 100% preventable. No one needs to die when they use drugs, no one deserves to die from using drugs, and every time someone does lose their life to drug use, it’s a failure of the system to keep them safe from harm. Recognizing this, a group of Regina residents have planned a day of action at the Legislature for Saturday, May 8. They intend to place dozens of crosses on the lawn of the Legislative building in protest of the government’s inaction on the crisis. The group, called Regina Harm Reduction Coalition, is calling on the government to set aside the moral objections and political barriers that are currently allowing people to die needlessly. 

While most of the deaths due to drug use have been labeled “overdoses,” this term is misleading. It suggests that users are being careless in their dosing, taking more than necessary. But most of these deaths are drug toxicity deaths. They’re happening because the supply of drugs is toxic and contaminated with potent additives like fentanyl. If drug users had access to a safe supply the crisis of drug toxicity deaths could largely be eliminated. Safe supply can mean many things. It’s most commonly envisioned as medical practitioners prescribing drugs to users, although that approach has barriers like limited clinical capacity, stigma, and rigid protocols that mean some people are left behind. Other approaches to safe supply include compassion clubs, biometric vending machines, and public health dispensing models that don’t require a prescription. While truly safe supply is likely a distant dream for Saskatchewan, interventions like safe consumption sites, needle exchanges, and drug testing should be (relatively) easier to obtain. Residents who are tired of the constant barrage of unnecessary deaths, which disproportionately impact Indigenous people and poor people, hope that by forcing the government and the public to confront the sheer scale of death that is being allowed, they can bring about some of these changes. 

NDP presents petition to save the peatlands

In March Saba Dar wrote a piece for the Sask Dispatch about the movement to protect northern peatlands from invasive mining practices. The piece covered the critical importance of peatlands to the health of the global environment, describing the way “nature’s nurseries” capture and store carbon, generate and support astonishing biodiversity, and prevent fire and flooding. Dar’s story focused on an area of northern Saskatchewan being threatened by Lambert Peat Moss, a Quebec company whose peat mining in that province has directly contributed to devastating fires. 

Quincy Miller

Lambert’s proposal to mine a tract of peatland near the Potato Lakes prompted a flurry of resistance from residents, including Kona Barreda’s seventh grade class. On April 28, Barreda’s class, which launched a petition against the project which garnered more than 20,000 signatures, got to watch as NDP MLA Doyle Vermette presented the petition before the Legislature.  Although it’s unclear where things will go from here, it’s been impressive to see the grassroots actions reach the legislative floor. In a year when much of the momentum youth generated from the school strikes was lost to pandemic restrictions, it’s been particularly gratifying to see work done by youth have a real impact on the story that’s being written about the environment. 

Jeremy Davis via Flickr

Children are the ones who will be reaping the worst of what climate change has to offer, and their perspective on how we need to respond to the crisis should be at the forefront. Classrooms can and should be places where students learn about the power of grassroots actions and the ways in which they can collectively influence the direction of society. Barreda has said she hopes her students “learn to stand up for themselves and fight for their land.”

Saskatchewan needs more independent journalism. But without the backing of corporations like Postmedia, we rely on your support to keep producing high-quality journalism that challenges the mainstream media consensus. Donate now to help us sustain and expand our work.

Winter is making its last stand across parts of the province, and hopefully it’s COVID’s last stand, too. Although variant numbers are alarming and ICUs have been pushed past the brink, more residents are getting vaccinated by the day. Keep taking care of each other, and let’s hope we’re almost at the finish line.

Kathy Cassidy via Flickr

If you have feedback or suggestions, email sara@briarpatchmagazine.com! We love to hear from you.

Regina City Council fumbles the ball on trans rights  

But they can still pick it back up. On Wednesday, Regina city council’s Community Wellness Committee heard from delegates about a proposed “conversion therapy” ban in the city (this ban would stand on its own, separate from the proposed federal ban, Bill C-6, which is a copy of Bill C-8, which died when Parliament was prorogued last year. It would be similar to bans in Saskatoon, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and others). Kent Peterson of Queen City for All was the first to speak on the matter, calling conversion therapy a “cancer in our community” that is “inflicted on children and vulnerable adults.” Peterson added that conversion therapy is “always violent, abusive, manipulative, and based on deep-seated hatred.” (At this time Councillor Terina Shaw said she saw a “red flag” at the word “always” and played the old hit “I have talked to people who have had a positive impact from this repellent practice”). Council also heard from leaders of faith group who spoke to the debt the church owes to 2SLQBTQ people after untold years of queerphobia. 

But the meeting also took a troubling turn, and the councillors seemed unable to meet the challenge laid before them. One delegate brought up Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, the idea that transness is a “social contagion” and that children and teens will begin identifying as transgender when members of their peer group do, and that these youth will then get medical treatments that they don’t need and will end up regretting. ROGD is more moral panic than good science, and has been debunked more than once. The delegate, who cited that 80-90 per cent of teens who experience gender dysphoria will come through it “resolved” (what?) noted that he had not actually read the study he was referencing himself. No councillor challenged this. Another delegate misgendered a transgender youth and erroneously said that the father of that youth was in jail for misgendering their child, when in fact the man was in prison for repeatedly and egregiously violating court orders relating to the child. Again, no councillor challenged this. Cat Haines, a past chair of TransSask and a queer and trans researcher, educator, and academic, said in a Facebook post that “the opportunity and platform that was given to the organized and mobilized anti-trans right in Regina today will have material impacts for trans people down the line from now.” Rather than discussing conversion therapy, “we opened the door to a discussion about the legitimacy of trans health and affirmative care.”

Clyde C. via Flickr

The rank, institutional and social transphobia that’s afflicting the UK and the US hasn’t made it to Canada yet (although transphobia is certainly alive and well here), which is not to say that we should pat ourselves on the backs, but rather that we need to be vigilant in stamping out any and all instances of it. In the US and UK, transphobia has become such an accepted facet of the culture that it’s seeped into legislation and media coverage, robbing trans people, and in particular trans youth, of their human rights. Transphobia is particularly malignant because it’s not just associated with the far-right and fundamentalism. In the UK transphobia has made strange bedfellows with feminism, with TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists, who are, confusingly, neither radical nor feminist) making sickening arguments that trans people threaten the gains that women have made in the workplace, athletics, and virtually every other field, that non-binary people don’t actually exist and that claiming to be non-binary harms gender non-conforming cis people, that trans men are just confused lesbians, suffering from internalised misogyny, and that providing trans youth with non-permanent hormone blockers is somehow more cruel than forcing them to go through irreversible puberty. By cloaking their rhetoric in the language of human rights and “parental rights,” transphobes have helped bring in legislation that prevents trans youth from receiving gender-affirming care and creates cumbersome and expensive barriers to having your gender marker changed on your identification. Thanks to the government and media friendliness to transphobes, transphobic hate crimes in the UK have quadrupled since 2015. America has seen rates of violence against trans people reach record levels. To think it couldn’t happen here is the same folly as thinking COVID-19 couldn’t happen here. 

Now it’s doubtful that city council as a whole holds animosity towards trans youth, or wants to cause them harm in any way. What more likely happened is more benign (but still insidious). They simply didn’t know that what they were seeing was transphobic. That’s a problem. If council is unable to identify transphobic arguments, they’re not going to be able to make the kind of thoughtful, respectful, evidence-based decisions they need to ensure Regina is a city that’s safe and affirming for trans people. Fortunately, there’s robust literature and a community of talented, thoughtful trans advocates that can help them identify transphobia and prevent any further platforming of hate.

Sask Party chooses harm with new budget  

On April 6, the Sask Party released their new budget - the second of the pandemic. The deficit has swelled to a record $2.6 billion, with more deficits expected until at least 2025. Fortunately this doesn’t matter because deficits aren’t real, they’re just bogeymen for Boomers and the Sask Party Youth Caucus. But what is real is the harm caused by the province’s refusal to fund Prairie Harm Reduction. The organization had asked for $1.4 million (less than the province spent funding community rinks and veterans’ clubs) to keep it running 24/7. The site is currently only open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Friday, and much of their human resources has to be spent on fundraising efforts, instead of the life-saving work that is their mandate. The province refused. 

Bruce Dean via Flickr

Most readers of the Sask Dispatch are going to be familiar with the facts. That 2020 was the deadliest year for drug toxicity deaths in Saskatchewan on record. That 2021 is on track to outpace that. That the dead are beloved mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children, cousins, friends. That harm reduction sites save lives. You know this - and the Sask Party knows this. They just refuse to do anything. 

The province has bragged up their $453 million investment in mental health and addictions services as an explanation for why they don’t feel the need to fund PHR’s relatively paltry ask. But they’ve made a choice here. And it’s not a choice to allocate funds elsewhere, or a choice to invest in other evidence-based community responses. It’s a choice to refuse to set a precedent for funding community-based responses to social problems, regardless of whether those responses save lives. They aren’t funding PHR because they don’t want to. They do not believe that they have any obligation to the poor or to drug users or to vulnerable people of any kind, and funding PHR would send the message that they do have that obligation. If they fund PHR, how can they justify not funding a site in Regina, in Prince Albert, in any other Saskatchewan city? How can they justify not funding homeless shelters? It’s an ideological choice - like so many of their choices. And it’s going to kill people. 

Saskatoon Police Service hopes to provide 24/7 terror from the sky

For years the SPS has hassled people in Saskatoon from the sky, flying low over the city’s poorest neighbourhoods between the hours of 10 p.m. and 12 p.m. (so, you know, bedtime), stalking people with an infrared camera. The service claims the Air Support Unit (ASU) has lowered crime rates by 10 per cent (they don’t provide any links on their site to confirm this, but cops never lie so let’s just take that at face value). In 2020, the ASU responded to 1,941 calls, leading to 251 arrests (That’s 12 per cent of calls, and while I wouldn’t want to see more arrests, it seems to me like this is an unusually poor ROI). Now, however, they feel they aren’t bothering people enough, and they want financial resources to keep a plane in the sky 24-hours a day.  

Hossam el-Hamalawy via Flickr

Essentially what SPS is asking for is millions of dollars to let their officers screw around with expensive toys and harass poor and racialized people in Saskatoon from above. This says nothing of the environmental impact of having a literal jet cruising around 24/7, nor the psychological impact on Saskatoon residents who will be constantly surveilled from the sky. The SPS annual report only came out on April 15, so it’s too soon to tell what kind of organizing will be done in response to this absurd ask, but hopefully there’s a robust response from Saskatoon residents.

Saskatchewan needs more independent journalism. But without the backing of corporations like Postmedia, we rely on your support to keep producing high-quality journalism that challenges the mainstream media consensus. Donate now to help us sustain and expand our work.

Kristi via Flickr

As always, if you have any feedback, reach out to sara@briarpatchmagazine.com. We love to hear from you!

Dear John, it’s not us, it’s you

“History” suffered a grievous blow on Wednesday when Regina city council voted to remove the seven foot bronze John A. MacDonald statue from Victoria Park, as well as change the name of Dewdney Pool - named after renowned racist and prairie-basher Edgar Dewdney - to Buffalo Meadows Pool. Of the more than one dozen members of the public who spoke on the removal of the statue, only two came out in favour of leaving the towering hunk of bronze where it is. Both cited “history” as the reason for leaving the monument - which was erected three quarters of a century after Canada’s first PM died - in place, as though the statue were standing around giving lectures on the subject of John A.’s genocidal legacy. Interestingly, both of these defenders seemed to take a dim view of what history actually is, with one speaker arguing that residential schools and the starvation genocide of Plains people were not “really” genocide and that residential schools were a “net positive” for Indigenous people. When Ward 1 councilor Cheryl Stadnichuk asked the delegate (and self-declared historian) if he had read James Daschuk’s book Clearing the Plains, the Herodotus of the Queen City said that he hadn’t, but he had read reviews of the book and concluded it was biased. Both of the objectors also mentioned not holding historical figures to the standards of today. There are two problems with that argument. The first is that MacDonald’s beliefs were considered objectionable EVEN IN HIS TIME, EVEN AMONG CONSERVATIVES. The second is that, yes, we can hold historical figures to the standards of today. Oppressed people have always known that they were being oppressed. There has always been resistance to oppression. It wasn’t okay to commit starvation genocide 150 years ago, and it’s not okay today. Period, end of story. 

Rural History and Culture Association of Saskatchewan

Despite the large number of delegates who spoke in favour of removing the statue, and the city’s own report which concluded that the monument represents a “harmful legacy,” the vote was not unanimous. Four councilors - Hawkins, Findura, Shaw, and Bresciani - voted that it should remain in place, and their reasons for doing so were shameful. Findura, Hawkins, and Bresciani all claimed a greater need for public consultations, which apparently meant “we need to hear from more white people,” since the city had already consulted with Indigenous knowledge keepers, artists, academics, and other local leaders for the legacy review that found the statue is a site of harm. (Council meetings, like the Wednesday meeting, where the public can make statements about topics under discussion, are also public consultations, which someone should explain to Cllrs Hawkins, Findura, and Bresciani.) It’s also important to note that white people’s opinions on the statue don’t *really* matter here. They’re welcome to (and did!) express their feelings about the monument, but what they have to say carries little weight in comparison to the feelings of those who are still living with the effects of MacDonald’s legacy.

Five Things to do with Your John A. MacDonald Statue:

Are you a city with a troublesome statue of a genocidal maniac? Allow us to present five suggestions for what you can do with it!

1. Immerse it in the bottom of your local lake. Give John A. a second life as an aquatic ecosystem!

2. Melt it down into 100 smaller statues of Louis Riel, to be placed around the province in defiance of white supremacy.

3. Two words: tetherball pole.

4. Build community with a public toppling!

5. Cut open his head and make a bird bath.

Scott Moe hates you, redux

The premier’s indifference to the lives of Saskatchewan people has only grown more obvious as variants of concern explode across the province, with Scott Moe refusing to implement stricter regulations. On Tuesday Moe said that tighter restrictions were “nothing more than a stopgap to buy us time until we get the majority of Saskatchewan residents vaccinated.” And Moe is RIGHT. It IS a stopgap. But it’s one the province SHOULD BE TAKING. People are dying. Younger people are getting much sicker, and many of them will face months, if not years of recovery. Some may be left with lifelong problems. In a horrible deja vu, schools are moving to remote learning, yet parents are being given no grace from their employers. We are being made to live alongside death and no place has been made to grieve or mourn or catch our breath. People are angry, and they should be.

Saskatchewan Health Authority

Moe’s approach to the pandemic has always been about taking individual responsibility for this social problem. It’s an approach that has led to needless death and suffering. It’s also had horrific effects on the economy, and in particular the lives and livelihoods of those who work in the service industry. Brief shutdowns have put unbearable strain on restaurants while not doing enough to curb the virus. Last year, our sister publication Briarpatch published this piece by Daniel Sarah Karasik about the need to suppress the virus - rather than flatten the curve. Karasik called the failure to completely suppress the virus - as Vietnam, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Australia have done - “murderous abandonment” of vulnerable people. Murderous seems the right word to use to describe the Sask Party government’s approach to COVID-19. Hundreds of people have died needlessly and thousands more have been sickened, while the premier callously dismisses their lives. With Regina existing as a variant hotspot not only in Canada, but possibly in North America and the world at large, it is impossible to imagine how the province could have done worse. It’s important to remember that this was not inevitable. There are people to blame. Scott Moe is one of them. 

Everyone’s a loser in carbon tax battle

After a years long fight costing over half a million dollars in legal fees alone, the Saskatchewan government has lost its fight against the federal carbon tax. On March 25, the Supreme Court ruled that the existential threat of climate change is serious enough that Ottawa is within its rights to compel the provinces to set a price on carbon, whether they like it or not. And while the decision, which was split 6-3, is more welcome than if it had gone the other way, it is, in a sense, a pyrrhic victory. 

Putting a price on carbon is not going to put the brakes on climate change. But for the last two and a half years, much of the political discourse on the climate crisis in Canada has centred on this one, relatively toothless, policy. Carbon pricing isn’t actually a phase out of oil and gas. It doesn’t create green jobs. It isn’t climate justice. As James Wilt noted in this 2018 piece for Briarpatch, the very fact that companies like Exxon support a carbon tax makes the efficacy of the proposal seem dubious indeed. And while people have been arguing for or against the carbon tax, other opportunities for justice have been passing us by. We have wasted years arguing about a policy that is, at best, a thing that can be done.

Eagleclaw Bunnie

Perhaps most nauseating was the Saskatchewan NDP’s response to the Supreme Court’s ruling. Solidifying their move to the right, the official opposition issued a whiny, inexplicably italicized, statement, claiming, among other things, that “Trudeau’s economy-wide carbon tax will continue to take more from the people of Saskatchewan than they get back, with people living in rural and remote areas being most affected.” The statement isn’t true - according to a federal report, Saskatchewan received more in rebates than we paid in carbon pricing - and it served to further alienate people in the province who are crying out for a party that will actually take a real stand against climate change and the inequities it creates. At the end of the day, we’ve all lost.

Stay tuned!

Sask Dispatch and Briarpatch will be launching some solutions journalism workshops next week along with a call for pitches, so watch our social media @saskdispatch on Twitter and Facebook so you don’t miss it!

Saskatchewan needs more independent journalism. But without the backing of corporations like Postmedia, we rely on your support to keep producing high-quality journalism that challenges the mainstream media consensus. Donate now to help us sustain and expand our work.