Premier Scott Moe and the Saskatchewan Party won a fifth consecutive majority government Monday, losing in the big cities but retaining its iron grip on rural areas to secure victory.
Moe’s party was shut out by Carla Beck’s NDP in Regina and lost all but two seats in Saskatoon.
But it found enough support everywhere else to be elected in 35 seats in the 61-seat legislature, compared with 26 for the NDP.
"Thank you once again, Saskatchewan for placing your trust in our party, the Saskatchewan Party," Moe said as supporters in Shellbrook clapped and whooped.
"This was a much closer election than we've seen for some time."
He said his government heard the message sent by voters that there is unhappiness in how the province is delivering health care, education and making life affordable.
"We must do better and we most certainly will," he said.
The New Democrats almost doubled their seat total from the 14 it had at dissolution, retaining seats and gaining more in Regina and Saskatoon. In doing so, they defeated Saskatoon cabinet ministers Christine Tell, Bronwyn Eyre and Paul Merriman along with Regina’s Laura Ross and Gene Makowsky.
Beck retained her seat in Regina Lakeview.
The NDP also gained back the rural northern riding of Athabasca, which it won in 2020 only to lose to the Saskatchewan Party in a subsequent byelection.
But with 31 rural seats to 30 urban ones, the NDP’s margin of error was razor thin. It needed wins in the two seats in Moose Jaw and the two in Prince Albert — but failed to get them.
Beck delivered her concession speech in Regina to cheers from supporters and chants of "Carla! Carla!"
"Friends, we came so close," said Beck. "Many people did not give us much of a chance, but we believed.
"We've given people a reason to hope again, and that's not nothing. That's a victory in its own right.
"We've changed the landscape in this province."
Moe, in his second election as leader of the Saskatchewan Party, kept his seat in Rosthern-Shellbrook.
Other Saskatchewan Party cabinet ministers were re-elected: David Marit, Jim Reiter, Colleen Young, Lori Carr, Everett Hindley, Terry Jenson, Jeremy Cockrill, Tim McLeod and Jeremy Harrison.
Harrison was a controversial figure on the hustings. Earlier this year, he apologized for carrying a gun into the legislature about a decade ago while on the way to go hunting.
Moe's Saskatchewan Party has been in power for 17 years in office, while Beck's NDP was looking to take back government for the first time since 2007.
It’s the third straight campaign where the Saskatchewan Party has lost seats — from 51 in 2016, to 48 in 2020. The party had 42 seats at dissolution due to byelection losses, retirements and two members facing criminal charges.
The voting capped a month-long campaign that focused on health care, affordability and crime.
Beck pledged to spend more to fix health care and education, pause the gas tax, and remove the provincial sales tax on children's clothes and some grocery items.
Moe promised broad tax relief and continued withholding of federal carbon levy payments to Ottawa.
He also promised that his first order of business if re-elected would be to ban “biological boys” from using school changing rooms with “biological girls.”
He said he made the promise after learning of a complaint at a southeast Saskatchewan school about two biological boys using a girls change room.
It was later revealed that a parent of the two children who were the subjects of the complaint is an NDP candidate. Moe said he didn’t know that when he made the promise.
Beck has said such a ban would make vulnerable kids more vulnerable. She also promised to repeal a Saskatchewan Party law that requires parental consent if children under 16 want to change their names or pronouns at school.
Moe has come under fire for using the Charter's notwithstanding clause to enforce the pronoun law, facing accusations of pandering to social conservatives.
Political scientist Charles Smith with St. Thomas More College in Saskatoon said the Saskatchewan Party’s seat loss signals disapproval of its more right-leaning policy proposals.
"I think we've seen a bit of repudiation of the Sask. Party's last term in government by a significant percentage of the voting public," Smith said.
"I think this is a very conservative party that ran a very conservative campaign and has run on a very conservative sort of policy platform for the last three years, and I think that's part of the explanation behind these results."
Political scientist Daniel Westlake at the University of Saskatchewan said Beck and the NDP should be a more vocal force in Saskatchewan with the gains they made.
"It makes the NDP, I think, appear more of a threat to the Sask. Party and that probably keeps the Sask. Party more honest," Westlake said.
"I think they should be happy that they are a much larger caucus in the legislature.
"But they still have a lot of work to do."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 28, 2024.
— With files from Jack Farrell in Edmonton
Jeremy Simes and Aaron Sousa, The Canadian Press
