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Originally Posted by CampbellsTransgressions
Another great conservative leader that took the easiest route and staked everything on the every sustainable oil and gas sector.
Now that it's clear that things are not going to recover much more, he decides to move on, leaving the province's finances a mess.
Ah yes, conservatism.
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A major economic fallacy that the 'OMG all our economic eggs are in one basket crowd' makes time and time again is the thought process that the benefits of developing natural resources comes at an equal dollar cost to other economic sectors. They think we live in some kind of Minecraft or Sim City simulation where we can simply choose to allocate different levels of utility to different sectors at will and still achieve similar levels of prosperity. There isn't an alternative dimension where Saskatchewan led by socialists results in the same prosperity, lower volatility, and everyone has more socially acceptable means of employment than the natural resources sector.
Saskatchewan has a little over 1 million people, without a truly major urban center. It's economy is completely dependent on agriculture & natural resources. No amount of Richard Florida creative class BS / Prairie 'Silicon Valley' self promotion, or some other government make work project was or is going to invent jobs that prevent it's young, driven and educated from leaving for Alberta, BC, Ontario or the country. Prior to 2007 Saskatchewan was in a managed decline due to a brain drain and a hollowing out of their population. Embracing the commodity boom at least stemmed the tide and actually created an influx of people moving to instead of from Saskatchewan. One generation was at least preserved.
There's an old saying that goes "Make hay while the sun's shining." Brad Wall and his policies at least achieved this.