The more than 275 biographies of Saskatchewan politicians from the past 100 years that are included in this volume represent but a fraction of those who have been elected to public office in the province. These are only the longer-serving, the most distinguished, the most famous...the most infamous. Together, their individual stories tell our collective political story in Saskatchewan, the birthplace of Medicare and socialism in North America.

The essays in this volume cover a broad range of topics on Saskatchewan politics, including: the role of the legislature and the Governor General; political institutions (premiers, cabinets, public service, judiciary, commissions); political parties and their history; and social issues & the economy (public finance, health care reform, economic development, rural life, demographics, First Nations, public welfare, federal relations, the media). Appendices include a table of provincial electoral results 1905-99 and lists of Saskatchewan premiers, Lieutenant Governors, and presidents & chiefs of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations.

Accompanied by DVD videodisc, entitled The 2006-08 throne and budget debates between NDP leader Lorne Calvert and Saskatchewan Party leader Brad Wall, in jewel case.

When social democratic politicians in the 1990s moderated their ideas and policies as part of a turn towards the "third way," they were assailed as traitors to the cause. Remaining Loyal demonstrates that while third way social democrats in Quebec and Saskatchewan supplemented certain social democratic ideas with more right-wing economic programs, their public policies remained true to the original spirit of social democracy. Drawing on a range of archival resources, David McGrane traces the evolution of social democracy in Quebec and Saskatchewan from their respective origins in social Catholic thought and agrarian protest movements at the turn of the twentieth century to the most recent Parti Québécois and New Democratic Party governments. In doing so, he reconstructs the public policies of traditional social democracy from the postwar era and the third way in the 1990s and early 2000s and finds both differences and continuities. McGrane contends that remaining loyal to core social democratic values is exactly what differentiates the third way from neo-liberalism in Saskatchewan and Quebec. The first historical comparison of social democracy in Saskatchewan and Quebec, Remaining Loyal challenges how we think about the recent ideological evolution of left-wing parties in Canada and the rest of the world.

Since the expansion of democracy, and the election of the CCF Government in 1944, the people of Saskatchewan have consistently felt that natural resources should be developed for the benefit of all. [...] In Canada today, and in many other countries, economic rent from resource extraction and use is considered to be the difference between the basic international price of a commodity less all the costs of production - including exploration, development of the extraction process, operating the system, the capital invested and the transportation costs. [...] Economic rent under this definition would include the excess profits captured by the corporations, as well as the special taxes, fees and royalties, which are used by governments to try to appropriate a share of the rent for the general public - the legal owners of the natural resources. [...] The theory is that the private company responsible for the extraction owes royalties to the owners of the resource, the general public, and this should be considered a basic cost of production. [...] For example, in 2004-5 there was a major increase in the price of oil and natural gas unrelated to the cost of extraction, and the monopoly rent was captured by the private corporations and their owners.

In this new scholarly compilation by David P. McGrane, established and emerging trends in Saskatchewan public policy are the foundation for setting new directions for the province in the 21st century. In what direction should Saskatchewan be headed in the 21st century? To answer this question, academics from various disciplines at the University of Regina and University of Saskatchewan have come together to produce New Directions in Saskatchewan Public Policy, the first edited book exclusively devoted to public policy in the province, with chapters discussing taxation, immigration, agriculture, urban affairs, poverty reduction, the social economy, labour, aging, Aboriginal public administration, and climate change. The authors provide an analysis and description of the current policies of the Wall government, and also look back to explore what the Romanow and Calvert governments did in these areas. The overarching theme of the book is that, despite the province's robust economic growth, significant public policy challenges remina for the Saskatchewan provincial government. The lesson is that economic growth does not magically solve entrenched societal problems and that economic prosperity will dissipate if worrisome social trends are left unchecked. While many scholarly books shy away from prescription, the authors of this book include sections in their chapters that set out new directions for policy development. As such, the book not only contains solid analysis of the present policy situation, but also offers concrete ideas for future policy makers.

The more than 175 biographies in this volume together tell the story of writing in Saskatchewan. As David Carpenter notes in his Introduction to the volume: "The writers whose lives are told in these pages are part of an extraordinary cultural community that has touched and been touched by the people and landscape of this province."