Rhino's Ramblings - Riders Win As NDP Political Privilege Falters

By Robert Thomas Opinion/Commentary

For Saskatchewan sports’ fans the words “We’re back baby” are echoing throughout the province because after well more than a year the Saskatchewan Roughriders have taken to the field.

The Riders are back and they won what is I believe the latest home opener in the team’s history.

But in all of those shouts of joy there is a political story going on. A political story that is you guessed it entwined in the world of COVID - 19.

As the Riders got prepared for what was their home opener Dr Ryan Meili - a man whom I personally respect as a doctor and a human being because he lives what he believes - leader of the NDP was issuing warnings about allowing such a large crowd to congregate without proof of vaccination given the continued danger of COVID - 19.

Take a look at what the NDP said to the media as they pushed the unenforceable idea that people to attend the Rider games should have to prove they were fully vaccinated. A vaccination passport if you chose to call it that.

Something that Premier Scott Moe immediately outright dismissed.

“These superspreader events risk putting additional strain when, again, everyone is hoping — particularly our hard-working frontline health-care workers — that the worst of this is behind us,” Meara Conway Regina Elphinstone-Center NDP MLA told the media going on to add “We should be taking every reasonable step that we can to keep Saskatchewan families safe. People have been waiting a long time to do the things that they love and one of those things is going to a Rider game.”

So let’s look at it this way by the NDP’s reasoning Friday night’s Rider game should be a place that Saskatchewan residents should avoid because there are likely going to be unvaccinated people in attendance.

It is a “superspreader” event that needs to be made safer is what I see the NDP’s policy when it came to Friday night’s and any future Rider games.

But is this the reality?

On Friday evening I was doing my regular look at Facebook to see what was going on and what popped up on the Saskatchewan NDP’s Facebook page is in my opinion one of the most hypocritical things from politicians of any stripe since the early stages of the pandemic itself.

Screen shot of the Saskatchewan NDP Facebook page showing NDP MLA’s at the Rider game something they called a “superspreader event” - photo credit Facebook

There on the page are the very MLAs who decried Friday night’s game as a superspreader event at the game and celebrating the win.

The attempt in stealing the thunder from the Riders optically is not a very sound one in this scribe’s opinion.

This is in my opinion is NO different than politicians who told us all to stay home and then they themselves went off to Hawaii or some other tropical destination.

The NDP members, by being virtue of being there and then publicly posting a photo of themselves imbibing in spirits, are no less hypocritical than the politicians who wintered in the tropics.

Now I am sure a lot of the NDP faithful are going to scream and make noise and dismiss me for what I write. You get that from political partisans of every stripe.

It seems people get so wrapped up in political partisanship that few, if any, of them understand I am more like an everyday person than they are in some partisan bubble out in cyberspace. Irrelevant in the real world the majority of people live in.

And that for many is the problem with politicians and politics in general the hypocrisy of so many in really what is a game much bigger than the Riders will ever play.

It is a game that extends through politicians, partisans, the local Facebook bitch page and even the media itself.

It is a game that on Friday night the NDP played and sorry lost.

They can hate me, they can attack me, they can continue to lie and cover up their own criminal misdeeds but in the end Friday night was more than a failure for the NDP what it demonstrated is the hypocrisy of those who say they are just like everybody else and represent us and then do the exact opposite.

This is the political privilege we all just hate.