REGINA – There will be no electoral alliance or merger happening between the Progressive Conservatives and the Buffalo Party for the upcoming provincial election.
PC leader Rose Buscholl put an end to the speculation at a news conference in Regina on Thursday morning.
“Unfortunately, there were many things that kept us apart,” said Buscholl as she confirmed that talks have ended between the two parties and that they would go it alone in the upcoming election.
She acknowledged the “rumors” that circulated in the past few days about the two parties entering a joint candidate coalition agreement for the 2024 election, followed by a full party merger afterwards.
She said the nature of the talks with the Buffalo Party were “to see if there is common ground to offer a true third option for the people of Saskatchewan.”
But Buscholl pointed to the Buffalo Party’s “extensive focus on out of scope federal and international issues” as a stumbling block.
“While we are sympathetic to their focus on many of these things, we in the Progressive Conservative Party of Saskatchewan feel the primary focus of our party is local and on provincial issues exclusively.”
While she said compromise and cooperation were essential in democracy, they could not come “at the expense of our core beliefs.”
Busholl said that they could not “give up on and compromise what we believe as a party, wanting to stay in the centre as (John) Diefenbaker intended. Therefore, we have ended discussions with the Buffalo Party and decided to go our own separate ways of promoting our common sense and practical solutions, once again, that benefit all of the province of Saskatchewan.”
When pressed for details on why they couldn’t come to terms with the policies of the Buffalo Party, Buscholl pointed to certain topics engrained in the Constitution that the PCs as a party “did not want to entertain or discuss… for us to say ‘we want to limit this or limit that’, we can’t do it and it’s not a provincial issue.”
The western-separatist focus of the Buffalo Party did come into discussions, she acknowledged, but “that was a while ago when they were that” and they truly believed the Buffalo Party was moving more to the centre.
Buscholl said this decision doesn’t mean they are not open for discussions in the future, “but it’s definitely something that’s going to need a lot more time than a few weeks out before the writ gets dropped.”
The party currently has 14 candidates in place. As for the upcoming election, Buscholl says her goal is still to have 61 candidates.
As for whether that will actually happen, she replied “realistically, I don’t know, I don’t have a crystal ball in front of me to tell you what that’s going to look like.”