What did we learn about the Sask. government's priorities from this week’s throne speech?

The provincial government unveiled its priorities this week with a speech from the throne. Is Saskatchewan as strong and steady as the government claims, or are things a little shakier? We've brought in our political panel to answer that. Marie Mandrick is a political columnist and CBC reporter. Alexander Kwan covers the legislature for us here at CBC Saskatchewan. He's Saskatchewan. Alex, what's up to you from the throne speech? The relatively mundane nature of this speech, if you compare it to last year, that speech had the government talking about its plans for its approach to dealing with forced treatment for drug addiction or the crowd-pleasing, you know, tailgating and Rough Riders games. Nothing in this year's speech really rises to that. There's some legislation about providing oversight, transparency. Transparency and accountability in personal care homes. There's also the Protection of Economic Infrastructure Act, which will ensure the province's critical infrastructure and transport routes are, quote, cannot be disrupted by occupations or other illegal activities. Don't blockade a data center. Basically. And so, but even when we asked the premier, it wasn't exactly clear what the province was hoping to address with this. He wasn't able to provide any kind of specific recent examples where this would apply. Exactly. Honestly, the biggest thing might be Mo's anecdote about how an AI ad featuring him and Prime Minister Mark Carney was used to defraud someone, which is an example of why the province is going to be taking action on deceptive and manipulative AI. Now, I wasn't necessarily surprised by how... relatively boring this speech was. They didn't really tease anything out like they normally do in the weeks ahead of the throne speech. Really, the biggest hook of this all was stability. You know, the speech carried the title Strong, Steady Saskatchewan, a message that Mo said was a deliberate choice as the party tries to win back support in Regina and Saskatoon. Yeah, strong. We love strong in the political circles. Everyone's been using that, Marie. Love steady. It sounds Sounds great. Alex says, is it something that's a bit of a nothing burger? What did you think of the speech? Well, the real theme of the government is trust us and don't trust the NDP. And that's an easier one. And it's significantly easier than the notion that Saskatchewan is strong, steady, and particularly boring. Saskatchewan is only boring to those people that don't live here. And if you fly over it, you don't see any problems. But if you live here, you do. You see problems not getting a doctor. You see problems that we saw in the legislature this week on the second day where we had this incredibly tragic story of a young woman losing her life over a broken ankle and a blood clot because she was delayed on the surgery list. There's always those problems going on. So the challenge for any government to basically say in the midst of this world crisis created by the buffoons south of the border. that When we're affected by the gas prices, when we're affected by fuel prices in agriculture and mining and everything else, or just driving your kids to hockey, that we're immune from the world and all the things going on, and the government doesn't really even have to kind of really address these problems you. because we're just so fortunate and so blessed with our resources that arguably haven't been as hit by tariffs as other things. I don't think that's an easy message for the government. to sell because there's always something. And in a place like this province, it's just hard to govern because it's so large, it's so vast. You're always going to have problems in health care. You're always going to have these other problems cropping up like the cost of living and such. You're always going to have issues in play like Kevin Weidmark that the Speaker seems to be doing his damnedest not to bring forward. to the floor of the legislature, even though taxpayers' dollars may be involved in much of the issues surrounding that. As a matter of fact, every time he kind of shuts it down, I think it's to the advantage of the NDP, because people get more suspicious that there's that much going on. It makes it seem like there's something there. So, I mean, it's going to be really hard for the government to pull off the notion that it's got a handle on this, particularly with some of the ministers that they have that don't handle the situation particularly well. Well, and I think that... This is going to be a significant challenge for the Saskatchewan Party government this fall.