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If the SHCA has proof Alberta is “taking protectionism to the extreme” let’s see it. After all, you are now going to have to put forward your defence before the NWP secretariat, anyway.

Is Wall expecting the New West Partnership to simply take his word Alberta is being protectionist, or is everyone just supposed to take his word? You are risking a maximum $5-million NWP fine that could keep Saskatchewan libraries openbased on what Bilous described Thursday as untrue “rumours” presented by Saskatchewan that contractors are facing similar plate restrictions in Alberta?

The ironic thing is that Wall, leaving on Jan. 27, so hoped his enduring legacy would be moving Saskatchewan from the image of bumbling backwater to a real player on the national stage.

Ostensibly, the notion of the so-called “new Saskatchewan” that would no longer be a poor cousin of Confederation was why Wall in 2010 dropped former NDP premier Lorne Calvert’s equalization suit against former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper’s government. (Although, more likely, this mostly had to do with keeping peace within the ranks of Saskatchewan’s conservative brethren.)

Yet we now see Wall frequently tweeting about the inherent unfairness of equalization payoutsboth he and Harper vowed to fix.

So besides reverting to cap-in-hand Saskatchewan, Wall and company’s bumbling efforts to take us back to the silly protectionist mentality of past NDP governments hasn’t gone unnoticed by the very national audience that he and his government craved. Consider this week’s editorial in the Toronto Globe and Mailthat rightly calls Wall “so petty.”

Petty, as in, when you do harmful things for no good reason.

Surely, this is not what Brad Wall wanted Saskatchewan to be.

Mandryk is the political columnists for the Regina Leader-Post.