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That said, a skeptic might note that about the only time Wall did not take the side of the oil companies, which are big Sask. Party donors (with Cenovus Energy Inc., of carbon sequestration-fame, the largest of them all), was in changes to the Surface Rights Agreement when oil drillers were in conflict with farmers.

However, to now have the oil, gas, mining, business and agriculture sectors (representatives of which eagerly took in Wall’s speech Monday from the legislature’s public gallery) in unison against a federal Liberal tax is a dream come true for the premier.

To then foist upon the downtrodden NDP a debate in which it must unequivocally support your very own white paper on the environment, or risk being seen as anti-job during an economic downturn, would seem a political masterstroke for Brad Wall.

But even a debate like this that’s heavily weighted in Wall’s favour may not have been quite as effective a political tool as Wall had hoped it would be.

For starters, a legitimate debate requires someone to support a notion and someone to oppose it.

That the Saskatchewan NDP Opposition made it abundantly clear it actually supported Wall’s argument that Trudeau’s carbon tax is bad for this province made the idea of having this debate somewhat less politically clever.

In fact, this lack of disagreement on Wall’s reasoning for the debate allowed the NDP to confront Wall with another reality: Debates are always about ideas and alternatives — in this case, how jobs and the environment can co-exist.