Premier Brad Wall and his Saskatchewan Party government narrowly avoided disaster last month, even though the province is enjoying boom times. They were shaken with a ghost from the past, in the form of a long-forgotten videotape of drunken Progressive Conservative party workers during the 1991 provincial election campaign.

The 17-year-old video was discovered in the Opposition caucus office at the Legislative Building by NDP staff and released to the public in early April. It shows Wall, then a 26-year-old party worker, adopting a thick Ukrainian accent and making disparaging comments about then-NDP leader Roy Romanow, who is of Ukrainian heritage.

The tape also shows Regina Conservative MP Tom Lukiwski, then a PC party organizer and later general manager of the Saskatchewan Party, making hateful comments about gays. A thoroughly humiliated Lukiwski has since apologized to the gay and lesbian community, in both the Parliamentary press gallery and the House of Commons.

Nevertheless, many have called for Lukiwski to resign from his seat in Parliament, or at least as parliamentary secretary to Conservative Party house leader Peter Van Loan.

Wall was also quick to apologize, especially to the large Ukrainian community in Saskatchewan and specifically to Romanow, who defeated the Grant Devine Tories in 1991 and was premier for 10 years.

The video seems to confirm the worst fears of Saskatchewan voters, many of whom are uneasy about the history of the Wall government. As the NDP have repeatedly reminded voters, the Saskatchewan Party was formed in 1997 from former provincial PC party members and Liberals; according to the NDP, it is still fundamentally the same old PC party that was swept ignominiously from office in 1991 under Devine.

The nine-year reign of the Devine PCs was notable, among other things, for racking up huge debts and deficits, mismanagement and overspending, and an expense account scheme that left many political careers in ruins. The Saskatchewan Party has been scrupulous in its efforts to downplay the connection. Indeed, despite the NDP repeatedly calling the Saskatchewan Party “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” voters gave Wall a majority victory in last November’s election, ending 16 years of NDP rule.

While Wall has moved quickly to staunch the bleeding from the tape controversy, the incident may reopen old wounds in the party, dating back to Wall’s acclamation as leader in 2004: he replaced former leader Elwin Hermanson, who resigned after the party’s 2003 election defeat.

Several leadership contenders, including current Finance Minister Rod Gantefoer, lacked Wall’s charisma but conveyed more gravitas than the 42-year-old leader. More important, unlike Wall, leadership hopefuls from the Liberal Party were not tainted by the connection to the former Devine PCs. But the party rank and file decided to go with the fresh-faced Wall, an affable former economic development officer and DJ from Swift Current, in the province’s southwest.

Until Saskatchewan’s own “sex, lies and videotape” controversy, things were going swimmingly for the Wall government. The province leads the nation in economic and population growth, retail sales and wholesale trade, housing prices and starts, consumer spending and capital investment, and wage and income growth. As Wall and his ministers like to say: “Saskatchewan is on a roll.’’

Whether this is just a bump in the road or a sign that the wheels are starting to fall off the Saskatchewan Party’s bandwagon remains to be seen. But the new government’s momentum has clearly been stalled, and it may take some time to get it rolling again. IE