The new Saskatchewan is fundamentally different from the national understanding of the province – a sleepy, comfortable place of wheat fields, grain elevators and grid roads.
Now that Saskatchewan Party Leader Brad Wall has won a renewed mandate, the real work begins. And it won't be easy.
Mr. Wall may talk about the "Saskatchewan advantage" at every opportunity, but the booming provincial economy that has helped remake Saskatchewan in recent years has also created some of the challenges that confront citizens today.
In fact, the new Saskatchewan is fundamentally different from the national understanding of the province – a sleepy, comfortable place of wheat fields, grain elevators and grid roads, all set down on a landscape so bereft of any relief that you can see your dog run away for days.
It's also the land that time seemingly forgot, since Saskatchewan is the only province where clocks do not jump ahead or fall back every spring and fall. And during the 2009 Grey Cup, it also became the province that can't count – at least on the playing field.
The reality is an increasingly urbanized society with a diverse economic base and a rich cultural life, trying to come to terms with its agricultural past and its aboriginal future.
Indeed, Saskatchewan is grappling with the twin challenges of meeting the needs of both a growing, young, urban aboriginal population and a declining, aging, rural non-aboriginal population.
Saskatchewan's population is just over one million people. Two-thirds are found in urban areas, and two out of every three urban residents live in either Regina or Saskatoon. These dominant communities may not be major metropolitan centres, but they both have to contend with big-city challenges – from poverty to violent crime to social housing to outdated or inadequate infrastructure.
Distance, meantime, has once again become a factor in rural lives as the low population density means that many services, especially health care, are available only in larger centres.
The situation is compounded by climate change and how it will adversely affect the availability of water on the Prairies, where evaporation normally exceeds precipitation on an annual basis, The precipitous decline of rural Saskatchewan is a reflection of the changed economy.
Agriculture makes only a marginal contribution (less than 10 per cent) to the provincial treasury.
What drives the engine of the new Saskatchewan is a range of natural resources (from potash to oil to forestry products) marketed worldwide to a number of trade partners. But the economy is still vulnerable because the province has no control over international price and demand.
So should Saskatchewan exercise greater control over resource development? Or ask for a larger share of the resource wealth? And how will the province respond when the labour-intensive expansion of the non-renewable resource sector comes to the end?
Any new economic development must involve more northern Saskatchewan residents and end decades of marginalization, during which time the region was treated as little more than a colony by imperial Regina – and a dumping ground for uranium waste.
The integration of the provincial north will necessarily mean jobs. In fact, new jobs must be created throughout Saskatchewan to replace those lost in agriculture.
This quest for new jobs means addressing the fact that Saskatchewan has one of the least-educated populations in Canada. Education and training will be needed if the provincial work force is to participate in the new knowledge-based economy and meet the demand for trades services.
But the most critical challenge facing Saskatchewan is the role and place of the growing aboriginal population.
In 2001, aboriginal people (Indians and Métis) made up almost one in eight of Saskatchewan residents (13.5 per cent). By 2045, they're projected to account for one in three people. Saskatchewan can't afford to discount its aboriginal population, particularly given its lowly place in provincial society, or there will be more serious challenges in the future.
Why, for example, are aboriginals overrepresented in correctional services? Should the Saskatchewan government enter into resource revenue-sharing discussions with aboriginals? And what's to be done about the high diabetes rate among the first nations population?
The road to Saskatchewan's future will certainly be bumpy. But solutions to the province's challenges must be found if the "Saskatchewan advantage" is not to have a hollow ring.
Bill Waiser is A.S. Morton Research Chair in the Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan.