Saskatchewan's NDP has a long and sordid history of using crown corporations and government department budgets to further their political interests. In fact, they have been manipulating voters with public money for so long that taxpayers have become very ho-hum about it all.

This needs to change.

A few years ago the province handed out "energy rebate" cheques to compensate voters for high energy prices. Ironically, they used SaskTel to distribute the money through credits on phone bills. It's still a mystery what phone lines have to do with gas prices.

It's hard to forget the government forking over more than $600,000 to ensure the production of Prairie Giant - a Tommy Douglas biopic created by money-losing Mind's Eye Entertainment. Recall that Mind's Eye is partly owned by Saskatchewan taxpayers and is housed in the taxpayer-funded Saskatchewan Soundstage. The film made glorious the memory of Tommy Douglas and the CCF (the predecessor to the NDP), but slandered former Liberal Premier Jimmy Gardiner in the process.

Prairie Giant wrongly turned Gardiner, a teetotaling defender of European immigrants, into a drunken, intolerant thug - a perfect foil for the beatific Tommy Douglas. It was historical revisionism befitting a Soviet-style totalitarian state and you, dear taxpayer, paid to make it happen.

More recently, any Saskatchewan resident with a registered vehicle received a "rebate" cheque from SGI in the neighbourhood of $100. The government says it can do this because of Saskatchewan Auto Fund's great performance. The reality is that the government is making cash withdrawals from the auto fund, in advance of an election, resulting in a $100 million deficit.

Imagine how shareholders might respond if a private company did the same on the eve of a shareholder meeting.

Even worse is the government's choice to mail out cheques to every driver. It makes more sense to permanently reduce premiums to low-risk drivers and avoid printing and mailing costs. This sensible move, however, lacks the psychological impact on voters of "free money" arriving in the mailbox.

In the latest installment, Premier Lorne Calvert interrupted Question Period in the Legislature with a surprise news conference - a fairly rare occurrence. Members of the media weren't told what the news conference was all about but assumed it was important stuff.

At the news conference, Calvert breathlessly announced that Al Gore, star of the global warming horror movie An Inconvenient Truth, had accepted his invitation to give a speech in Regina.

Who do you think is paying for it Turns out that SaskTel and SaskEnergy are forking over more than $200,000 cash to pay for Al Gore's $125,000 personal appearance fee and to purchase hundreds of tickets so high school students can attend and bring the message back to their schools.

It's no coincidence that, days later, Calvert launched the province's "green strategy" with millions in subsidies for solar panels and wind mills. A few hundred thousand to bring Al Gore to town is a small price to pay to underline the NDP's political message.

None of this is new for Saskatchewanians. It has been going on for decades but that doesn't mean it should be tolerated. When the politicians use public money for political purposes it's a subtle form of abuse. It's manipulative, it's cynical and it's wrong.