Story By: John Cairns
REGINA – The federal election campaign is on for an April 28 trek to polling booths, and provincial leaders are watching closely to see if their priorities will be addressed.
Premier Scott Moe outlined his priorities in a social media post. Moe said he had his first meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney and he called on Carney to commit to the following:
To reach out immediately to engage with President Xi Jinping to indicate Canada wants to negotiate a path to removing the tariffs on Canadian canola, peas, pork and seafood; to do it to support and swift approval to pipeline projects; to commit to work closely with the provinces on any response to further US tariffs that may be imposed on Canada; commit to not impose export tariffs on Saskatchewan resources or any other exports; repeal of laws and regulations including Bill C-69, the Clean Electricity Regulations, and the oil and gas production cap; complete removal of the federal carbon tax including the industrial carbon tax; and discontinuing the federal government’s efforts to try to collect the federal carbon tax on home heating from Saskatchewan.
In another social media post on X immediately after Sunday’s election call, Moe had this to say:
“The federal election campaign is now on. Over the next 37 days, I hope every Canadian will have a close look at which party has the best plan for defending, strengthening and growing the economy in every part of Canada.
NDP Opposition Leader Carla Beck said on Monday that she has written a letter to the three main party leaders outlining her federal priorities.
Those include expanding access to global markets for Saskatchewan products, including investment in infrastructure like ports, rail, pipelines, and power lines; scrapping the federal carbon tax; protecting jobs at Evraz in Regina by maintaining tariffs on Chinese steel; twinning the Trans-Canada Highway; increasing federal healthcare transfers to reduce wait times and improve access; reforming the equalization formula; urgently signing a new childcare funding agreement; expanding school nutrition funding; hiring more RCMP officers and preserving Depot; and other priorities.
“I think they’re all incredibly important issues. And they are all issues that we would expect to hear some answer from many of those who seek to be the Prime Minister of this province on behalf of Saskatchewan people,” said Beck.
As for what voters should look for during the campaign, Beck said they “should be looking to have clear answers to all of the issues that we’ve raised.”
There may be other issues that that other voters, other groups have, but a clear answers when it comes to equalization, for example, and the impact that that has in our province, the child care program, for sure, that infrastructure, some real steps towards those investments and plans to to get those projects off the ground, to improve reliability of our rail access, our port access in this province to not to, well, let’s say this, Saskatchewan producers produce world-class products. The world knows that. And one of the concerns when it when it comes to securing broader access and new markets is that we’re not going to be able to do that. So that is what has traditionally been unreliability in terms of the performance of rail and ports in this in this country.”
When asked if NDP MLAs are going to be able to get involved in the campaign, Beck said right now their MLAs “are incredibly busy.”
“So I don’t know if there’s anyone in our crew who’s looking for extra work right now. They’re all incredibly busy. I guess we will cross that bridge if we come to it. It’s a pretty important election.”
Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance Jim Reiter also pointed to a busy time for Sask Party MLAs, and did not know if he would get involved himself.
“My schedule’s kind of busy right now, but, you know, fellow colleagues, everybody makes their own decision,” Reiter said. “I’d be surprised if at least some of them don’t engage in it.”
He added that whether MLAs did get involved would be up to each individual MLA.
As for where the Sask Party government stood, Reiter seemed to tip his hand about what kind of outcome they wanted to see.
“This is a very important election. It’s no secret where our government’s been. The federal Liberal government, over the last number of years, have put a number of laws and policies in place that have damaged our economy, the economy of Western Canada, so this is a very, very important election.”
Reiter said he “would encourage people to look at the platforms of the parties, and to look at what’s happened over the last number of years, and I would encourage everybody to get out to vote.” He also reiterated concern about “policies the Liberal government put in place, (that) severely damaged industries, severely damaged in particular the oil and gas industry. So again, I would encourage people to consider that at voting time.”
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