Premier visits Swift Current to hear local concerns
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe spent a day in Swift Current last week as he and Swift Current MLA Everett Hindley met with local leaders, businesses, and community based organizations.
“We have been visiting a number of communities across the province, joining with our locals MLAS as we are in Swift Current here with Everett Hindley really to just get out and discuss with community based organizations that are offering services to our community today in the way of immigration services,” explained Premier Moe. “Meeting with a number of different businesses, all the way from retail to export focused businesses here in Swift Current. As well as always touching base with our municipal leadership. I met with the mayor and the reeve of the region with Everett. Really just listening, just listening to what’s on their mind, their concerns, and ultimately how we can continue with the partnership that we have between the provincial government and those businesses that are driving our economy, those community based organizations that are making life better for people and meeting with our municipal leaders, our partners really in the infrastructure that we provide in our communities and our RMS across the province. Very pleased to be here with Everett Hindley here today and we had just a fantastic day.”
He said a number of issues were raised, including the rail blockades.
“The immediate issues are with respect to rail service quite frankly, and the ability for us to get our goods both into our communities and out of communities. We talked with businesses both new and old that have newly come to the area and located here, as well as businesses that have operated here for a number of years in the agricultural industry and the energy industry that are being impacted. First on accessing some of the specialized equipment that they need and second on gaining access to rail service to get our products out of Saskatchewan to our customers in 150 countries around the world.”
Hindley said that he hears from people around the area through conversations, social media, people stopping in his office, phone calls and written correspondence.
“We heard it first hand today when the Premier was out and as he talked about we went out to a number of different businesses and organizations today and we point blank asked the question, ‘Is it starting to impact you?’ And they were pretty direct with us saying yeah it actually is now. That gets to be a concern because with what’s going on nationally, this isn’t just something you’re seeing on TV happening in the west coast or the east coast. This is impacting families right here in Swift Current and Southwest Saskatchewan and that’s a worry. That’s a worry for me as a local MLA because it’s impacting people’s opportunities to earn an income here in Swift Current and Southwest Saskatchewan. So it’s becoming a bit more of a concern here locally too and I think people are unfortunately starting to feel some of the impacts of that.”
Immigration also remains a key topic in the Southwest and Saskatchewan.
“As we continue to grow this province and we had a growth plan that we had set forward back in 2012 out to 2020 and that growth plan included some population targets,” explained Premier Moe. “We’ve revived and renewed those targets out to the year 2030 now with our current growth plan, which Everett and other MLAS worked quite hard on consulting with constituents across the province on what is important to our communities and how do we continue to enhance the growth that we’ve experienced? Part of that, quite frankly, is through job creation and attracting investment into our communities. Part of that is our investment in international trade and investment offices around the world of which we just opened three additional ones. Everett has been very closely working with that in his capacity as the Legislative Secretary to the Minister of Trade and Immigration. We’ve opened up additional offices in Singapore and Tokyo and in India. That is, one, to create that pathway for our export based businesses directly into those markets and to represent Saskatchewan in those markets, but also to attract that investment back into our region so that we can continue to add value to our exports, create jobs, and attract people here, which ultimately leads us to attracting people here from other areas of the world. We’ve been successful with that in the last 10 years. We have supports right next door here in Swift Current that are helping those families and those individuals settle in communities throughout the Southwest. I believe it was from over 100 countries that people have immigrated to the southwestern portion of the province over the course of the last number of years, a tremendous record and that speaks to a need for community based organizations just such as this.”
The spring session of the legislative assembly is quickly approaching.
“With the spring session of the Legislature each and every year comes a provincial budget,” said Premier Moe. “Again we are working with our industries and our communities on what needs to be in that budget. And obviously we have embarked on a path over the course of the last few years to ensure that we can continue to build strong communities and strong families and a strong province through balancing that budget. We were able to achieve that last year and this coming year’s budget will also be a balanced budget. It will be a budget that will contribute to building our strong communities by investing in infrastructure and there will be a significant amount of infrastructure that will be invested in in this budget, both provincial infrastructure like hospitals and schools, highways, as well as partnering with our municipalities in the traditional way with our federal government and our provincial government and our municipal governments on that all-too important municipal infrastructure. We had discussions with respect to the opportunities for our regional landfill in this area where a number of municipalities, communities, and the City of Swift Current are coming together to have a conversation around is there an opportunity for us to achieve some efficiencies of scale in a regional landfill operation, which other areas of the province have done.”
Another local topic that came up was Dories House and the continued push for government funding by local interests for the youth emergency shelter. “There has been some decisions made with respect to Dories House in the city of Swift Current, but there’s always a conversation for us to have as to what services are being offered and how we are offering those services in where the community is,” said Premier Moe. “The decisions have been made with respect to where Dories House is here today. We had a conversation about that earlier today as well in one of our sit down sessions. But in saying that, in the same way that I say the relationship between rural and urban Saskatchewan has changed over the last number of years, the relationship on the services that are required in our community changes as we move through the years as well, so we always need to be aware of that. We need to work with our CBOS and we need to fully support our CBOS in ways that we can as a provincial government. As we near the provincial budget I think you will find ways, find examples of how we are stepping forward to not only ensure that we are supporting our current CBOS, but ensuring that we are always having a conversation with perspective CBOS that are looking to be funded or come on streaming in the future.”
“We had a really good meeting a couple of Fridays ago that was organized by the Dories House Board, Shaun Hanna and the group there,” added Hindley. “We had a room full of about 30 organizations represented, not just from Swift Current, but from the region as well. As you know with the history of it they applied for funding a couple of times unsuccessfully for provincial funding. But we had a really good conversation in that meeting about the services that we offer in Swift Current and where there is duplication and where there is some gaps. We do fund a number of programs and services and supports in Swift Current through the Ministry of Social Services, including we do have a shelter here, JP’S House, which has been operational here for a number of years, not necessarily, but is there reasons for that and how can we best find a way to eliminate some of the overlap? So that was the good thing with the conversation we had a couple of weeks ago, having a number of groups in the room to say ‘We’re an organisation and offer this, we offer this and this and to figure out how we can better work together to better utilize the resources that are being spent not just by provincial dollars, but by federal dollars and by people who privately donated and support these various CBOS throughout Swift Current and areas. I think it was good to have that conversation, kind of discuss where we’re at right now, where there’s gaps, where there’s potentially opportunities. I committed to the folks there at the meeting. I said, ‘You know I’ll be reporting this back to the Minster of Social Services’ and I think there’s going to be another meeting coming up here in April and we’ll just keep working forward on it.”