NDP Pedersen gathers input at Swift Current roundtable

Regina Northeast MLA Yens Pedersen was in Swift Current gathering information regarding rural issues during a round table discussion on April 7.

Pedersen, who serves as the NDP Critic for both Agriculture and Environment, hosted 30 people for the roundtable discussion which targeted primarily rural issues as they prepare for a provincial election in 2020.

“We’re gathering input. It’s informing what issues we bring to the legislature in Question Period. But it’s also gathering input for developing our policy and our own platform for the next election,” Pedersen said following Sunday’s discussion.

While there were some specific target discussion areas, Pedersen did have one main takeaway from the Swift Current round table.

“The one thing that I did jot down was the one comment about we need to actually make populating rural Saskatchewan a priority. Make rural Saskatchewan attractive as a place to live. To me, rural Saskatchewan already has a lot of attractive features to it. But I think one of the things that people would identify is the difficulty or the distance from accessing services. And so if we are going to make rural Saskatchewan a more attractive place to live, and re-populate rural Saskatchewan, then our focus on services has to be a part of it.”

Pedersen was also intrested in receiving feedback about rural transportation issues.

“Ryan Meili has committed that part of our platform will include a commitment to a provincial public transportation service. We haven’t announced what that’s going to look like yet, but we’ve absolutely made that commitment and that will be part of our platform,” he noted.

“There’s no doubt that passenger service wouldn’t have kept the service alive on a forprofit basis. What we’d be looking at is further changes to the business model, changes to the services offered. And ultimately, and this is something we heard today, ultimately this is about providing a public service and making sure that our rural communities have public services available to them.”

“There’s no doubt that the ridership between some areas in the province was pretty thin. You could take a look at many rural highways and the amount of traffic over some of those rural highways is also pretty thin, but that doesn’t mean we should get rid of them. These are public services.”

Pedersen has also been hearing extensively about the growing concern over the potential of producers having to pay royalties in order to use farmsaved seed.

“What I’ve been noticing it’s cutting across party lines and farmers are overwhelmingly opposed to this. They’re concerned about what it means for them and the province. And I think just in general there’s something that rubs farmers the wrong way when the federal government comes along and says we’re going to make you pay to reuse the seed that you grew on your farm. We’re going to make you pay if you want to use that again.”