MOOSE JAW - The two candidates in the Saskatchewan NDP leadership race squared off last Thursday in their first leadership forum in Moose Jaw, as they looked to gain support to win the June 26 leadership vote.
The two contenders Carla Beck and Kaitlyn Harvey responded to questions posed on a number of different areas including health care, education, climate change, reconciliation, and on how to win.
Here is a look at some of what they had to say on the issues during the forum:
Education
Harvey: “Between April 2020 and December 2021 alone, Saskatchewan shelled out over $600 million in fossil fuel subsidies. And if we were able to put even half that towards dealing with our education budget, which brings us up to the status quo of where the budget was in 2017, we still have an extra $300 million to spend wherever we want it, maybe healthcare, maybe improving our education. We have so much potential, we just have to be spending money and investing wisely.”
Beck: “As a parent and as a former school board trustee this is exactly the issue that got me into politics. We have been seeing falling per student funding in this province since 2013. That means a student who is graduating today will have spent their whole career in school without proper funding. Before the pandemic our classes were crowded, and had more needs than we were able to provide for…
We have to look at education as an investment in our children and an investment in the future of this province. Also the last budget, we saw the Sask. Party government spend an additional 16 per cent on private education, privately funded education, and 1.3 by contrast for a publicly funded, publicly delivered system. This is about priorities.”
Reconciliation
Beck: “Truth needs to proceed reconciliation. And I know that we have been sitting on the call for action, the TRC calls for action, and the calls for justice in the report on the inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous girls and women. We can start there….
We need to go out and meet with people and find solutions with community leaders. This again is far too important in our province to not get right.”
Harvey: “I think we accept that we need to do something about it. And that’s where we have fallen down….
We’ve had recommendations, calls to action, calls to justice, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People — 2007? How much longer are we supposed to sit back and be waiting for people to tell us what we should be doing to implement real substantive reconciliation? No, we need to act.
We need legislation that recognizes the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, applies it domestically, recognizes the right of the communities to decide for themselves how they want to live their lives, how they want to protect their cultures.”
Affordability
Beck: “We’re facing 30-year high inflation in this province. It’s like the 1980s again in too many ways. I’m proud to have stood with my colleagues in the House who have put forth ideas such as a windfall levy to ensure that at a time when we see record potash prices, when we see record oil and gas prices, that we take a little bit back of those profits to invest in affordability measures like rebates, that we invest in health care, and that we put some of that away for a rainy day.”
Harvey: “That rainy day is today. We need to start using the money that we have, the resource wealth that we have, and spending it wisely, putting it back into our communities. We can’t keep up with this privatization strategy that the Sask Party has been implementing that is cutting those services, cutting back capacity from within our public institutions, our public corporations. Those are supposed to be owned by Saskatchewan people, and that money, these windfall profits, should be kept and given back to Saskatchewan people. We have people dying on the streets, they don’t have homes or roofs over their heads, no places to live and raise their kids. We've got seen seniors who can’t find a place to spend their lives, grow old. And people who are making windfall profits blows my mind… we need to start using that money wisely now.”
On health care workers leaving:
Beck: “The first thing is to listen to them, and that is something we've seen this government fail to do time and time again. We had a system that was under pressure before COVID(-19), and I think we all know how much pressure has been put on since that time. We also don’t need to be looking at American-style privatization for our healthcare system.”
Harvey: “We need to be really look at what’s going on with our healthcare system from a holistic person perspective. You know, we spent years privatizing services, cutting funding, clawing back on the things that people need, not investing in training, not investing in education, not investing in local health care solutions, forcing people to go to urban centres. Putting pressure on key areas that we don’t have the capacity to deal with the demand on these services and on these people.”
On how to deal with the Sask Party’s electoral success
Beck: “One thing that I’ve really noticed is what too many people know about the Saskatchewan NDP in this province is what the Sask Party told him. We need to go out there and tell them our own story.
I just had a conversation tonight with someone who said you know what, I’m not gonna vote for those guys anymore. And we’re hearing that in every room.”
Harvey: “First of all we really need to give people something to vote for and we haven’t done that… People want to see serious action on climate change. And this narrative that Saskatchewan doesn’t care about the environment is false. People care about the environment and want to see action. We need to be honest with what’s going on, have that kind of strategy that people can see and know in advance and we need to be building capacity with our constituency executive associations.”
On creating jobs
Harvey: “Saskatchewan refuses to work with the federal government and we keep propping up natural gas plants and the oil and gas industry. Let's get our head out of the sand and look at the writing on the wall and be working with people to create these jobs, which is our responsibility, our ability to create, do the work, and just get on with it….
We can have wind turbine, solar power, plants like geothermal have so much potential that it blows my mind. We can do this, but we don’t have the political will.”
Beck: “Even before COVID life is getting harder, too many people in the province were living paycheque to paycheque. In fact it’s not just last year, it’s five of the last seven years we have seen GDP in this province shrink. Other provinces are growing.
…. We need to look at all sectors in our province — private and public, renewables and traditional energy sectors, tech and new industries. There is opportunity here. But we need to quit ceding economic ground to the Sask Party if we want to win and form government.”
Reactions by candidates in speaking to reporters following the event:
Beck: “I’ve been twice elected as an MLA and spent two years on the Regina Public school board. I think that experience in building a team and winning and being able to deliver for people really is at the core of what we have been doing this whole campaign.”
“Especially this spring, a lot of people were coming to us and telling us they are tired of divisive politics. They are tired of wedge issue ‘one group screaming at the other’. I think it’s very important both in terms of our path of being able to invite people into this party, but also the current state of the vitriol that we see in politics I don’t think is getting us to good places.
“We’re proposing a very different path. When I’m out in rural Saskatchewan or in the north or in the rural centres, in the cities, I see a lot of people agree on in this province. We like to look out for our neighbours, we like to look after the air and the land, build for the future, some of the things that we talked about tonight. We start there, we don’t start from division. We start from the things that we agree about. We invite people in to be part of finding these solutions and I know that this can work because it’s already working.”
Harvey: “I know that people are sick and tired of politicians not putting forward the truth, and people aren’t stupid. Saskatchewan people aren’t stupid. We know that our communities are not in a good place. We have a lot of issues that we need to be dealing with. We can’t just sit back and let our family members continue dying of drug overdoses, committing suicide, going missing, dropping out of school, moving away because there’s no opportunity here. Nurses, doctors, psychiatrists. We don’t have reasons for people to come here and stay here. We need to be creating those opportunities.
“And you know, as we’re having these conversations with people, people if they are attracted to it they say ‘Kaitlyn, oh you’re calling it what it is.’ And that is going to appeal to people. So in terms of a strategy, you know, we’re just doing our thing. We’re just having these conversations and people are more than welcome to participate, ask questions. I don’t always have the answers but if I don’t have it, I’ll go find it, because that’s what I do. It resonates with people. And so we’re just going to keep on having these opportunities and connecting with people and hopefully that’s enough to make the difference come June 26.”
