Letters: Saskatchewan Party fails the rural areas that support it

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Because the Saskatchewan Party and Alberta’s United Conservative Party have the support of rural voters, one might assume that their policies benefit rural areas.

Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota and recently announced as the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, made some interesting comments on what benefits small towns and rural areas. “The two things that are core to small communities: school and hospital.”

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Walz commented on school vouchers “How are you going to get a private school in a town of 400? That’s not where the private school is going to be. The private school is going to be where it already is … These guys, they talk about how evil the public schools are. For many of us, public schools were everything. That was our path.”

On health care, the main Saskatchewan Party pitch to rural areas is the never-ending campaign against the NDP government of over 30 years ago. Perhaps we should ask what improvements have been made in health care in the last 17 years, and what are the plans for the future?

Is it more privatization? Is it endorsement of anti-science rhetoric, entertained by Premier Moe in Speers and peddled at an “Injection of Truth Town Hall” supported by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith of the Saskatchewan Party’s lookalike UCP?

If we want teachers and health care workers to live and work in rural areas, we need to support them and improve the structures within which they work, not hinder them with conspiracy theories and diversion of funding to private organizations.

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David Steele, Saskatoon

Address all barriers behind hiring bias

Regarding the article: “How hiring bias affects workers in Canada’s food service industry” (Leader-Post print edition, Aug. 3).

This article focuses on the employer’s perception of whether an employee will “fit” in the workplace as a barrier to entry in the food service industry. It also cites advancement barriers once hired, including placement in low-paid and lower-status jobs with unsteady hours.

By way of prescription, it proposes: “focused anti-racist programming that involves actively challenging and changing racist policies, practices and attitudes.” Undoubtedly these would be of benefit.

But a further initiative might be to change the nature of the work that produces the employer’s view as to the kind of person who is the “perfect fit.” This would involve increasing employee influence in defining the conditions of work.

Presently, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that the rights of employees to submit proposals on working conditions, picket and strike are Charter-protected rights. Presently there is no legislative process enabling employees to exercise these rights.

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Barriers include employer opposition that would reduce its control at the workplace and organized labour’s resistance, given its gatekeeper role in the adoption of collective bargaining. Perhaps the latter are also barriers that could be addressed.

Dan Cameron, Regina

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