With election looming, Beck promises campaign on shared Sask. values

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With the provincial election call expected to come Tuesday, Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck says one common theme she’s been hearing on doorsteps has her feeling optimistic.

“It’s the values,” she said on Sunday in Saskatoon, when she visited multiple NDP campaign offices and spoke to staffers and supporters as they prepare for a month of door-knocking, phone-banking and getting out the vote.

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“Looking out for your neighbour. Hard work. Caring about the physical landscape — the air, the water, the land. Concerns about health care. Education. Crime,” she said.

“They might look a little bit different in the city than they do in rural areas, but those are still the top issues.”

Since 2020, Beck says she has become more worried about “polarized, divisive politics” in Saskatchewan and around the world, with more efforts to score “cheap political points” and less of the “sense of shared purpose” between all representatives.

“There’s a role for government. There’s a role for opposition,” she said. “Both of those roles are important in our democracy. But people are better served when you have politicians and leaders who are focused on finding solutions regardless of where they come from.”

No matter how — or if — people have voted in the past, Beck points out, everybody needs to see a doctor sometimes, or has a relative in a nursing home, or knows somebody with kids in school, or has been tracking the rising prices at the grocery store every week.

“People in this province deserve better than what we have now, (and) they’ve been discouraged,” she said. “But we have an incredible story to tell in this province.”

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Whoever forms the next provincial government will have a busy portfolio. Beck says. If the NDP has the reins, the Saskatchewan health care system will be the top priority.

“People have been sounding the alarm for years,” she said. “This is a system on the brink, in this province. And this is a system that is worth saving. This is a system that can be saved.”

Beck’s health policy proposals include more consultations with rural and remote medical workers, offering more education and training so would-be health professionals can fill open positions, and working to change the way nurses are hired and scheduled so that more of them can secure full-time positions rather instead of unpredictable part-time shifts.

Beck also wants to take on the cost of living by reversing some of the PST expansion enacted over the past few years and offering a six-month suspension of the fuel task.

“There are some very practical measures we can enact,” she said. “We can deliver for people before Christmas (and) give people a bit of a break.”

As to where the money is going to come from, Beck said it will not involve long-term debt. She says an NDP government would balance the budget within four years.

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“We have $20 billion in revenue in this province of 1.3 million people,” she said. “This isn’t a revenue problem, it’s a management problem.”

While she expects a hard-fought race, with the Saskatchewan NDP and the Saskatchewan Party neck-and-neck in recent public polls, Beck encouraged people to take the time to listen to what their neighbours — of all political leanings — have to say, and hearing them out about what matters most to them.

“If you go looking for division, you can always find it,” she said. “But if you go looking for the common ground, I’m pretty good at finding that as well.”

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