NDP Leader Carla Beck announced a new Northern Strategy during a two-day tour of northwestern Saskatchewan that started on Thursday.
On the tour, she visited Green Lake, Beauval, Ile-a-la-Crosse, Buffalo Narrows and La Loche, to meet with community members, according to a NDP news release.
The comprehensive strategy includes: cost-of living relief for northerners, initially by suspending the fuel tax for six months and removing PST from children’s clothing and groceries.
The NDP also says it will improve healthcare by hiring more doctors and nurses and having more First Nations and Métis people working in healthcare, through a “Grow Your Own” strategy to recruit and train-up healthcare staff, quoted from the news release.
Beck said northern residents have made it clear that healthcare is a major concern.
“One of the biggest challenges in healthcare services is retaining the healthcare workers that we have,” Beck said in an interview with the Daily Herald. “In a lot of places there’ll be locums, or a doctor will come for a short period of time and leave. In a lot of places, particularly in rural and remote areas, it’s difficult to recruit them to the area.
“We’ve just heard in Ile-a-la-Crosse now (and) we just heard in Beauval there are people who have healthcare experience who would be interested in taking courses to go from an RN to a Nurse Practitioner, to provide primary care for people,” she added. “(It’s) increasing the training for people … we know those likely to stay long term are the folks that have roots in the community.”
Increasing education funding to ensure school boards in the North are able to provide specialized supports for children in need is also an area included in the Strategy.
Another area involves plans to work with First Nation and Metis people “in respect to inherent rights and restoring a physical presence for government in the North.”
Beck said an NDP will ensure northern voices are heard when major decisions are made.
“More and more decisions are being made without consultation and more and more decisions are being made in small rooms in Regina and that is not benefiting communities,” she said. “We see that with school boards. We see that with healthcare decisions, so many decisions that could better benefit communities if only communities were invited in to be part of the solution.
“People want to be part of these decisions. People have great ideas…. What they need is a government that is willing to work with them.”
Highway maintenance is also high on their list, particularly highways 155 and 123, to increase safety for people in the area.
Wildfire management is another area, particularly, working with northern leaders to improve wildfire management and with residents to provide access to training to ensure they are part of local wildfire responses.
Beck said, two of the party members travelling through the north with her have had experience fighting wildfires when they were younger. However, she’s said the way they were trained has changed since then.
“It’s a concern that I’ve heard from Chiefs, from mayors, people in community the need to return some of that capacity to fight fires and to respond to fires to people who are closest to the forest,” Beck said. “People who are living in communities north of the treeline and know exactly what that looks like. It’s one of those things that really needs to be dealt with.”
She added that it doesn’t mean there’s never a need for other firefighters, including from other countries at times, especially since firefighters from Saskatchewan frequently help out other provinces and countries. Instead, she said it’s about training firefighters with local knowledge who has respond quickly to fires.
“This is something that had existed in the province before . Something that we’re hearing from communities that’s very much needed, especially after the last two summers we’ve had with the amount of forest fires that we’ve had and people being displaced,” she said.
Beck also reiterated plans to scrap the Saskatchewan Party’s Marshals Service, and using the $20 million in funds for to improve access to “culturally relevant mental health and addictions supports.”
On Aug. 30, the NDP released a four-point plan to make Saskatchewan communities safer involving scrapping the Marshals Service and hiring more police officers, investing in mental health and addictions services, “going after organized crime and drug traffickers, and protecting families, small business and places of worship with a $2 million rebate program for security resources such as alarms, doorbell cameras and motion sensor lights,” reads the news release.
The Northern Strategy plan also includes making vacant SaskHousing units available for “people needing a home and introducing rent protections for tenants and restoring the direct rent and utility payments to landlords for income support clients.”
“Everywhere I go I hear that it’s time for a change, and nowhere do I hear that more than in Northwest Saskatchewan,” Beck said in the news release. “Saskatchewan New Democrats have been listening to Northerners, and this Northern Strategy has been built with them to address the challenges people in Northern Saskatchewan are facing.”
editorial@paherald.sk.ca
