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Thursday, January 4, 2024
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Year end interview with Premier Scott Moe By John Cairns SASKTODAY.ca
Premier Scott Moe was in a reflective mood as he looked back at what was a challenging year in Saskatchewan. In a lengthy year-end interview at the Legislature with SASKTODAY. ca, Premier Moe pointed to both global challenges seen in the Ukraine and Middle East, at national challenges including ever-increasing environmental regulations from the federal government, and also provincial challenges in health care, education, and in trying to balance the budget. These challenges play out as the province enters what will be a provincial election year in 2024. Here are highlights of Moe’s responses on the variety of issues discussed during that interview: On the national and global challenges Saskatchewan faces “There’s some real challenges nationally. We see a Russian invasion of Ukraine is continuing and intensifying. We see Canada‘s relationship with what is the largest economy in the world now, with India, being somewhat challenging. We’re working on that from a provincial perspective. Now we’ve seen the terrorist organization Hamas essentially invade
Israel. So very challenging time, I think, when you look internationally. And herein lies some opportunities for Canada to do what we traditionally have done as Canadians, which is really to promote getting along, to open up avenues... for many of the entities around, to see that the greater good in where we’re heading as a global citizen is collectively. And that’s maybe part of the reason why later in this year we attended as a provincial or sub-national jurisdiction a very international event in COP28, to really bring forward what Saskatchewan is doing as Canadians to the world and to put that on full display. I think Canada has a larger role to play in bringing people together as opposed to dividing people and nations, so I think the sooner that we get back (to that) as Canadians, the better off we will be, and I say that globally.” “We continue to grow in Saskatchewan. We have jobs that are arriving, careers that are arriving in community after community. We have a potash mine that’s doubled down on investment. We’re seeing approvals of other mines — uranium mines, net-zero copper mines moving forward. A challenging year in agriculture in certain areas of the
province, but overall agriculture continues to progress as we climb the value chain with investments, continued investments in canola crush and meatpacking and opportunities that are there, and we are seeking people continuing to move here. And we also see a government that is very committed to building the necessities that we need in our communities in order to best manage that growth. We have 15 schools that are under construction, largescale hospitals that are in the planning stage and are about to start construction in many cases. One thing I think about when looking back over the past year, and all that is going on…I think of the additional 200,000 people who moved here from other areas, and add to that all of the people who stayed here. When I was young, luggage was the grad gift… it’s funny because it’s true. It was a grad gift, and the expectation was if you were going to make something of your life, it was probably not going to be here. It was going to be in Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto or some other place in Canada or around the world, and that’s no longer the case. So we have in addition to those 200,000230,000 roughly people
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who moved here, we have 200,000-300,000 400,000 young people, young families, who have chosen to stay in Saskatchewan that didn’t decades ago. And so they wouldn’t be aware or wouldn’t remember what maybe things were like in Saskatchewan 15 or 20 years ago when we didn’t have population growth, when 19-year-old kids finished high school and left the province, when we didn’t have the need to build new schools, certainly didn’t have the need to build 15 of them in one year — about 90 of them
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now built and reconstructed over the last 15 years. We didn’t have the need to replace hospitals and add additional hospital infrastructure like the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital, because we simply weren’t growing as communities and we weren’t growing as a province. So as I look ahead and look back over this past year and look ahead to the next year, when we head into an election year…. I think of the growth we’ve achieved in this province, how that growth is something that we are becom-
ing accustomed to as Saskatchewan residents. We’re expecting we’re going to have new schools built next year, on top of the schools built this past year. And it’s incumbent on us just to pause for a moment and recall remember that that is not the way it’s always been here.”
To read John Cairns’ complete interview with Scott Moe visit
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