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The race for the Estevan-Big Muddy riding is seeing candidates announce themselves for the election race coming soon, with the Saskatchewan NDP bringing in their candidate.
Phil Smith, who was born in Arcola and grew up in Carlyle, currently works as a cook in the food services industry. He was announced as the candidate back in September as the Saskatchewan NDP were preparing for the writ to drop.
He says that the reason he's putting his name on the ballot is to work on bringing costs back in line for people.
"All around me I notice like with my circle of friends and coworkers and everything, like we've all been affected with this affordability crisis we find ourselves in in Saskatchewan, having trouble to keep up with our bills and our debts and just basic costs like gas and food."
"So seeing that and also the state of healthcare that we're currently in. We have some families that are currently in the hospitals and people that have like been in the hospitals have passed away sadly and in the last ten years, I'd say we've seen so much dilapidation over our healthcare."
"That it got to a point where I just felt in my heart, I really wanted to, like, make a difference and see what I could do and then when this opportunity came up to jump in and run for the riding, I said, yeah, for sure, let's do it."
Smith says he has plenty of fond memories of Estevan from his childhood and wants to do right by those.
"My grandfather used to live in Estevan and my mother was born there. So I spent a lot of time there growing up as a kid and more so in my teenager and adult life I think I've spent weeks there at a time in the summer and at Christmases. So I have a really fond spot for the city and when I saw that they didn't have an NDP candidate, I just felt in my heart that I wanted to fight for the people of Estevan and be there for them."
Smith currently lives in Regina and he says he would move to Estevan if he ended up winning the election.
With healthcare one of the top issues in the province, he feels that the Saskatchewan NDP are a better steward of the service.
"Carla Beck's already put forward a $1.1 billion plan for healthcare to address the first four years all of the issues that we've been dealing with, especially with like frontline workers and nurses being overworked and understaffed, all that kind of stuff and having emergency rooms that are not available at all times in the big cities and it's even worse than the towns."
"So I think what we need to do is like work on getting the 24-hour emergency rooms in the big cities as well, but also having emergency services available in some of the smaller cities as well. Focusing on that and not just the two big cities, but for the small cities as well. For Estevan in particular getting that MRI machine paid off at St. Paul's (sic) and functional and ready to go on everything like that would be one of my first things I'd be advocating for."
With provincial debt being another point for residents of the province Smith says that the province would be better served with the Saskatchewan NDP in control of the coffer.
"In our view, it's not a revenue issue, it's a management issue and our money has been mismanaged too long by the Sask Party. With their $1 million flights to Dubai and their $8000 car trips to North Battleford and Limousine services everywhere, and all this frivolous spending. We don't believe that there's an issue with the revenue. We just need to cut back on things like that."
Another issue Smith would like to see addressed is smaller crime popping up in many communities.
"The kind of petty crime that's been going on in our downtowns across the province is also in Estevan, unfortunately. So we're going to have our tough-on-crime approach as well as tough-on-crime causes to try to make a dent into this issue that we're dealing with on all this crime that's not being taken care of."
"Scrapping the Marshall Service, hiring 100 new RCMPs for all over the province to try to increase the safety and happiness of our residents that way. There's also going to be the rebate program we're putting in place for security measures for homes, businesses and places of worship where they'll be able to apply for funding for things like security cameras and lights, and like alarm systems and things like that, so I'll be focusing on that.
Smith says he'd also like to see some funding go towards finishing up the Downtown Revitalization Project here in Estevan, with funding for some of the items which were pushed to 2025.
In terms of working with other governments, he believes that he could represent the area's interests well.
"Whoever I was dealing with, I would just fight strongly for the people of Estevan and Big Muddy and causes that they face every day like agricultural issues and like I'd be pushing for like getting more tech and innovation abroad from, like maybe federal contacts and like things like tha and then working with the municipal, but just to mostly fight for the peoples quality of life in Estevan."
Increasing the population would be one of the ways Smith would see the province and Estevan grow in the future.
"I'd like to see Saskatchewan grow in population for sure, it's been too many years where so many of our talented and smart individuals move off for different provinces or even different countries. So I'd like to see more people staying in the population, which I think is capable through things like affordability and like fixing our healthcare and our education system.
"With having more population, I think also it would help strengthen our economy and make our economy actually strong, to the point where we're all like living happily, not caring so much about how am I going to pay this bill, how I'm going to buy these groceries is by cutting the PST on gas on day one and then cutting the PST on groceries. We're immediately going to make it so that it's more affordable for all of us."