Q: Tell us a bit about yourself and why you decided to run in this provincial election?
A: I'm currently farming with my oldest son in the Davidson area. Prior to that, I've had experience as a recreation director for the towns of Davidson and Biggar. I got my Local Government Administration from the University of Regina back at that point in time.
My dad needed help farming, and I moved back to the farm and helped him to be able to manage the family the way my wife and I wanted to.
I worked in the oil patch to help subsidize my farming habits for about 10 years. Then as my family grew, I took a job at the potash mines and worked there for about 10 years until I was able to farm full time with my oldest son.
The reason I ran for the Sask United Party? I think the Sask Party was leaving me behind on the way I am with my conservative values. I watched the Sask United Party come together, and there was a group of people in there that I liked. They were asking the same kind of questions I was. After meeting Jon Hromek, the leader, it made it pretty easy for me to put my name on the ballot to want to work with him and see how we could do.
Q: What do you feel are the pressing issues for your constituency this election?
A: The pressing issues are pretty well the top three that the media have talked about in the past - affordability, education and health.
Probably the number one thing that I run into at the doors - people interested in the party, but people afraid of vote splitting. I spend a lot of time door knocking and vote splitting would be the number one thing I do run into.
Q: What’s your stance when it comes to housing in the province?
A: A lot of it with our party, what we're talking about is, is to stop and audit.
When you look at the amount of money that's being spent, and the deficits that we've increased, money seems to be not quite getting to where it needs to be. Housing is a more of a regional thing - It's probably more concern in the cities than it is in rural.
As far as an exact plan for housing, the biggest one is to audit and just see where all funds are going and start there with the fundamentals of management.
Q: What are your thoughts on healthcare?
A: Healthcare as far as our party, again, with auditing what's going on there?
Our party also believes in a universal public-private healthcare, where we would encourage your help where doctors, nurse practitioners, and people in that run their own clinics outside of the government bureaucracy - they look after their own buildings and provide their service.
Everyone, because it's universal, would have their choice to where they would go. That system isn't something we've invented. It's something that the Scandinavian countries, a lot of them use - some countries in Europe also use it, where the government’s still the underwriter, and we just give that entrepreneurial spirit to the health profession.
Q: What do you think needs to be done about policing and public safety?
A: That one is a hard one to sit down and exactly find the problem, but the way I personally see it is to hire more police officers.
You also need to have a whole idea change as far as what the problem is. If you're going to have more police, the catch and release doesn't work, which means you need more prosecutors, more judges, and sadly to say, it's possible you need more jails because we don't have places to help people get out of the problems that they're in.
The biggest reason people cause crime is poverty, mental health and addiction, and those are ones you have to look at.
Q: What’s the Sask United Party’s stance when it comes to the economy?
A: The success of Saskatchewan, from the history of time, has been through small and medium business.
For me personally, when I look at it and you think that the annual budget for the provincial government’s $20 billion, that breaks down to roughly $16,500 you're trusting your government to manage for yourself. A family of five, that's north of $80,000 you're trusting your government to manage for you. Is it being managed properly?
If you really want to go deep into it add the debt that's doubled in the last little while. Then you could put all those numbers together - It's just a simple as I'm saying it - as a family of five, you’re trusting your government to manage over $200,000 for you. Management is huge, and having the right people to be able to manage needs to happen.