The campaign is in full swing for the 2024 Saskatchewan provincial election. We are reaching out to the leaders of the parties of the province and will be asking them the same set of questions.
Rose Buscholl is the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Saskatchewan and will be running in the riding of Humboldt-Watrous. We caught up with her on Thursday morning.
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How does it feel to finally be on the official campaign trail after what seems to have been a summer of campaigning?
“It’s about time. People are really, really calling for change, so I’m really happy it’s finally here.”
What has the reception been on the doorsteps to the parts of your platform already unveiled?
“On a whole, very positive. It seems one of the biggest issues is the foreign farmland ownership, which is something that the Sask Party feels is not an election issue. But living in Saskatchewan with a lot of farming families, this is an issue and this is an issue they want addressed.
So on a whole, it's been very positive and we are the only party that's actually talking about that.”
Our listeners and readers identified healthcare, affordability, education, and trust in public officials as the main issues – how does your platform address these?
“We have a very extensive health care platform out. It includes recruitment and education of people within the healthcare field. It's also looking at utilizing existing resources and putting them in places to help make up the shortage.
Education, we all know that education is in shambles. We have got one of the lowest funding per-student ratios in the country. Our reading scores are way down.
The politicians right now in government have been using education as nothing but a political battlefield, which is why we saw an extended strike with teachers because they're not addressing the proper issues that they should be looking at. Instead, they want to look at it as a political speaking point. And as for accountability and trust in officials, I don't blame people.
There's no transparency. All we've seen for the past four years, and especially this year, is scandal after scandal after scandal. There is zero accountability, and that has to change.
If we want to move forward in this province, and we do have the potential to become the envy of every single province in this country, we need to have that transparency and accountability, and we need to start trusting our public officials, which is something that obviously we can't do with our current government.”
As leader of the party, you will be travelling quite a bit during the campaign. Where will you be focusing most of your attention?
“I'm going to try to get to some of the ridings, but I also need to focus on this riding because this is the riding that I represent. I need to let people know that I am the type of person that they can count on, that they can trust, that they can go to and say, hey, we have a problem. How can you help us?
I may not have the answer right there on the spot, but it's something I'm going to work very hard to find it for them, or at least make sure that their voices are heard in the legislature.”
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We will continue to bring you up-to-date coverage of the 2024 Saskatchewan election, leading up to election day on October 28th, when we will have the results as they come in – on-air and online.