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.
Phil Zajac is the leader of the Buffalo Party and will be running in the riding of Estevan-Big Muddy. We caught up with him Tuesday 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?
Well, it's awesome. It's kind of like you're waiting to play the play the football game and you can practice and now we're off and running. Pretty exciting.
What has the reception been on the doorsteps to the parts of your platform already unveiled?
Well, I think people are ready for people to be involved in government that are not politicians. We presented a common sense approach to problems in the province, and when we start talking to people, most of them end up buying a membership and they're just like, this is some really good policy. And the reason that our policy is so good is because I don't write it.
We're a member-driven party, and a lot of people, once they find out that our members submit the policy, then it gets read at a policy and governance convention and then it gets voted on. And if it's half, it becomes policy, so we are not top-down politics.
Our priority is to bring a service attitude back to government, and that's why once people start to learn about what we want to do, we have such a passionate group of members. We've been through three policy and governance conventions and have passed over 100 policies.
So, we're not running on a platform. We're running on actual policy that we can implement day one in the legislature.
Our listeners and readers identified healthcare, affordability, education, and trust in public officials as the main issues – how does your platform address these?
First, for health care, we need to, you know, recently you've heard the other two major parties had announced about another 100 million in additional spending in health care in the next budget. We would put a billion dollars into health care. We need to catch up.
Every hospital, new or old, in the province of Saskatchewan should have an MRI and CT scanner as standard operating and what that will do is it'll alleviate the wait times in Regina and Saskatoon. There's 13000 people waiting for an MRI in the province right now, and that's unacceptable. The mental distress that it puts the people in.
Patients and family members and friends worrying about their family that is ill is horrible. And it's and so the effect of not knowing what needs to be done is it. I've dealt with it myself, and it is very, very difficult when you don't know what's wrong with your family member.
So, we will do that. The other thing that we will do and we've been traveling around, I've been to every doctor retention meeting in the southeast. I've been to emergency room closure meetings in the southeast.
And what we're going to do is we're going to increase pay, which is a problem across the board. And I've heard it from doctors in Regina and in the small towns because we are behind in paying people as well. So, we've already announced that we would pay doctors and nurses a 20 percent raise immediately when they live in the cities and rural doctors and nurses an additional 30 percent of their pay for rural hospitals.
The other thing, too, is we have a plan to open up the medical school seats at the U of S. We'll open it up to 200 per session, and it'll be Sask kids first. Kids that apply to medical school that are from Saskatchewan will get first priority for seating.
If we don't fill them all with Saskatchewan kids, then we will open them up to other provinces. But this is how we'll solve the doctor retention program in the provinces by allowing our kids that want to be doctors and nurses in this province to succeed in university.
We've talked about opening up a new ministry for seniors and veterans' affairs in the province. Seniors and veterans are struggling right now just to make ends meet. So, we need, with a growing and aging population, we need to have a voice for them specifically in the legislature.
They will be tasked with ensuring that veterans and seniors have safe and affordable housing. This is something that as a government we can assist in and need to ensure that they're not just getting by, that they're living a good life. These are people who have served our country and built this province.
We need to do a better job of taking care of them and making sure that they have safe accommodation. For low-income housing, we have some ideas for expanding room availability. Basically, what we would do is we would look at acquiring existing hotels that are in some of the cities that are either a one-story or a two-story.
And all those hotels have a room, they have a bathroom, they have a television, they have a microwave. We would have to put a fridge in, a small stove. But we can easily create 200, 300 new rooms immediately with the construction already completed.
So, we don't have to worry about the build costs running, running overboard. And, you know, they'll have a reception area that we would convert into a into the office area for staff. And I think it takes it takes aim at a problem that doesn't have a solution really quickly.
I just spoke on the on the education forum last week, and what we need to do is bring education back to the basics. The Buffalo Party plans on working to a curriculum that in grade nine and grade 10, just like in university, you have your core classes.
So, every kid will take math, reading, English, science, phys ed, all the basic core classes. And then what we're going to do is we are going to promote trades in the schools. So, we're going to we're going to promote plumbing, electrical, carpentry, automotive.
That way, if kids know that they want to be a mechanic and they have no program for it in high school, what happens is, is we you know, we make them go into calculus classes and chemistry classes that they don't want to take because they know they're not going to ever be in those fields. And it's detrimental to the whole education system. You know, they don't want to be there.
They're forced to take those classes. So, we want to make it more of a university model. And the other thing about school, when you come to school, doesn't matter whether it's public, private, Catholic, when you come to school, you're a student and we will have no political, no political effect on schools.
Simply come to school, be a good student and participate in the community. We've also are working on a zero tolerance for aggressive physical behaviour toward teachers or other children. And I talked about this last week as well, that we're contemplating a simple three-line contract that every kid will sign when they come to school.
And it's not complicated. It'll say, number one, I understand that I cannot touch a teacher. Number two, I understand that I cannot touch another kid.
Number three, I understand that if I break one or two, I will be suspended and I will not be allowed to come back to that school. There's no time where a kid should worry about getting beaten up at school. There's no time where a teacher should be worried that they may have a physical assault.
And it's the same way to teachers who physically assault or touch children. Same thing. They will be suspended and not allowed to come back.
So there has to be some type of enforcement of a rule. And kids are very smart. They understand that if they can get away with it, they will.
And if you simply suspend a kid for 24 hours or 72 hours after they got in a fight at school, it's unacceptable because they'll do it again. And what we look at is if you're at work and you have a bad day, you can't punch another worker and get in a fight because you get fired. And why is it any different in public education or private education?
So, I think it's a good solution. Of course, it needs to be tweaked and finalized, but it works in the States and it can work here.
Number one for trust and accountability - we have a recall policy.
So, if 70 percent of the voting population feels that your MLA is not representing your community and the values that it stands for, they can initiate a recall and the MLA will have to defend themselves in a recall election. This can happen at any time. And no other party has put this forward.
The other policy that we're going to submit in the legislature the first day is that if you are an MLA, you are an appointed member of the government or an employee of the government who is caught enriching themselves financially with information that is within your ministry or within the government. It will be a minimum of a five-year criminal offence. It's time for us to hold people in positions of government and power accountable and make sure that they're operating ethically.
And I think that's the one thing in Saskatchewan that people don't forgive easily is unethical behaviour. And I think that this legislation makes it very clear who is going to operate ethically and who won't. I mean, if you don't vote yes for it, we know who you are.
So, you know, the Buffalo Party is very proud of that. And the other thing that we have been doing is, even without seats in the government, we have been doing the work of the opposition for years now, doing freedom of information requests and fighting battles for people who can't fight them themselves. And that's what the opposition is supposed to do.
And we have been doing it relentlessly.
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've been doing town halls all over the province, spent a lot of time in the north earlier in the year. This portion, I tell everybody, my schedule's fluid. You know, I'm in Regina today.
I'm in Estevan tonight, Estevan tomorrow, then North Battleford on Thursday. So, it's, you know, you try and help candidates as much as you can. But then for the final crunch, you know, I'll be focused on Estevan.
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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.