Estevan had some representation at the SARM Annual Convention as members of the council for the RM of Estevan were in attendance. That includes the reeve for the RM Jason LeBlanc, who sat in on a number of meetings to discuss what was important for the southeast.
Those included meetings with the Crown Investment Corp and even the premier himself on some of the latest from the province.
A big topic according to LeBlanc was the energy sector around Estevan and its future.
"The ground keeps shifting underneath the provincial government's feet, ridiculous federal mandates that just keep changing, and our premier stood up for us, and they're rejuvenating coal. It's within the transition of going to nuclear down the road, but they have put in a stop to some of the green energy initiatives and they are going to make it so that coal is here and it'll be here for a long run."
LeBlanc says that at the meeting there was a lot of support on that for the local unions and fellow RMs.
That'll begin with some new steps on powering up some more units at Boundary Dam to keep coal power running longer.
"They're going into negotiations now to figure out exactly what they're gonna be bringing some units back online and it's baseload power, it's affordable, and it's common sense, and that's what they're doing. The same way we've been doing it for 50 years or 100 years, they're using a common sense approach and it's just very nice to see."
Another topic that dominated the conversation at the meetings was the tariffs coming down from the US and China.
LeBlanc was centered on the Chinese tariffs, which are likely to affect agricultural products produced here in the southeast.
"China is the one that hurt us the most and basically they put a 100 per cent tariff on because the federal government put a tariff on bringing in electric cars and the federal government put on a tariff to protect an industry that doesn't even exist. By doing that, China put a tariff on Canola, which affects in the billions of dollars and it affects every Canadian and that tariff is gonna hurt us far more than anything that the US has put on yet."
LeBlanc was very happy to see all 294 RMs represented in the SARM Convention, which he says is the first time in a while.
There were also a few new faces that he was delighted to see.
"We did notice that this convention was after the last election, a lot of newer, uhm, counselors and staff were brought in and it's a younger base there now, so that was kind of nice to see that more people are starting to take an interest in their in their local RMs and their local politics.
LeBlanc is pleased with the current direction of SARM and hopes that some of the great ideas he saw at the convention go forward in the future.