Battlefords MLA and provincial environment minister Herb Cox is back to being a Saskatchewan Party candidate once again.
His constituency office and parts of his ministry have closed for the duration of the election, and Cox has moved over to his campaign office at 1662-100th Street in North Battleford.
The office held an informal open house event on Wednesday afternoon to launch the campaign. But Cox says the groundwork for this campaign has been underway long before the writ was dropped.
“We’ve been actually quite busy, for the last, well, quite some time, several months, getting out and meeting people on the doorstep and finding out what issues they have and what they think’s important for the province moving forward,” said Cox.
With the election now on and the weather getting warmer, the plan is for Cox and his volunteers to be out over the next several nights campaigning door-to-door.
The general feedback Cox received has been positive, he says.
“I think for the most part people are pretty content here in the Battlefords,” said Cox.
“We haven’t been hit as hard, you know, with the downturn in the oil industry like they do in Estevan, Weyburn, even Lloyd[minster].”
Cox says the region has been “fortunate” to have been insulated from that to some degree.
There has been good feedback on a number of government initiatives as well, Cox indicated.
“We get a lot of favorable comments – we’re building the new [Saskatchewan] Hospital here and that’s important to the residents of the Battlefords.”
Also, there has been “great support for what Premier Wall’s doing, in taking the stance and standing up not only for Saskatchewan but for western Canada with regards to Energy East and some of the other issues around doing something for the people that are unemployed because of the downturn in the oil industry. That’s a big factor here, in Saskatchewan and in Alberta.”
Cox believes management of the economy is the top issue.
“The economy is the number one thing on people’s minds,” he said
He says of Premier Wall that “I definitely think he’s the best one to handle the economy going forward. We’ve had a very frugal government, for the past eight years of our government.”
But it’s also a government that is facing a deficit situation, one they insist will be temporary. Cox points to the drop in revenue as well as dealing with the forest fires last year as the reasons.
“The expenses are basically right on to what we said they were going to be. The problems we were having is because the revenues are down a bit. We can’t control that – that’s a global thing. But we’re going to control expenses and work our way through this.”
On local issues, Cox spoke extensively about The Lighthouse Serving the Battlefords and some of the well-publicized funding problems the shelter has been having. He pledged a solution would be found to keep the shelter open.
"We’re going to see that The Lighthouse stays open. That’s the bottom line,” Cox said.
Cox also spoke about another hot issue – the liquor store privatization that will see 40 existing liquor stores privatized and 12 more created through an RFP process. This privatization will be impacting the Battleford liquor store on 22nd Street.
The move has been blasted by opponents such as the SGEU who’ve referred to the changes as a “closure” and said the province would be losing revenue that could go to hospitals, schools and roads. Cox made it known he thinks there has been a lot of misinformation.
“We’ve seen some, maybe, what should I say, not correct information that’s come out,” said Cox.
“This change that we’re making is going to be revenue-neutral,” Cox said.
He said the changes are going to be “leveling the playing field” and there will be one straight markup for everyone using the system, with the government still making their markup on the liquor the same as now.
“The stores were picked basically on numerous criteria,” said Cox, with the stores impacted being ones “we weren’t making money on anyway,” he said.
“A lot of the facilities are in need of capital renovations, some of them are 30-40 years old, whatever the case may be. We think our money is better spent on hospitals, highways and schools than it is on liquor stores.”
Cox also responded to the criticism of the use of public-private partnerships or P3s. NDP leader Cam Broten pledged on the campaign trail to get rid of SaskBuilds, which the NDP has referred to as the “privatization ministry.”
“I’m not certain what his reasoning is for it,” Cox said of Broten, but “the P3s have been proven, they save us money. And we look at our own local hospital here, over the stretch of that hospital being functional it’s going to save us millions of dollars. Same is true for the Regina bypass that he’s talking about quite often. Other jurisdictions, including the NDP government in Manitoba, are in favor of P3s.”
Of Saskatchewan Hospital, Cox says “we’ve already hired 11 local companies, and historically between 40 and 50 local companies that are employed by the contractor building these P3 projects. It’s just a great way to get infrastructure built and I stand behind it 100 percent.”
As for the rest of the campaign, Cox has pledged to commit to appearing at the Battlefords Chamber of Commerce’s all-candidates meeting on March 22. That is confirmed for Third Avenue United Church between 7 and 9 p.m. that evening.
As well, Cox said it is a “safe assumption” that Premier Brad Wall will make an appearance in the riding at some point during the campaign.
