Kenneth Brown
of The Crossroads
Saskatchewan Party leadership candidate Scott Moe says he will have the support of a strong team if he’s elected to be the next premier of Saskatchewan.
There are six candidates running for the Saskatchewan Party leadership. The candidates will be featured in a series of articles over a five-week period leading up to Dec. 8, the deadline for when party memberships must be obtained or renewed in order to vote in the leadership election.
Scott Moe
The candidates are Moe, Tina Beaudry-Mellor, Ken Cheveldayoff, Rob Clarke, Alanna Koch and Gordon Wyant. The candidates are being featured in the order in which the interviews had been conducted either by phone or in person.
While the New Democratic Party of Saskatchewan and Saskatchewan Liberal Party will also hold leadership conventions in 2018, the leadership race for the Saskatchewan Party has greater significance because the winner will become the province’s next premier.
To be eligible to vote in the leadership election, new memberships and membership renewals must be received by the Saskatchewan Party headquarters by no later than Dec. 8 at 5 p.m. or people would not be added to the official voters list. The leadership election takes place on Jan. 27.
Moe, the MLA for Rosthern-Shellbrook, was first elected to the legislature in the 2011 general election and he was re-elected in 2016. He has served as minister of advanced education, minister of environment and minister responsible for the Saskatchewan Water Corporation and Saskatchewan Water Security Agency. Moe has also served as deputy chair of the legislature’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts among other duties.
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An active member of his community, Moe has worked with Shellbrook and District Health Services Project Inc., Shellbrook and District Physician Recruitment Committee and the community’s economic development corporation. He obtained his Bachelor of Science in Agriculture from the University of Saskatchewan and he has volunteered with minor sports associations.
The leadership candidate said his decision to run for leader of the party involved asking himself the same type of questions as when he first decided to run for elected office. He said he talked to his family, asked himself what he had to offer, and discussed the future with colleagues.
He noted that after Premier Brad Wall had announced he was stepping down, he started to discuss the future of Saskatchewan with his legislative colleagues. Their discussion focused on what the province should look like by 2030.
The discussion then focused to what type of leadership is needed within the party, especially if the party continues to form government moving forward. Moe said a group of like-minded began to form, and the group needed someone to step forward. He gained support from a team.
“My leadership style, as we move forward, will be very collaborative in nature,” he explained. “I’m very team focused and that may be why we are so fortunate to have a team of 22 MLAs that are working on our campaign and putting our best foot forward to be successful.”
Moe, who was raised on the farm, said the goal of his team is to achieve success in the leadership race, and then to be successful in the province’s next general election with hopes of forming a fourth Sask. Party majority government.
He noted that people are shaped by all of their experiences in life regardless of whether they were positive or negative. An important item Moe said he has learned from his experiences both in the private and public sectors is the value of collaboration.
The leadership candidate said a strong team brings a range of talents into the mix and it fosters an environment for good discussion, helps to minimize errors and leads to setting the best possible policy on behalf of the province’s residents. He said he believes the Saskatchewan Party has led with a strong team approach for a decade now, and he would hope to apply the same approach for the next decade and beyond.
According to Moe, the role of premier needs a person who is willing to lay it on the line and stand up for the people he or she serves. He said as minister of environment, he has been standing up for Saskatchewan by opposing a federal carbon tax.
He noted that he has three themes of policy initiatives to bring forward, so each theme has a set of policies. He said one theme focuses on continuing “to make every effort to balance the budget” in two to three years.
A second theme of policy initiatives is to continue to support communities and families across the province, and the third theme is to continue to stand with Saskatchewan’s industries and businesses to provide an environment where businesses are able to prosper.
Moe said he has already put forward an initiative to replace the ministry of economy with a ministry solely focused on trade and export, so the initiative would include separating the ministry of energy and resources from the former ministry of economy. As for the urban-rural debate, the candidate said he will focus on Saskatchewan as a whole.
“Our rural areas and our urban areas are linked,” he said, recognizing that the province has an export-based economy and while commodities are often located in rural areas, the people who extract commodities are often residents of urban areas. “We are reliant on one another in rural and urban Saskatchewan.”
He noted that he will be busy travelling around the province to meet with the people. The idea of party renewal does not mean major changes or even the renewal of people, but it means renewing an approach for engaging the people, Moe added.
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