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Mayoral hopefuls debate in Regina and Saskatoon

The two largest cities in Saskatchewan held televised Mayoral debates this week.

Saskatoon

The Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce hosted a televised Mayoral debate in Saskatoon on Tuesday night. Four candidates participated in the debate. Former Mayor Don Atchison, current city councillor and former broadcaster Cynthia Block, engineer Cary Tarasoff, and former MLA Gordon Wyant discussed their ideas and contrasted their plans. Candidate Mike Harder wasn't invited to participate, because the debate features the top four mayoral candidates who have "engaged the chamber throughout the election process."

The debate featured top issues like city responsibilities, rising taxes, and business attraction before moving on to more specific topics like homelessness, the downtown event and entertainment district, and the housing accelerator fund.

At the outset of the debate, Block said, "It would be really great if other orders of government were taking responsibility for their jurisdiction. Unfortunately, I just don't think that the residents of our city want us to squabble about jurisdiction when we're facing very serious issues in our community."

Wyant said the city needs to focus on core services like fire, police and infrastructure, saying, “Those are the things that we need to spend time concentrating on. Getting back to the basics in this city...and I think that as we stray away from that, we lose the ability to properly fund those core services." Wyant, whose slogan is ‘Safe Streets Smart Spending’ also said, “We don't have a revenue problem in the city, we have a spending problem.”

Throughout the debate, it was obvious that Atchison, Wyant, and Tarasoff wanted to tie Block to incumbent Mayor Charlie Clark. Throughout the debate, Block wanted to tie Wyant to the provincial government.

You can re-watch the debate in its entirety here. Block, Wyant, and Atchison will participate in another debate hosted by CBC later today. You can watch here.

Regina

In the capital city of Regina, nine Mayoral hopefuls took the stage in a televised debate.

The debate was hosted by Access TV and sponsored by the Regina Chamber of Commerce. The debate focused on topics such as affordability, Regina's infrastructure, homelessness and more.

Chad Bachynski, Lori Bresciani, Melina Bushenlonga, Bevann Fox, Kevin Kardash, Sandra Masters, Bill Pratt, Shawn Sparvier and Rod Williams participated in the debate. ‘Dancing’ Bob Pearce claims he was not invited, and Nathaniel Hewtin did not attend due to an ongoing arrest warrant.

On the topic of homelessness, councillor Lori Bresciani said it would take a collaborative effort by all levels of government to take on homelessness, and said she’d work with government agencies and community organizations to help Regina’s most vulnerable residents.

When the topic of debate was fiscal management, Mayor Sandra Masters touted her hiring of an internal auditor as well as creating a “very strong” audit and finance committee. Masters also said she’s pushed for the production of quarterly financial statements to hold the administration accountable to budgets. Masters also released her platform for second term earlier this week. Chad Bachynski said Regina needs clear and comprehensive documentation, noting that the city received a B in a 2023 C.D. Howe report on financial transparency. He said there needs to be more public sector accounting standards included in budgetary items.

With nine candidates and multiple questions, the debate was structured so each candidate had a chance to respond. You can re-watch the Regina debate in its entirety here.

The municipal elections will take place on November 13.

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Saskatchewan Party caucus meets in Regina for the first time

Premier Scott Moe has welcomed the new government caucus to Regina following the Saskatchewan Party’s majority government victory earlier this week.

In a post to social media, Moe said, “First meeting today of our new caucus, including 16 brand new Saskatchewan Party MLAs. Many Saskatchewan people voted for a strong economy and a bright future with the Saskatchewan Party. Many others voted for change. Our new government will deliver both.”

Hinting at delivering change likely indicates a dramatic shake-up to the cabinet that will welcome at least ten new faces. Other moves to improve the Saskatchewan Party’s positioning in the wake of siginificant losses may also be forthcoming.

The governing Saskatchewan Party will have 34 elected members, reduced from the 44 members at dissolution.

There is yet to be a confirmation of when the session will begin, but a throne speech is likely to happen in the coming weeks.

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Beck reflects on election campaign

The leader of Saskatchewan’s New Democratic Party appeared on the Evan Bray show yesterday to reflect on her party’s campaign.

Carla Beck will return to the legislature with the largest opposition caucus since 2003 when Brad Wall’s Saskatchewan Party won 28 seats. Vote counting is still being conducted, and will be finalized on November 9, however, the NDP are elected or leading in 27 seats, an increase of 13, and garnered over 182,000 votes, an increase of 8.5% in popular support.

Speaking to Evan Bray, Beck said, “You know, there was a lot of gain in this election. We covered a lot of ground. We saw, not success in every constituency, but we saw growth in every constituency. And it was a campaign that people felt proud of, a campaign that was focused on the things that people had been telling us for the last number of years that were most important to them. So I think the feeling of leaving it all on the field, which is always the goal – I always wanted to make sure that we did everything that we could, that we ran an honest campaign focused on Saskatchewan people. We made huge gains and as I said, this is an important role, the official opposition. We look forward to the next four years, and we’ll just continue to grow.”

Beck said she was disappointed but mostly proud of the results. She also reiterated that she would stand up for Saskatchewan against any federal leader regardless of party, promised to stay focused on issues that matter to Saskatchewan people and deliver for Saskatchewan people.

You can read or listen to the full transcript of the interview here.

More news and info

• Conservatives continue to have a double digit lead over Liberals > Jobs/the economy tops national issue of concern (Nanos)

• Liberals look to move past leadership drama with eye on next campaign (Canadian Press)

• Highschool students try out voting (SaskToday)

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