It was a busy day Wednesday for Battlefords MLA Herb Cox.
Early in the morning, he and fellow Northwest region MLA Scott Moe (Rosthern-Shellbrook) were in North Battleford for the post-budget breakfast address of Kevin Doherty, put on by the Battlefords Chamber of Commerce.
By the afternoon, however, Cox was back in Regina, where he was in store for an active day in the legislature.
Just one day before, the provincial auditor had released her report, and among the items she zeroed in on was preventing invasive species such as quagga mussels or zebra mussels from entering Saskatchewan.
The report called for a long-term, multi-agency aquatic invasive species strategy. As well, the ministry was urged to determine whether its public education and awareness plans worked, and to complete and test a rapid response plan.
Not surprisingly, opposition critic Cathy Sproule rose to grill Cox on the quagga mussels issue. Here is that exchange as recorded in Hansard.
Ms. Sproule: — Mr. Speaker, yesterday we heard from the auditor about several inadequacies in the environment minister’s strategy to deal with invasive aquatic species. I have to admit, even I was surprised to hear that because, Mr. Speaker, it seems like any time we hear from the environment minister, it’s about quagga mussels or zebra mussels. Of course protecting our lakes and rivers is important. But it’s pretty much the only thing that this minister does, and he is still failing at it.
And, Mr. Speaker, what about their promised tech fund? Five environment ministers later, Mr. Speaker, and still nothing. Nothing. Radio silence. How novel would it be if this environment minister tackled some other issues? We don’t hear him talk about conservation or water strategies or even climate change. But then again, given how the minister has done on his pet project, I don’t have much confidence this government or this minister could come anywhere close to making the progress that is needed.
Still, to the minister: when can the people of Saskatchewan expect to see some serious action taken to protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land we grow our food on?
The Speaker: — I recognize the Minister of Environment.
Hon. Mr. Cox: — Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you for the question. And we certainly do take our Provincial Auditor’s recommendations very seriously, Mr. Speaker, and we thank her for the good work that she does.
And some of these things that we’re doing with regards to combating and preventing aquatic invasive species from entering our province, we’ve initiated $100,000 in new funding for that project. We are working together. As you know, on Monday we announced an interprovincial agreement between ourselves, Manitoba, Alberta, British Columbia and the Yukon to share information, to share expertise, and to share ways in which we’re going to combat keeping these out of our area.
We’re also working with Canadian border services industries, and I think we’re the first province to do that, Mr. Speaker. We’ve trained some Canadian border service staff and they are now relaying information to us. Should they suspect a boat to come into our province with aquatic invasive species on them, we send our decontamination units down there to take care of that. That’s the kind of work that we’re doing, Mr. Speaker.
Later, Cox spoke at length during the budget debate in the legislature that day.
The comments were wide ranging and included remarks about the past provincial election, as well as activities and funding in his own department the environment ministry. Here is some of what Cox had to say as recorded in Hansard.
Hon. Mr. Cox: — … At this time I would also like to just take a moment, if I may, Mr. Speaker, and thank the constituents of the Battlefords constituency for the confidence that they’ve shown in me, and I’m committing to them to continue to work hard as I have in the past.
I would also like to thank my campaign team: my campaign manager and co-manager Gregg and Stacey did an awesome job; Shelley of course; Terri-Lynn and Dennis have been involved in both of my campaigns. And especially I would like to say thanks to my wife, Linda, her sister Susan, and again Terri-Lynn. They started working on this campaign probably in January and February, working on our data entries, and did many, many hours of work in getting that ready long before the campaign started.
And of course to Linda, I would say thanks for everything that she does in keeping me on track — not just during the campaign time — while I’m gone, looking after things back home.
To all of the other great friends and volunteers that I had who worked so hard, your efforts are greatly appreciated. And the day-to-day work in our constituency office, as many of my colleagues, I know, have referenced the great work that our constituency assistants do back in our offices. So I would just like to say thanks to Lil Robinson, my full-time CA [constituency assistant], and as well Gail Heintz, my part-time CA for all the great work that they do while I’m here in Regina.
… Of course of greatest interest right now, I think, what we’ve talked about in many cases is our new Saskatchewan Hospital being built in North Battleford. You know, over the past several years I’ve had the privilege of attending a lot of functions on behalf of our government: a lot of programs, a lot of sod-turnings, those kind of things.
I think back to one of the first things was the water treatment plant expansion for the town of Battleford. The urban connector highway that went through Battleford and greatly enhanced safety going through that town. We built two new Battleford residential services homes in North Battleford, duplexes for our less fortunate people to handle. We were pleased to be able to attend that. I also attended the sod-turning for our first Habitat for Humanity duplex in North Battleford that now houses two very appreciative families, I’m sure. And I think, most recently the sod-turning at our Battlefords Trade and Education Centre with over $4.5 million of funding from our Social Services ministry. That building is now nearing completion, and it’s replacing the 100-year-old building that they’ve been suffering through for the last several years.
But as I said, at the sod-turning for our Saskatchewan Hospital last fall — and this is not to diminish the importance of all these other projects and announcements that we made — but the Sask Hospital in North Battleford was definitely the Godzilla of all announcements. It is going to be a hospital that we’ll be proud of for many, many years, and I was proud to be part of that.
… I’d just like to now, Mr. Speaker, talk a little bit about some things that are going on in my ministry. And I think we’re doing some good work there. We’ve got some great officials that are doing some good work and, contrary to what the critic may think, I don’t think we’re totally inefficient over in that department.
This year the WSA [Water Security Agency] budget, Mr. Speaker, we’re looking at about a $48.5 million in expenses. Our revenue is going to be in that department of $246.7 million.
As you may remember, in the fall of 2015 we passed some new drainage regs because these regulations had not been changed in over 35 years. They were badly in need of updating and some changes that we needed to make. And we did make several changes in the regulations, but I think perhaps one of the most significant is the requirement that all works, whether they’re built prior to 1981 or after 1981, will have to be approved. And if they can’t be approved, if downstream land control can’t be obtained, these works will be closed.
Mr. Speaker, we estimate that here in the province of Saskatchewan there’s probably in the range of 150,000 drainage works in existence today, and perhaps only in the neighbourhood of about 5,000 of those are actually approved. So, Mr. Speaker, you can see that we’ve got a daunting task ahead of us, and that’s why we’ve projected that this is probably going to take us in the range of 10 years to do. And we’ve decided that we’re going to do it in a phased-in approach because this is the only way that we can probably get the job done.
… Mr. Speaker, in spite of the massive drop in our resource revenue that we’ve talked about quite a bit in the House recently here, we are continuing with our commitments on numerous capital investment in infrastructure projects in the province. And this year, those infrastructure projects are going to total approximately $20.83 million. And we’re doing this, Mr. Speaker, from funds in our cash reserves . . . And these are cash reserves that have built up over the years from our water rates. By doing this, Mr. Speaker, we’ve saved the Saskatchewan taxpayers approximately $640,000 a year in annual interest charges.
… Mr. Speaker, we just heard some comments about work being done on environment in this province. I think that we’re doing some good work on environment in this province. And we absolutely remain committed to doing our part in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions in Saskatchewan, and I think we’re seeing some good results. We’re seeing a reduction in our greenhouse gas intensity by 12 per cent over the last few years, while at the same time, Mr. Speaker, our GDP has grown by 24 per cent. So we’re definitely seeing a delinking of those two items. Our total emissions per capita has also decreased in recent times from times under the NDP. It grew by 70 per cent while they were in power at the same time with a stagnating economy, Mr. Speaker.
We have also just seen the largest investment per capita of any jurisdiction in technology and innovation to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Of course here, Mr. Speaker, I’m referring to the Boundary dam 3; the first commercial scale power plant to capture CO2 emissions anywhere in the world. To date, Mr. Speaker, we’ve captured 839 000 tonnes of CO2 gas, and we’re on track to capture 800,000 tonnes in this calendar year.
… Last year, Mr. Speaker, of course we saw a very unprecedented wildfire season here in this province. And I would just like to take a moment to thank and commend all of our very professional and well-trained firefighters in the wildlife management branch. But equally important, Mr. Speaker, was the contribution of First Nations and northern community leaders and the volunteers who were invaluable in their assistance that they provided with fighting our fires in the North and with evacuating nearly 13,000 people from the North. The Red Cross and the Social Services have made a huge task as efficient as it possibly could have been and helped these people to get back into their homes again. We certainly thank them for their efforts.
This year, Mr. Speaker, after what we’ve heard from our northern consultations, we’ve made several changes. And we’ve also increased our budget this year by $18 million in the wildfire branch to $73,887 million. And, Mr. Speaker, as well we provide additional funds, should that be required, to handle an unprecedented fire season again this year.
Mr. Speaker, towards this end we have already undertaken several initiatives prior to the beginning of this fire season: things like purchasing more equipment, fire hoses, sprinklers, pumps, backpacks, those kinds of things. We have also done upgrades to our weather forecasting system. We’ve done a lot of clearing around communities in the area to help increase the fireguards.
But, Mr. Speaker, our most noteworthy investment in this budget is our commitment for the purchase and conversion of the CL-215 water bomber, with a capital investment project of about $14.6 million this year. And we’ve also committed to spend $3.2 million on hangar and apron improvements in our La Ronge fire base. These are all improvements that will certainly contribute to our ability to continue to provide excellent fire protection in the North.
Mr. Speaker, we’ve also committed to investing in the North with a $455,000 increase in our woodland caribou range assessment and range planning department. As well, we are investing 124,000 as start-up money for the new Saskatchewan Outfitters Association commission.
And finally, Mr. Speaker, we are investing $100,000 in our fight to prevent aquatic invasive species from entering our province. Mr. Speaker, you may know that preventing these species, in particular quagga and zebra mussels, from ever entering this province has been of particular interest to me for some time now. I would just like to share a little history on these mussels and what a devastating problem they could be if they ever enter our province. And we do have many pristine lakes, waterways, and streams in this province that need protecting. These species are now getting close to our borders. They’ve been found in Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba, which of course is one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world. And they’ve now also been found in Cedar Lake, which is only 265 km east of Nipawin, so they are getting close.
Mr. Speaker, I won’t go into too many more details on how these species came to our province but I will just say this, that we have increased our funding again. In ’14-15 we had invested about 252,000. In ’15-16 we increased it 264,000 and now we’ve added another 100,000 to that.
But, Mr. Speaker, no matter what we do I still believe that our best defence is education. And we’re going to continue with that, whether it’s billboards, advertising, radio and television — whatever we need to do to convince people to clean, drain, and dry. Let’s face it, we live in a huge province. We cannot possibly stop every person from coming across any roadway so we need to continue our education efforts, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I believe that that pretty much concludes my comments today. I would just like to close by saying this is exactly the kind of budget we need to keep Saskatchewan strong, and I will therefore be supporting the budget motion. And I certainly could never support the amendment. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
