Humboldt’s MLA is taking a new role in the provincial cabinet.
Donna Harpauer is now the Minister of Government Relations and Minister responsible for First Nations, Métis and Northern Affairs. The move was announced Aug. 23.
“I am excited about it and I’m looking forward to getting started and meeting the respective stakeholders in this particular portfolio,” she said. “I think it’s going to be a great learning curve and a great experience. I’m truly honoured to be given this responsibility."
Harpauer was previously the Minister of Social Services.
“There’s always mixed feelings when you have a change because, of course, there’s things that you’re working on in the portfolio you have and you have to let that go and start learning a new one,” she said. “The exciting thing is I love learning a new portfolio and meeting the different people in that portfolio.”
She added she’ll miss the people in the Ministry of Social Services she was working with.
As the Minister of Government Relations, Harpauer will be working with cities, towns, villages and RMs. She said Premier Brad Wall hasn’t particiularly given her an issue to focus on.
“It is a matter of finding out what their priorities are,” she said.
She has attended the conferences of the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association and the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities as a MLA and has been told local government are facing pressuring with infrastructure.
“We hear often about aging sewer and water lines in our communities across the province, so I think I will be working with our Canadian government on shared programming,” she said.
The other part of her cabinet position focuses on the Aboriginals of the province.
“On the First Nations front I had been able to, with my portfolio of education as well as the portfolio I’ve held with social services, have been able to build some relationships with First Nations and I hope to expand on that,” she said. “[This new portfolio] will be continuing work that I’ve already been working on and expanding into the actual, on the ground municipal level.”
The province has announced that it’s embarking on a program of transformational change that will allow it to provide services while spending less money. Harpauer said her ministry won’t be too involved in transformational change.
“I think you’re going to find more work done in education, healthcare, social services, which are the larger human services delivery, more so than you will in municipalities.”
In terms of the province’s 296 RMs, Harpauer said there were informal conversations among those MLAs with previous RM experience about encouraging mergers where it makes sense, a soft line compared to the government’s announcement of a panel tasked with reducing the number of health regions in the province.
