Saskatchewan Party leadership candidate Alanna Koch said she wants to see the provincial government be more open, more transparent and more communicative to its citizens.
During her visit to Tisdale Oct. 10, she said she doesn’t want to change what the government is doing – she said the province is on the right path – but how it is doing it.
A good example of that was the province’s recent budget.
“My view was there was some really tough choices made by the government in the budget and those decisions needed to be made. Many of them were necessary,” she said, adding what should have happened was the government should have explained to the public what the options were, the context of which they made the choices and what the implications were.
If the province had done that, some of the decisions made – like adding PST to insurance, something that Koch wants to review – could have been tweaked when the government properly understood the consequences, while other decisions would have been better accepted by the public.
As well as Tisdale, Koch visited Melfort and Nipawin during her tour of the Northeast, all part of a commitment to get out to every constituency in the province.
Koch is taking a leave as the head of the province’s civil service. She has also served as the deputy minister of agriculture, a school board trustee and served on the boards of agricultural corporations. She also farms.
“I’ve had many people encourage me because of the breadth and depth of experience I bring to the table,” she said. “I’ve built my career here, raised my family here, I’ve got a couple of young girls that want to have their future in Saskatchewan and I want to make sure that opportunity is there for them and all our other children and grandchildren in Saskatchewan.”
If chosen as the Sask. Party’s leader, Koch said she’ll find a seat in the legislature as soon as possible – seats in Kindersley and Swift Current should be soon available – so that she could lead the province as premier and prepare for the 2020 election.
“For me, I think winning the next election’s going to be about having that strong team in caucus, making sure that we are able to communicate to the people of Saskatchewan the direction we’re going, what the benefits of that direction are and in that way, we’ll be successful in the 2020 election.”
As for what she will specifically do for the Northeast, Koch said she heard loud and clear that too many of the province’s bureaucrats are in a big-city bubble, unaware of what’s happening locally. She said those civic servants should be encouraged to visit and get a sense of what’s going on.
“I think that’s a really good message for me to hear today and I would need to think on how we can deliver on that. I think it is in making sure that we’re getting out from Regina.”
