What will Saskatchewan be when it grows up?
We're at 109 now, which means we are teenagers in country years. We're just getting started.
Where we see our province going lately, doesn't make us feel comfortable.
We did manage to leave the proverbial protective nest provided by the CCF-NDP who were quite eager to tell us what to do, how we were going to do it and when we were going to do it. And maybe, when we were the children of the Canadian confederation, we needed that hovering assistance.
We are growing up under the not-as-protective right wing Sask Party, who are out to prove a point that this province is every bit as good as all the other provinces. We are no longer "just the little guys from little Saskatchewan."
It seems that the time is ripe for this province's senior administrations at the political, educational, social and industrial levels to start investing in its people.
We have been pretty well educated in the past and we do have thousands of very talented people who are willing to make us competitive. But we're not there yet.
By continuing to place 90 per cent of our time, talent and dollars into commodities and resources, we are cheating ourselves.
Senior governments should surely realize that when the digging and drilling nears an end, we'll have a whole lot of holes in the ground and nothing to show for it if we don't start doing something about the future.
We have a background in taking care of one another, yet we are allowing a few very wealthy individuals and corporations to benefit the most from our resources. These are people, for the most part, who don't even live in Saskatchewan and have no intention of ever living here. Or if they do, it's only temporary. They show up on occasion because they have a corporate presence here, but they have no intention of sharing the big wealth.
That's not how to build a proud province.
We need to ensure that our wealth gets spread more equitably, and that means shared with those who deserve it, not just because they happen to live here.
We need to learn how to be competitive. We need to learn how to put our elbows up in the corner. In other words, we no longer need to feel intimidated.
To continue with the hockey metaphor, let's just say we have always been good team players, but now we have a balanced lineup. Not only do we still have the third and fourth line grinders and penalty killers, we have the talented goal scorers and playmakers who need to be unleashed to do a little fancy corporate stick handling. We see flashes of brilliance in this sector, but we need more and that's where the business grooming comes in. Unfortunately there aren't a lot of corporate mentors out there on the Saskatchewan landscape. They've been exported along with the resources.
It's time for Saskatchewan to pay attention and build some cache in our business schools, universities and trade schools. It's time to groom a generation of brighter lights who know how to build wealth, not just spend it. We need to quit shipping people and profits out of Saskatchewan and we can only do that by making this province a destination point, not a province that's content to be taken advantage of at the corporate levels.
We're better than that.
