This is an election year, and the political parties in the province have been getting their candidates in order. The provincial NDP have just announced their candidate for the Yorkton constituency, Chad Blenkin.
Blenkin is the president of a Yorkton-based management consulting firm, and resides in the city with his son Miguel and wife Mary-Anne Blenkin (nee Maduck).
The decision to run for the NDP, says Blenkin, came from concerns about how the current government's policies were affecting families, both in the area and across the province.
"I decided to run for the NDP after a long period of time watching the government develop long standing policies of progress at all costs, which are affecting families across the province. Most importantly I saw a number of reports over the past year, specifically when you see an increase in food bank usage, 44 per cent of those are children, and local reports that 1,350 families are essentially living in poverty due to lack of affordable housing," Blenkin says.
His history with Enterprise Saskatchewan has also been an influence in Blenkin's choice to run, he says. Blenkin sits on the entrepreneurship council, and says that has been an influence on his views of what needs support in the province.
"I have seen a lack of support for small to medium sized businesses in this province, and just about every proposal that our council put forward was rejected," Blenkin says.
The primary focus of Blenkin's campaign will be ordinary families, he says, and he believes that they are being left behind in the province. As a result, housing in the province will be one of his main issues.
"We've got to get moving on an affordable housing strategy, we've got to take a wholistic approach to that. Obviously I think we need some more social housing, I think we need to work with the private sector to develop some programs and initiatives there to increase the number of homes on the market, because that will level the playing field. I think we need to work with municipalities in possibly taking a look at the cost of releases of land, those have gone up significantly, and that's driving even the higher-margin homes out of the range of some individuals," Blenkin states.
Another focus for Blenkin will be healthcare in the province, and he believes that something needs to be done to increase the numbers of physicians in the province and especially in the Sunrise Health Region.
"The Yorkton region would qualify as second worst in the country [after northern Saskatchewan], we have six doctors for every ten thousand patients, and only one doctor that's accepting patients at the current time. There's a lack of a cardiologist," Blenkin says.
He also says some patients are having difficulty finding a physician, and that people are unable to go outside the region for health care. He believes that there needs to be a better recruitment strategy for physicians in the province.
"Physicians are looking for fair pay, but I think we need to look at the wholistic approach with that... Workers are more mobile than they have ever been before, you can go and work anywhere you want in the world... People are selecting where they work based on the quality of life in their environment, not necessarily based on the pay or the organization. Secondly, we have to get more aggressive when it comes to recruiting physicians, we have to work with physicians to get a better understanding of what would attract, because they are the ones who would are going to help being more physicians here. We've got to bring fair contracts to the ones that are being educated. Bringing more seats to the U of S is one part of the equation, but when you're asking them to graduate with student loans of $100,000 plus and they're making $40,000 a year, and housing prices are on the increase, it tightens things up for them. Where they plant their seeds, that's where they're going to stay," Blenkin states.
The campaign will be hard fought, but Belkin believes that his background will put him at an advantage in the coming campaign.
