CARROT RIVER VALLEY — Rod McCorriston said that if he is elected as MLA for Carrot River Valley, his focus would include healthcare, education, transportation and building infrastructure using Saskatchewan workers.
McCorriston, who's running for the NDP, was born and raised in Tisdale, and has spent the last 10 years serving as the director for labour relations for the Saskatchewan Government General Employees Union.
In addition, he has spent over 20 years with the Department of Highways and Transportation helping to co-ordinate highway maintenance across Saskatchewan.
“My goals and platform is obviously to represent the citizens and the voters of Carrot River Valley with strong representation,” McCorriston said.
“I’m committed to delivering the same type of hard work and commitment into representing Carrot River Valley.”
McCorriston said one issue that is important to the NDP is upgrading infrastructure to communities throughout Saskatchewan.
“The issues that are important to the NDP are highlighted in regards to what’s happened just recently in Tisdale, we had the fiber optics upgraded in the town and that’s a good thing to upgrade infrastructure.”
He said that the disappointing aspect of it is that the plates on the vehicles were all from Alberta – something that he would work to change if elected.
“We want to generate economic activity by having our infrastructure updated, but using Saskatchewan companies and Saskatchewan workers to do this work. We think that will create some economic activity that is sorely needed in rural Saskatchewan, and it would create work for our workers.”
Another thing McCorriston said he would fight for is a mode of accessible transportation to and from rural communities to the major cities in the province.
“We will be returning the STC (Saskatchewan Transportation Company) in some form,” he said.
“I’m touting a public, private partnership where we have feeder vans feed the larger centres, and that’s where the larger buses would travel into the cities on a daily basis, and then travel to rural Saskatchewan – and the feeder vans would take them to their home locations.”
If elected, McCorriston said he plans to return funding to the education sector, reduce class sizes and ensure teachers and assistants have the materials they need.
“When I used to go to school, there wasn’t the fundraising that was required for the supplies that was needed in the schools, or for the extracurricular activities. Those were already funded by taxpayers’ dollars. So we see the chronic underfunding of the education is causing our education system to not be the highest quality.”
In the sector of healthcare, McCorriston said he is committed to returning the homecare sector.
“We are going to get back to what homecare was when it was first implemented,” McCorriston said.
“I think if they had more staff in the homecare, that this stuff could be used and it would allow people to stay in their homes longer. We’re going to have a crisis on our hands in terms of long-term care. There is going to be the baby boomers in 10 to 15 years who are going to need these long-term care homes so we need to get ready for that crisis.”
With his plans, McCorriston said this will require a deficit – but now is the appropriate time for that to happen.
“People are hurting and we have a pandemic that we need to spend a little bit of money to keep the economy rolling and create economic activity to grow ourselves out of this mess,” McCorriston said.
“This government has left us with $26 billion in debt, and that’s not even counting the debt load in the crowns.”
