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Standing at the edge of Regina, near the highway bypass and in front of a line of rail cars, Sask. NDP leader Carla Beck laid out her party’s plan for the economies of both Saskatchewan and Canada.
“The past several months clearly should have been a wake-up call for all of us,” said Beck.
She explained the country needs to build out an economic future in Canada’s control, and not be so reliant on the U.S. Beck spoke as the possibility of tariffs on Canadian goods heading into the U.S. loomed just days away.
The plan includes four points, which Beck said both provincial governments and the federal government should take action on.
The first is expanding rail, including short-line rail capacity in Saskatchewan. Beck said better capacity and reliability will ensure the movement of agricultural and mining products to international markets.
In the plan, the NDP also wants a pipeline to be built to the east coast.
“This is something that will get oil and gas off rail and onto new markets in Europe and beyond,” said Beck.
She said the Trans-Canada Highway should be twinned from coast-to-coast, so truckers can move their goods across Canada without having to go into the U.S.
The NDP also called on more interprovincial electricity transmission lines to be built running East, West, North and South.
“We should be repairing and expanding electrical transmission into Alberta and Manitoba to sell power generated in Saskatchewan. Doing this will provide us a massive economic boost, and it will also keep power rate stable for us, for our neighbours, and provide energy security for Canada,” explained Aleana Young, the NDP’s SaskPower, and Jobs and Economy critic.
Young said the federal government should foot the bill for this build-out, pointing out that the Government of Canada has paid for power plants in other provinces in the past.
Beck couldn’t say how much all this infrastructure would cost, just saying the cost of not doing it is incredible.
Beck said, as Canada’s economy is being held hostage by the American administration, this kind of investment is needed.
“In a crisis we need leaders to step up, we need to work together, and we need to get things done and done in a hurry,” Beck explained.
She said, if there’s a silver lining to the situation, it’s that people have been uniting around Canada’s economy. She called the NDP’s plan a nation-building exercise.