Premier Scott Moe was in Moose Jaw on Thursday night, speaking to approximately 400 Saskatchewan Party supporters at the Premier’s Dinner which took place at the Moose Jaw Events Centre. 

A wide variety of topics were covered during his 45-minute speech. 

One of his primary focuses was the continued growth experienced by Saskatchewan, and the adjustments and investments needed to accommodate the growing number of people in the province. 

“In this province, the challenges we face most certainly come from growing communities and they are challenges we face due to the growth we have, population growth, we see industries that are investing, it’s infrastructure growth. These challenges, I would say that we welcome those challenges in our community.” 

Moe also drew attention to the investments in education that have been made. 

“We recently announced a number of updated funding initiatives, one of them being an updated funding model to address the pressures that our school divisions, our schools and our classrooms and our teachers are seeing due to enrollment growth ... it was called the Specialized Support Classroom Pilot Program, it was established a couple of months ago.”  

He also spoke about his recent visit to AE Peacock Collegiate, which is one of the 15 schools that are part of a program to expand mental health support for students. The focus being resilience while also promoting the early identification and intervention in mental health concerns. 

Investments into healthcare and the hiring and retention of healthcare workers were also discussed. 

“We are today actively recruiting and hiring healthcare professionals into our system. In fact, in just the last year there were just under 1100 nurses, 1097 nurses hired by the Saskatchewan Health Authority.” 

He stated that the process for bringing healthcare workers into Saskatchewan has been streamlined. With a recent recruitment mission in the Philippines bringing in 225 workers, of which 135 are certified and working in Saskatchewan’s healthcare system. 

Saskatchewan’s resource and energy sectors were brought up by the Premier, Moose Jaw’s Gibson refinery was mentioned specifically. 

“Gibsons invested millions of dollars, they were producing 17,017 barrels per day. They expanded that production to 22,000 barrels per day. 

They did that without one pound of additional carbon being emitted. So, their investment was not only in more production, it was in more sustainable and efficient production, reducing their carbon content per barrel of oil by 20 to 25 per cent. That’s something we can be proud of in this province.” 

The expansion of Saskatchewan’s exports was also addressed.  

“Of the exports that go to India, 40 per cent of those exports come from this province, up 71 percent this past year.” 

He also spoke about the recently opened trade office in Vietnam. 

“The value of our agrifood exports, just our agrifood exports to Vietnam, has increased by 227% since we opened that office” 

Premier Moe’s Speech concluded with the following statement: 

“Do you want to be the place of certainty? Do you want to be the place of continued growth, growth that allows us as a government to join with other levels of government and to invest, invest in the people that live in Saskatchewan to build on the successes and the growth that we have collectively achieved in the last 17 years? Or and do we want to all work together to not only protect that growth for our communities and for our children, but to build on it?”