Rural crime, carbon tax on SARM agenda
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe is expected to make announcements related to agricultural water management and local infrastructure in his speech to the association representing the province’s almost-300 rural municipalities this week.
He is also likely to touch on government bills aimed at reducing crime in rural areas — a legislative priority for his government — and call on Ottawa to strengthen its international trade advocacy efforts, particularly with China and the United States.
Moe is also expected to take the opportunity to talk up the forthcoming provincial budget in front of a friendly audience when he addresses around 2,000 Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) convention delegates on Wednesday.
Finance Minister Donna Harpauer is scheduled to deliver a “maintain and sustain” budget in Regina on March 20. The province has made clear it will be balanced and “tight,” with few raises for groups other than municipalities.
In addition to Moe’s speech and a “bear pit” — a perennial highlight during which delegates can grill the entire provincial cabinet — SARM’S three-day convention will include speeches from three federal cabinet ministers, including Ralph Goodale.
SARM president Ray Orb said the April 1 introduction of the federal government’s carbon pricing plan and Bill C-69, a controversial planned overhaul of the environmental approval process for energy projects, are likely to be top of mind among delegates next week.
The association has been pushing for action on what some have characterized as “out of control” rural crime — according to the Saskatchewan RCMP it dropped three per cent in 2017 — for several years, and Orb said it remains high on the agenda. While new measures from the provincial government have given rural residents some peace of mind, many are still waiting for the government to pass a bill that would reverse the current onus on landowners to “post” their land if they don’t want hunters venturing onto it, he said.
“I think there is (a sense) that what the province has done is helping and will continue to help,” he said, adding that SARM wants to work with Innovation Saskatchewan to develop a list for hunters showing exactly which landowners will welcome their presence once the law passes.
Delegates are also expected to debate on 24 resolutions covering a wide range of topics, from the establishment of a resolutions committee and the expansion of SARM’S legal department to lobbying for tighter stray animal rules and higher road maintenance agreement rates.
One of the resolutions calls on the association to urge the province to develop expanded regulations to allow the government to remove municipal council members if presented with evidence of “repeated code of ethics violations.”
Another, titled Survival of Rural Saskatchewan, calls for the association to lobby the government to review environment, labour and building regulations introduced at great cost “under the guise of environmental protection or public safety.”
Put forward by the R.M. of Piapot, the resolution states that those regulations are “in many cases not affordable for rural communities and it is being suggested that the villages join with the local rural municipalities to access a larger taxation base.”
John Wagner, the southwest Saskatchewan rural municipality’s reeve, said suggestions that amalgamation will solve the problem won’t help, and that the government should include SARM and others familiar with the burden in a review.