This has been the first full year in parliament for Yorkton-Melville MP Cathay Wagantall, and she feels good about what the Conservative party has achieved in opposition in that time. She believes they have the “heart and the ear” of Canadians on issues like the economy and federal debt, and has a positive view about what is being accomplished in Ottawa.
One of Wagantall’s focuses has been on seniors, and she believes there is a positive attitude through the house about making a seniors initiative. She believes there is a lot of potential for a consolidated effort to improve home care, long-term care and housing.
“That’s important for my riding, we have a significant senior base here that deserves good care.”
Wagantall has been on the veteran’s affairs committee this year, and one of her focuses has been on the use of Mefloquine, a then-experimental malaria drug and how that is affecting the veterans who used it.
The committee has been figuring out how to care for new veterans and ensuring they get support they need after coming home, especially dealing with PTSD. Wagantall says she has been learning about alternative therapies, like dog therapy and marijuana, and is encouraged by what she sees.
“I’ve been really pleased this year to understand far better the difference between recreational marijuana and what is being used by our veterans. Recently they lowers the amount that can be used to three mg. There’s an understanding that it works as a medication, it’s very different from the recreational... it’s a pain treatment.
“I’m pushing hard to see an actual study that compares what the marijuana does effectively in comparison to pharmaceuticals. It’s true they’re looking at how much it costs for this marijuana... Most of them take about a thousand pills a month when on the pharmaceuticals to deal with the PTSD, so we really need to be comparing to see which is the more effective medication and which is costing more.”
Wagantall’s private member’s bill, which would have made it an additional crime to harm a pregnant woman’s preborn child while committing an offense against that woman. While disappointed the law didn’t pass, Wagantall is encouraged by the response to the proposed legislation.
“Canadians are on side with protecting women when they’re pregnant. It’s a circumstance where someone is taking a child away from you. Public opinion is in support, and I think it shocked other parties to some degree to realize there might be a disconnect there in the future. It was very encouraging, because women who believe in choice see choice as not just this pro-choice extreme view of protecting a woman’s right to have an abortion but also the choice to carry your child to term. That was an exhausting but amazing opportunity for me.”
Wagantall believes one of the issues that is going to be important to the riding is the proposed carbon tax, something she doesn’t believe is going to help, and something she says families have told her they can’t afford.
“Saskatchewan is very environmentally conscious. With all the things we do, we’re pretty carbon-neutral as a province, but it doesn’t mean we can’t do more. But to slap a tax on everything, will not, I believe, help us do that.”
She also wants to push to get infrastructure money flowing to rural communities. She notes that some towns can no longer afford to pave their roads, and large agriculture equipment has meant that roads can no longer handle the equipment on them. She is pushing to see more investment into rural infrastructure, and emphasizes that these problems impact larger cities.
“Rural Canada is pretty left out altogether, agriculture and small communities.”
One of the challenges, Wagantall admits, is getting out into the riding as much as possible, given travel time for Ottawa. She wants to make it a priority to get home and attend events in the Yorkton-Melville riding as much as possible, and while she admits the travel time is immense she believes it’s important to visit people and events in her home riding and be available locally and make it to the many rural towns in the riding.
While it is, by definition, her job to be in opposition and take the government to task, she says that while she doesn’t necessarily agree with the federal government she does believe they have the same ultimate goal, the betterment of the country.
“You start to see very clearly that we all care about Canada, everybody in that house does. But we all have very different ideas of how best to do that, and that’s where the angst comes.”
