While recent Saskatchewan NDP nomination news has been based entirely in Regina and Saskatoon, that doesn't mean the party isn't making significant efforts to reach out to rural ridings as well. In fact, there have been a couple of noteworthy efforts to engage the residents of rural Saskatchewan - and both look to have plenty of potential impact as rural voters realize how empty the Sask Party's promises actually are.
First off, there's Judy Junor's rural health care outreach - which started in Leader with a well-attended meeting focused largely on the community's desperate shortage of physicians, with more interested communities sure to follow with their own concerns.
We'll find out before long how many of the ideas generated during the tour find their way into the NDP's policy development process. But the fact that Junor is taking the lead role in raising and discussing rural health care at a time when the Wall government isn't much listening to anybody should make for compelling evidence that rural voters concerned about health care will see their voice best reflected in the NDP.
Meanwhile, Dwain Lingenfelter has taken the lead role in questioning the lack of any immediate response to the agriculture disaster area in the Tisdale area. There, the lack of any substantive response from either the provincial or federal level of government (both of whom have toured the area without apparently planning to do anything in particular) has left the door wide open for the NDP to speak up for the needs of affected farmers - and so far Lingenfelter has taken up the cause.
Of course, there's far more work to be done both in dealing with those two issues, and in engaging more broadly with rural Saskatchewan. But it's certainly a good sign that the NDP is living up to its intention to work toward better representing the needs of the province as a whole - even where the likelihood of that effort flipping seats in 2011 may seem remote now.
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