(L to R: Al Didur – ASR Government Relations Chair, Bill Madder – ASR EVP, Rhonda Toth - ASR Vice President, Premier Brad Wall, Gary Busch – ASR President, David Salvatore – CREA Director of External Relations)
ASR Government Relations Days a Big Success
Government Relations Days held November 16th and 17th in Regina was a very successful event with over 50 ASR members in attendance.
The event kicked off with the popular “Media Panel” session consisting of Stefani Langenegger from CBC Saskatchewan, Angela Hall from the Regina Leader Post and Gerry Klein from the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix. The panel was ably moderated by Local media personality John Gormley who also served as our keynote speaker and gave a very compelling presentation entitled “Update on the Saskatchewan Advantage: Canada’s Greatest Province Continues the Momentum”.
Workshops on our current issues of Affordable Housing and Tax Competitiveness followed and David Salvatore from CREA’s Federal Affairs Department did a presentation on “Effective Advocacy”. David and former Finance Minister Harry Van Mulligen did a role play of an MLA meeting to give attendees an idea of how to present our issues and how an MLA might respond.
The MLA Reception was held on Tuesday evening and we had our best attendance ever with over 30 MLAs joining the group. Among those in attendance were several Cabinet Ministers from the Government side and some prominent critics from the Opposition. The highlight of the night was when Premier Wall took some time from his extremely hectic schedule to join us.
On Wednesday morning we had a quick briefing on our Tax Competitiveness proposal from Mr. Jack Vicq, FCA then everyone went off to their meetings with MLAs. We had meetings scheduled with 25 MLAs and have received 19 MLA visit reports so far. Based on these reports it appears our messages were well received.
Several of our members attended Question Period on Wednesday afternoon and the ASR was welcomed to the Legislature by NDP House Leader Len Taylor and also by Municipal Affairs Minister Darryl Hickie.
