On Friday, August 20, Talon Regent, NDP candidate for Moose Jaw–Lake Centre–Lanigan, invited the public to join him for a ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate the opening of his new campaign office on Main Street in Moose Jaw.
The NDP slogan for this election is ‘Ready for Better,’ and Regent explained to the crowd what that means to him.
“I’m ready for better and my team is ready for better,” Regent said. “It’s a rallying cry for everyone struggling with the status quo.”
A key part of the NDP platform is fighting to put an end to for-profit long term care homes, an issue that has recently affected Regent personally.
“Over 14,000 people died in long term care centres during the pandemic, and my grandmother was one of them,” Regent said. “My family is ready for better. The families of the other 14,000 people that died in long term care; they are ready for better.”
Regent believes that as long there is a for-profit motive in long term care centres across the country, Canadians will continue to lose their lives just for the sake of profit.
“That is absolutely unacceptable to me, it is absolutely unacceptable to New Democrats across the country,” Regent said. “It’s too late for my grandma, but it’s not too late for the other 200,000 Canadian seniors currently living in long term care.”
Regent feels Canadians should be as outraged as he is by the highly inflated costs of prescription medications, another issue the NDP is intent on tackling.
“We’re paying hundreds of times more than the cost to manufacture, to research, to develop these pharmaceuticals. The amount that we’re being gouged is astronomical.”
Regent feels that many of the hospital visits costing Canadian taxpayers so much money each year are entirely preventable, and that ensuring medications are affordable plays a crucial role in keeping Canadians out of hospital. As an example Regent described a man unable to afford his diabetes medication, falling into a diabetic coma, resulting in a single hospital visit that would cost taxpayers $20,000.
“We can just pay for that man’s diabetic medication from today until the day he dies, and it would not amount to $20,000,” Regent said. “We need to be dealing with the root cause of issues in our society, not the symptoms down the road.”
Regent urges voters to do their homework and make sure the party they’re voting for truly represents their core values and the direction they want for their country.
“When people vote for the Conservatives asking nothing in return, they will get nothing in return. The Conservative Party believes they have this province in the bag, and they will never do anything for this province because they take Conservative votes for granted. They will always pander to Quebec, to B.C., to other provinces where they have to fight for the votes.”
