She is a farm partner and mother of four. She drives 50 kilometres twice a day from her farm home in Laura, Sask., to a job in the city. Now Nettie Wiebe wants to sit in the Saskatchewan premier’s chair.
Wiebe dismissed concerns that she has no political experience. She said she counts her elections as women’s president of the
National Farmers Union from 1989 to 1994 and as NFU president from 1995-1999 as political experience.
She has been a longtime NDP member, serving on the provincial council, as well as constituency executives both provincially and federally.
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She has also served in several groups dealing with globalization, peasants, the environment and Third World issues. She works as a professor for the United Church theological college at the University of Saskatchewan.
She told a news conference that it would be useful to have someone around the cabinet table who has “a deep and clear experience of rural life.” She said rural people are in distress over the “de-development” of their towns and farms.
For agriculture, Wiebe said she would push for regulations protecting the environment and workers’ rights, clear definitions of aid for family farms, and significant limits on rail-line abandonment. She urged collective action to counter the tearing down of public infrastructure.
“Public policy must be made to reflect who we are and how we can best live together here in Saskatchewan. We are interdependent and that means that we must work more carefully at ensuring that all of us who live here have a hand in shaping the key components of our society – young people, students, aboriginal peoples, seniors, women, rural, as well as urban people.”
