The new deputy leader of the Canadian Alliance decided to run in the 2000 federal election because she was tired of watching Saskatchewan farm kids leave the farm and the province.
In particular, elk and bison farmer Carol Skelton from Harris, Sask., was upset that her own three children were giving up on farming.
“What got me into politics is what I saw happening in rural Saskatchewan,” she said in a June 25 interview from her Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar constituency, which she won by 68 votes over the sitting NDP MP.
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“When you are a parent on the farm, you want your kids to carry on and that would have been the fourth generation for us but it isn’t going to happen.”
Two of her three children tried to farm but found it was not viable.
“In a province like Saskatchewan, that is just not right,” said Skelton. “I couldn’t stand on the sidelines. I decided I had to try to do something about that.”
Her June 23 appointment as deputy Alliance leader – a position held in the past by such party veterans and luminaries as Deborah Grey and Grant Hill – was a surprise. Since arriving on Parliament Hill more than two years ago, Skelton has been active but not one of the party’s senior critics.
She most recently has been deputy health critic and deputy House leader, with added responsibilities for reviewing party policy on natural health programs and national blood screening for West Nile virus. Before election to Parliament, she worked with Canadian Blood Services in her area, as well as farming.
Skelton and her husband run a 2,400-acre farm that includes bison, elk, 500 acres of grain and the remainder in alfalfa and pasture.
When she received the call from leader Stephen Harper, Skelton said she was surprised.
“I said to him, ‘do you think I can do this?’ He said he thought I could do a good job.”
Skelton laughs that perhaps as the oldest woman in the caucus at 57, a grandmother and a farmer, the leader thought she would bring a different perspective to national issues.
In the 1980s, she had been active in the Progressive Conservative party but dropped out of politics during the Brian Mulroney years. Before her plunge into federal electoral politics, her main political involvement was to be a leader in the provincial constituency association for Saskatchewan Party leader Elwin Hermanson.
Three years ago, the Alliance riding association asked her to try to win the seat west of Saskatoon.
“I decided that if politics worked properly, it could help allow agriculture to work properly,” she said.
“As a mother who’s lost children from the farm, I thought I had to try to help stop that. Like many parents, I’ve lain awake many nights worrying about our family and our community.”
