Reform party veteran Garry Breitkreuz looks forward to Oct. 14 as the potential next great step in what he calls his long journey.
A Conservative majority government, if it happens, will allow the party to get on with doing some of the things Breitkreuz and 51 other prairie populists went to Ottawa 15 years ago to accomplish. 
“If we got a majority, I think the politicians would be able to play fewer games in the Commons,” he said Sept. 26 as public opinion polls showed the Conservative party with a substantial lead nationally half way through the election campaign.
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“I think we’ll be able to focus more on the issues that need to be dealt with.”
For Breitkreuz, a former teacher and high school principal, those issues include toughening up the justice system, ending the long gun registry and removing the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly.
“These are some of the issues my constituents bring up all the time,” he said. “There is a huge concern in my riding about crime and the youth justice system. They want to see courts back up the work of the court and end the revolving door system through the prisons.”
Over the past 15 years, Breitkreuz has been one of the most prominent Reform-Alliance-Conservative faces on the law and order issue.
He has campaigned tirelessly to end the long gun registry, compiling data on cost overruns, asking questions in Parliament and working behind the scenes to try to build alliances on the issue.
“You can be sure when we get back to Ottawa, I will get right to work to try to get that legislation (abolishing the registry) before the House and to a vote ASAP,” he said.
In his largely rural Yorkton-Melville riding, Breitkreuz regularly racks up large majorities, capturing more than 62 percent of the vote in 2006.
Still, when he went to Ottawa on the prairie Reform wave in 1993 that helped destroy the Progressive Conservative party in Saskatchewan, he never imagined it would take more than a decade to move to the government side of the Commons.
“It is different campaigning as part of the government, that’s for sure,” he said. “People naturally want to ask about what we have done and what we haven’t done. I do get questions about why we didn’t move on some of the things we have been promising.”
His message is to be patient. He has been.
“It has been a long march, a long journey, much longer than I ever imagined,” he said.
“I thought the march would be over long before this. When people ask why we haven’t abolished the gun registry or given farmers marketing choice, I tell them about the dynamic of a minority Parliament. Elect us and we’ll move on these issues.”
