The Saskatchewan Party government’s Speech from the Throne included three new initiatives intended to improve health care for rural residents of the province.

The throne speech, read by Lieutenant-Governor Vaughn Solomon Schofield to the legislature Oct. 25, detailed a plan to deal with the challenges of growth in rural areas of Saskatchewan in terms of increased physician recruitment and retention, an improvement to the availability of emergency services and the need to put to work all health care practitioners to the best of their abilities and expertise.

Randy Weekes, minister responsible for rural and remote health, said the plan will include a loan forgiveness program that will reward physicians and nurse practitioners to accept work in rural areas on a five-year-term, the development of collaborative emergency centres in different primary health care sites and a regional locum pool of physicians for each health care region.

Weekes said the loan forgiveness package for physicians and nurse practitioners is still in the works, but as of now it will give up to $120,000 to physicians and $20,000 to registered nurses or nurse practitioners if they agree to work for five years in rural Saskatchewan. He said the recruitment and replacement of doctors is an “ongoing challenge” and this package will help, noting the province currently has a shortfall of 120 needed physicians.

The second initiative announced in the throne speech involved the innovation of collaborative emergency centres (CEC) as another form of primary health care, which will reduce the workload of rural physicians while also using the expertise of registered nurses and emergency medical personnel.

“It provides emergency care in a health care facility by a registered nurse and a paramedic with oversight by a physician by telephone or e-health and so this takes the stress off physicians to provide 24/7 emergency care,” said Weekes. “The other part of a collaborative emergency centre is patients would receive the next day appointment in a clinic so it covers off the quality of life of physicians, which is one of the issues out in rural Saskatchewan, this is not on-call 24/7.”

Weekes said the CEC is based on innovation sites set up by Nova Scotia, which he along with the CEO of the Saskatchewan Medical Association (SMA) and a few representatives of various health regions toured this summer. He said this way of providing primary health care in Nova Scotia has seen a drop of “80 per cent” of calls going to emergencies in their province, with the calls instead going to non-emergency appointments.

The third part of their plan would see a region-based locum pool of doctors that could fill in for family physicians in the province on a longer-term basis if these physicians need to be away for a lengthy period of time. The province is currently only served by a short-term replacement program of physicians by a locum pool operated through the SMA.

To read more please see the November 12 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

Carved in stone on Davidson’s cenotaph are names of nearly century-old French battlefields: Ypres, Vimy,  Somme, and Cambrai.

Also carved into the monument are the names of Davidson’s soldiers who died in these battles.

Each year, on Nov. 11, the names of Davidson’s casualties of the First and Second World Wars are read aloud during Remembrance Day services.

“We will remember them,” the community proclaims.

The people of France also remember these casualties of the Western Front.

“Be assured that the sons your village left in our soil are well loved and their graves well cared for. Their families are dear to our hearts. They did not sacrifice in vain,” Etienne Robin, Mayor of Mézériat, wrote in a letter to the Town of Davidson.

“This letter is a modest homage from us to the long lost soldiers of Davidson who fought for the freedom of so many French people they did not even know and would never know,” Robin states.

Robin was compelled to write the letter to the Town of Davidson after a conversation with his childhood friend Claude Weil.

Weil, who grew up in France, now lives in Saskatoon and works at the Saskatchewan Research Council. During a drive to Regina, Weil stopped in Davidson intending to do some shopping at Home Hardware.

He noticed the cenotaph on main street.

Weil was appalled by the number of casualties Davidson suffered on the Western Front.

He wanted Davidson to know that the people of France appreciate the sacrifice.

“I think it left an imprint on the psyche of French people that free-spirited Canadians, country building people, would leave a country that was theirs to go fight for another land,” Weil said during an interview Wednesday. “It’s extremely remembered.”

Weil, who served three years in Israel in the Middle Eastern conflict, said conflict is something all of us have knowledge of. He lost three great uncles in the First World War and he was an eight-year-old boy when France was still at war in Algeria. He recalls as a schoolboy, the entire school would march with First and Second World War veterans to the cenotaph of his French village. He said World War II veterans were still relatively young and people were still so sad.

France, which had military conscription until a few years ago, understands.

“The generations are still very much aware of what war does,” Weil said.

“I respect and I have an appreciation for Canadians who came from so far away, who didn’t know what they were getting into. I started to look at the numbers and the casualty numbers were very high in Davidson and I was somewhat disturbed,” Weil said.

To read more please see the Nov. 5 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

PFRA patrons groups will have the opportunity to lease their pastures from the province instead of having to purchase them, according to the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture.

Lyle Stewart, Minister of Agriculture, said the first 10 federal community pastures to be transitioned from the province to patrons groups for the 2014-grazing season would have a lease option available if the groups are not able to purchase the land. He said the province would own the pastures in this instance and patrons groups would hold the lease to operate the pastures.

“We’re trying to be as encouraging as possible to patrons groups to consider purchase because we think it’s in the long-term interest,” said Stewart.

The Saskatchewan Government is working with Farm Credit Canada to develop financing options for patrons groups interested in purchasing their pastures.

“The more we ran the numbers ourselves, it appears that some of the pastures won’t work real well for a sale and may necessitate leasing,” he said. “It was always an option, leasing was, but we find…sales probably are not going to work for every instance.”

The first 10 community pastures to be divested by the federal government in Saskatchewan include: Estevan-Cambria; Excel; Fairview; Ituna-Bon Accord; Keywest; Lone Tree; Newcombe; Park; Wolverine and McCraney. In all, 62 pastures operated under the Community Pastures Program in Saskatchewan will be transferred to the province and patron-controlled operation by 2018.

The pastures will continue to be managed by federal government PFRA (Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration) staff during the 2013-grazing season.

Stewart said these first 10 were chosen due to interest from patrons advisory committees from these pastures. He said these groups have expressed interest in “going early” in the transition process, which made them a priority.

“There are also factors which have a negative influence on moving (some) pastures to the front of the list and those are things like a lot of oil and gas activity that has to be transferred into the provincial system and that is a big IT job and a lot of work,” he said.  “It might take a little longer. There are some pastures that contain substantial tracks. There are 440,000 acres in all that don’t even have or never have had titles raised for them, so that is going to take a little time. Those are negative factors. The positive ones are generally interest from the patron groups.

“Of course, before any lease or sale can be conducted those patrons groups will have to become legal entities, so that we’ll have somebody to deal with.”

Stewart said the province is only working with an “estimated value” of these pastures at this point and before any lease or sale can go through they will have to be appraised. He said expensive commodities such as oil and gravel will “generally not” be included in a lease or sale.

“The only offers that we are entertaining for sales or lease are offers from the patron groups that already occupy the pastures,” said Stewart, adding there will be no competing interests for the pastures from corporations or out-of-province groups.

“Some of (these 10 patrons groups) have just expressed interest. Others have presented proposals or ideas. All of that is being considered, so it’s early days. We’ve sent out letters to the patrons of the first 10 pastures that have been chosen and we’ll be holding in-person meetings with patrons groups with those 10 pastures in the near future.”

To read more please see the Oct. 29 print edition of The Davidson Leader.