My name is Regina Ann Demyen. I was born and raised in and around southern Saskatchewan. I am an educational assistant, ECE Level 2, having graduated from SIAST. I cherish my family of four half-siblings and three step-siblings.

I am also the single mother of a 24-year-old son with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a predetermined, rare life-threatening condition for which I was, from birth, the unknowing carrier. I am the owner/manager of my own daycare, operating for 15 years now. As a young adult, I put my energy into volunteering for the Kidney Foundation, and for many years I have been a fundraiser and volunteer for Muscular Dystrophy Canada, achieving their Mary Wickham Award in 2012.  

My focus if elected: 

I want to see additional, systematic help for Saskatchewan residents with predetermined conditions, inspiring the same throughout Canada. A special caregiver package, already in limited use, should be given to families who choose to continue to care for family members with disabilities or long-term health issues at home. I will promote the healthcare system Saskatchewan needs, one that is never overwhelmed because of understaffing and poorly funded hospitals. Premier Moe should be investigated for mishandling funds spent on his own hobbyhorses, foreign and domestic, rather than on the vital health needs of the people he was elected to serve.

Let’s face it, homelessness should never have become a problem in this society. We have the resources and the ability to give a fair opportunity to people who are struggling. Moe has made it so easy for the municipalities to be blamed for the failure of a provincial government in bed with large corporations. Our sickening housing costs are due to large, gluttonous corporations like Blackrock and Blackwater wildly buying out many single-family homes; these corporations need to get their hands off, and I support legislation to restrain them. Slumlords are living a charmed life under this government. Some slumlords are the landlords I knew personally back in my 20’s and 30’s They themselves used to live in these now-crumbling apartments, unrepaired for 30 years, that barely shelter low-income, often single-parent families. I have taken one of these landlords to court; he had over 2000 people on his list, largely struggling single mothers and many kidney patients, but mostly people who needed a support system and instead were pushed onto the street. Are you as tired as I am of governments supplying billions of dollars for weaponry while Canadians are living in tents in minus-50 weather, losing limbs from the cold? Moe is on his way to creating a near-Palestine right here in Saskatchewan.

Many issues are important to me and to my fellow Green MLA candidates, but it is not well known that we’re all concerned with supporting local small businesses and ensuring farmers get their crops produced and marketed locally. Foreign products should not be the first choice. (We don’t need foreign milk products like Fair Life!)

Perhaps issues outside of provincial politics should not determine which way we vote in October. But at the top of my personal list as a human being is the plight of the Palestinian people, which is part of the unnecessary suffering in many countries due to the historic meddling of Western powers. I have been following the struggle of the Palestinian people since 2002. The horrible crisis happening now in Palestine is because of its colonization more than a century ago. As a self-decolonizing nation itself, Canada needs to divest from Israel and from those who are complicit in supporting this occupation and genocide. The guilty need to be brought to justice under international law.