REGINA -- Progressive Conservative Party Leader and MLA Candidate in Regina Walsh Acres Ken Grey hopes to offer a “true, fiscally conservative alternative” to Saskatchewan voters.

CTV News Regina Anchor and Video Journalist Taylor Rattray sat down with Grey ahead of the Oct. 26 vote to learn more about the PC platform in 2020.

Below is a partial transcript of the interview edited for clarity and conciseness with the full interview available here and at the top of the page.

CTV News: What drew you to run in provincial politics?

Grey: Well I’ve always been interested in provincial politics, what drew me to this particular election was I just felt there wasn’t a true fiscally conservative alternative in this province. Both of the parties that are in the Legislature right now are very much proponents of increased spending. Ultimately, that will lead to increased taxation and I’m vehemently opposed to that concept.

FISCAL CONSERVATISM, TAX INCENTIVES OVER INVESTMENTS

CTV News: Speaking of financially conservative policies, how would you handle the current deficit if you were elected?

Grey: I think it’s hard to take a silver bullet and say ‘this is what we’re going to do’ considering we haven’t really seen the books or anything.

Having said that, it’s a philosophical mindset that we’re not going to engage in intervention in the economy. This government has done a lot of interventions in the economy and indeed they’re promising in the coming years that there’s going to be significant financial intervention into the economy by the government. We would curb that concept. We think that economic activity can be spurred by reducing taxes, making our business taxes the most competitive in the country and giving other companies that might want to invest in manufacturing in the Province of Saskatchewan, give them some tax incentives to do so.

We don’t foresee that going into a system where we’re going to invest or spend our way to recovery is the way to go.

MORE LONG TERM CARE BEDS, MENTAL HEALTH FOCUS

CTV News: Healthcare and education, always big topics for the election, what are your policies on that?

Grey: We are looking at increasing the number of long term care beds in the province, we’re also looking at increasing our investment into mental health which has become a real issue in the last while.

We recognize the need that we need to increase this spending, and unfortunately because of the big spending in other areas the government hasn’t had the resources to spend on the things that really matter to the people of Saskatchewan, like healthcare.

Rural health is a particular concern to us because we’ve seen a difficulty with getting doctors into some of our smaller centres so we would actually do an initiative that would try to bring more doctors to rural Saskatchewan.

CLASS SIZES, IMPROVEMENTS TO PLANNING

Grey: We are concerned like some of the other parties are about classroom size. Certainly we would prepare our budgets so we’re not spending on big warehouses outside of Regina instead of putting forward money for the things that matter like education as well.

I think with education and educational planning, there’s been some kind of disjoint. We see in the City of Regina for example where they have brand new schools that are already full to the brim with students. So obviously there wasn’t very good communication between civic planning and educational school infrastructure planning.

We need to kind of look at how that’s being done, because right now it just doesn’t seem to be working.

Head to CTV News Regina’s Election page for continuing coverage of the campaign leading up to election night on Oct. 26.