YORKTON -- The Parkland region is ready to settle in for four more years with its incumbent MLA’s.
Greg Ottenbreit in the Yorkton constituency and Warren Kaeding in Melville-Saltcoats both clinched their seats in landslide victories during the Provincial Election on Oct. 26.
After re-election both men said they are happy to have won their seats, and are looking forward to continuing the work they started last term.
"We've got some planning dollars that can go towards the new hospital in the future,” said Ottenbreit in a Zoom interview after being awarded the seat Monday night.
Holding office since 2007, Ottenbreit served as Minister of Highways and Infrastructure and Minister Responsible for the Water Security Agency this past term. He has previously served as the Minister Responsible for Rural and Remote Health for five years and has been an advocate for upgrading the Yorkton Regional Health Centre.
“We're having a significant renovation through the Yorkton Regional High School, a lot of different things that have been a real honour to take part in, and looking forward to carrying on a lot of those projects and reinforcing services and improving services in Yorkton,” added Ottenbreit.
Kaeding says he is also looking forward to potentially being able to finish what he started,
“Going into the election I was Minister of Rural and Remote Health and Minister Responsible for Seniors, and certainly, if I'm allowed to continue in that position, there's a lot of things that we started, some initiatives that we've begun, and I would really like to see them through to completion,” said Kaeding over Zoom on Tuesday morning.
“That would certainly benefit everyone, but especially residents in rural and northern Saskatchewan.
He says the initial feeling after being re-elected was “relief” after the struggles of having to campaign amidst a pandemic.
Kaeding, who took his constituency for a second term with a 3,882 vote margin, says he was a little concerned he wouldn’t be able to connect with voters.
"... That was something that we certainly had to work around, and we feel we did some social media things that we certainly hadn't done before and that was a new experience for us,” he explained, “and I think that that resonated relatively well."
Ottenbreit is “pretty exciting and humbling” to be re-elected for a fourth term in Yorkton.
"... To actually increase your plurality as we're looking at it right now is something that's pretty impressive I'm really excited. I think it just shows how impressive our team was even the challenges of COVID, and how we have to do things a little bit differently, but it's pretty exciting and we're tired, but we're happy.”
Ottenbreit took the constituency with a current margin of 3,768 votes.
