Election 2007

The Sask. Election results were interesting to watch, and it was good to see a number of women candidates elected. There were women candidates in 38 of the 58 ridings. Women were elected in13 of those ridings. My Math. which is not always, but often enough, accurate, works that out to 22.4% of the seats in the Saskatchewan Legislature. In all there were 54 women candidates running in this election. Twenty ridings had only men as candidates. The challenging task of determining whether some names were those of men or women, I didn't try to figure out, but there were only 3 I wondered about, and I chose not to count them. The breakdown shows the Sask. Party running 12 Women candidates, elected 8. The NDP Party ran 11 women candidates and 5 were elected. The Liberals ran 13 women candidates, and the Green Party ran 16 women candidates. There were 2 women for the other Parties. These are my "tallies" so as always I can be corrected on my figures. The candidate I campaigned for, Corinne Pauliuk , NDP. garnered 2254 votes. The winning Sask. Party candidate, Don McMorris garnered 5354 votes, Liberal Michael Hiebert, 528 votes, and Green Party candidate Dagan Harding, 202 votes. It was an interesting experience. Of course the reality of being an elected M.L.A. who is also a woman, does not mean they will be successful in putting women's issues on the agenda, or even be interested in doing so. Two of the candidates from the Women's forum have been elected: Laura Ross, S.P. and Sandra Morin, NDP. Both articulated their experience, and committment to issues that concern women, as did the Liberal candidate, Marie-France Magnin(who captured a respectable 2191 votes in the same riding that Sandra Morin won), and Larissa Shasko, Green Party (who increased the number of votes cast for the Greens by 100 in her riding). It will be up to us as women in this province to hold all our elected candidates accountable to the many issues women face. I will especially be watching, and hoping that "Gail" the women needing an ovarian cancer drug that is not on the Formulary, will, this time around, get the drug she needs to prolong her life. For many women, the impact of these kinds of issues is often uppermost in their minds, and there are so many similar issues, all of which seem to disappear into a sink hole, once government gets into office. Enough said!!