(File Photo/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Julia Lovett-Squires

Mayoral reaction

Meadow Lake and Battlefords mayors react to election results

Apr 30, 2025 | 9:54 AM

The Battlefords and Meadow Lake leaders are looking ahead to the future with a Liberal minority government at the helm.

“I think it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the next three to six to nine months mainly because I think this election was won on who created the most fear within this country,” Battleford Mayor Ames Leslie.

“It wasn’t about who is going to make the life better for people within Canada or who was going to make Canada prosperous again. It was which leader scared us the most to vote for them.”

Leslie said he wasn’t surprised by the Liberals’ result and said the last few weeks had changed the tide nationwide.

“We have a tremendously divided country right now and a significantly divided province over this election,” he said, adding he made a choice to refrain from social media to avoid the negativity.

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“It’s going to be interesting to see where our country and now Prime Minister Elect (Mark) Carney, if he can find a way with his collective group, if they can bring this country back to one voice, one people, which has never happened,” he said.

“We need to find some way to bridge our country back to being where everybody loves each other…where everybody can respect each other might be a better way to put it than what we’re seeing in today’s society.”

Across the river, North Battleford Mayor Kelli Hawtin declined to comment on the election, but said that as mayor, she congratulates all those elected and when it comes to the city, they look forward to getting back to work.

“There’s a lot of policies and decisions that are proposed and need to come forward and we have to just kind of keep our ears and eyes open to those things to make sure we’re taking in any opportunity we can to improve our community,” she said.

Hawtin said infrastructure projects are queued up with water and sewer lines prioritized. As such, they are wondering what type of funding will be available for other projects like the proposed new arena, water treatment plant and major capital needs.

“We will see what those programs look like in time here,” Hawtin said.

Another issue the city hopes to tackle is recidivism.

“We’re looking forward to hearing more on what type of policies and changes might come in terms of the justice system,” she said. “We have a lot of repeat criminals that are causing a lot of problems in our community and creating a lot of safety issues.”

According to the Election Canada website, at the time of this writing, 99.87 per cent of the polls have been reported and the registered voter turnout is 68.66 per cent.

Meadow Lake Mayor Merlin Seymour said when it comes to how it will affect his municipality, time will tell.

“Hopefully some of the promises that were brought forward by the new leader will be followed through with properly,” Seymour said.

“He just has to remember even though our constituency as well as majority of Saskatchewan are Conservative, we’re still a part of the country.”

He noted the days of “sour milk” over the Trudeau era and talks of secession aren’t the way to move forward.

“As long as the new PM elect has the entire country in mind, we’ll make things work,” he said.

Mayor Leslie said from the Battleford perspective, they’ll be watching the next stages closely. Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the administration focused on changing municipal revenue sharing to encourage affordable housing.

“We’ll see, watch that closely with (Carney) whether or not they follow down that same path or they go back the original formulation of allowing municipalities to use those funds for infrastructure, streets, water, sewer, things like that,” he said.

If Carney continues with his predecessor’s plan, Leslie said it could lead to an increase in property tax to cover other costs. Having said that, the mayor does acknowledge his community is in need of more affordable housing.

“We’ll definitely stay close to that ‘cause as we’re going into our strategic planning, one of the things that we’ve been hearing is we need more housing options in the Town of Battleford, in the Battlefords in general.”

As for his hopes as a country?

“I just hope that everybody finds a way to come together to just work towards making the Battlefords and this province and this country better than it was yesterday,” said Leslie.

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julia.lovettsquires@pattisonmedia.com

On BlueSky: juleslovett.bsky.social