Second ammonia leak keeps Weyburn rinks closed until after Christmas
13h ago
City was on schedule to reopen on Dec. 13, and now has to remove the ice again.
Personal details. Name, age, hometown
Tamela Friesen, 47, Grande Prairie, Alta.
Tell us about yourself
I love a lot. I love my partner of nearly 20 years, Karen. I love bicycling with the Wascana Freewheelers. We took two trips in Saskatchewan this year, one where the van carried the camping gear and the other where we carried the camping gear on the bikes. I love cross-country skiing with the Regina Ski Club. Both sports help me learn to navigate all sorts of challenges and conditions and to see beautiful places that most people can’t get to. I love my parents, both in their 80s (who ride recumbent tricycles all over High River for a couple hours each day). The quality of life that my neighbours experience matters to me and I choose politics and public policy as a way to try to ensure their lives go well.
What’s a little-known fact about you?
I lost my voice for two months last year. Five nurses/doctors/specialists couldn’t figure out why. I stopped all allergy meds, including a steroid inhaler, and started pursuing nutrition. My voice came back, my allergies are all but gone (haven’t taken a puff in four months), and lost 40 pounds as a happy side effect.
Why should voters hire you?
I am a hard-working, middle-class person. It wasn’t always that way. I use to live on $630 per month, rode a bike year-round, and decided which pizza to order by calculating cost per square inch! I can understand the hardships that people go through. I got out of poverty on the way, I learned that public policy could be changed to make it easier for people to do the same. For instance, if we want people to get to work, we’d better ensure there are child-care spots for their children while they are at work.
I will listen to them. My election promises: To read your emails and letters and hear you. Next I’ll take those concerns to the Green Party and to Parliament. I’ll show up for work every day. I will participate in parliamentary committees that further the well-being of my neighbours in Regina-Wascana.
I will try to break the current election system. It’s failing us all, the first past the post system. The politicians didn’t make 2015 the last unfair election after all. So we, the people, must take it into our own hands and make 2019 the last broken election by ditching the old-line parties and sending six different parties to a minority Parliament. It’s the only hope for real change.
Together, we can do better. Rather than keeping policies that make life harder, we can bring in policy that creates a foundation upon which we all can thrive. I have a master’s certificate in public policy.
Who should we call for a reference?
Sadia MacInnes.
What is your greatest strength? What is your greatest weakness?
Listening. Talking too much against authority.
Where do you stand on:
Gun laws? We need them. Hunters need to hunt. Farmers need to manage/protect their land and cattle. Sport shooters need to have fun (especially the biathletes). Collectors need to enjoy their collections. We need to ensure that suicidal people, criminals, enraged domestic partners, and toddlers do NOT have access to guns.
Our current Canadian laws enforce a gun safety course before you can own and use a gun. This has been very beneficial for the safety of the gun users and the general public. In Regina, however, there are too many murders. We need to do better. By implementing thoughtful gun laws, respectful of gun-users’ rights, and ensuring the utmost public safety, we can reduce that number.
I’m willing to hear from gun owners, law enforcement, and victims of gun violence or suicide attempts about what sort of actions might meet the above goals.
The need for more pipelines? I’m a Green candidate. We need fossil-fuel workers to help us retrofit every building in Canada for renewable energy and efficiency. We need tradespeople to build a new power grid or retrofit the current on Canada-wide. We need engineers and inventors to improve electric transit options that are viable on the prairies and in the winter.
The most unfortunate and difficult reality is that if we don’t act now, we will be stuck reacting later. As hard as this transition will be, we either do it proactively or we try and catch up later, after everyone else has left us behind. Greens plan for a just transition with targeted investment in local fossil-fuel workers in local communities for local solutions.
Western alienation? I grew up in northern Alberta, voting Conservative my first several chances. I’m an ex-Albertan, ex-Manitoban, and squarely Saskatchewanian. I get and feel the frustration with Ottawa. Yeesh, do I. And I want to stay in Canada.
Mixed-Member Proportional Representation: 30 per cent of the popular vote means 30 per cent of the seats. It includes local representation and “members at large.” It forces the east to negotiate with the west. It forces political parties to work together. I don’t think any one party has all the good ideas. If we must work together, we’ve got a chance to come up with an even better idea that none of us has thought of yet.
China? What should our approach be with some of our markets blocked? We need to use diplomacy and intelligence. We must always be aware of their strategic interest in participating in our economy and in trading with us. And we must always ensure we protect our own interests. We need to find creative ways to improve our relationship with them, to encourage their continued improvements in reducing GHG emissions, to encourage improvement in their human rights record. They have interests in our oilsands, our land base and maybe we need to leverage more of that to open the conversation about crops and trade barriers. We can only get somewhere with them if we stick to dialogue and partner with other nations to move forward.
Are we facing a climate change crisis? Is carbon tax the answer? When our family in the town of Hudson Bay heard about the carbon tax, they immediately started talking about how they could grow more vegetables, shop local, and car pool to save money. It appears a carbon tax just might influence behaviour after all. For many years, most businesses just tossed their negative externalities on the rest of us. Just like it’s not appropriate to toss your garbage into your neighbour’s backyard, it’s inappropriate for businesses to toss their externalities in our backyard. It’s got to become part of the business model — either clean up your own mess or pay us to clean it up for you.
It’s a day off and you can do anything you want. What would it be?
Bike ride, coffee shop, read the local news/events, visit with friends, then putter in my garden, then watch the Riders kick ___.
Who inspires you?
Regular people who keep going through so much … seniors — like Gramma Hardy, my folks, Karen’s mom — who’ve lived through so much and yet enjoy life and love and people today. My immigrant colleagues at the university who have such interesting and sometimes challenging journeys to where they are today. The beggars at the Regina Farmers’ Market … talk to them. Each day they choose hope over despair by simply showing up for life. My cycling mates, who keep riding into a 60-kilometre-per-hour rain-soaked headwind to get to camp and a warm shower and a huge meal. My Indigenous friends, neighbours, colleagues who continue to let me in their lives even though I can be so ignorant of their challenges sometimes. Em, in her 80s, who continues to out-ski me every single time. The people I know that live with mental illness every day, choosing hope over despair each time they decide to give life another try for the day. Karen.
What is your hidden talent?
Organizing things like I used to organize my mom’s Tupperware and I can fill up the dishwasher so that all the dishes fit nicely in. I guess I can see how things fit together which is very helpful for a politician!
What do you wish you could do but can’t?
Dance. I want to dance well. Keep a beat. Seriously, Karen’s been trying to teach me the TWO step for years. I’m a Mennonite by birth. We don’t dance. It’s worse than embarrassing, really.
Who are the three people, dead or alive, that you’d love to have dinner with?
My grandma Friesen, my cousin Grace, and Bianca Andreescu, of course.
How do you take your coffee?
Black.
What’s the one album you’d take with you on a desert island? What embarrassing song do you admit to on your playlist?
Winsome Kind. Footloose (watch this Mennonite dance to that)!
What is your guilty pleasure?
I have no guilt about pleasure … enjoying the morning sun on my deck listening to talk radio.
What is the last book you read?
Clearing the Plains by Jim Daschuk.
What is your favourite TV show? What are you binge watching?
Favourite: Likely The Crown (which is weird because it’s totally not my usual genre). Binge watch: Mindhunters (more my usual genre).
What is your all-time favourite movie?
Aw, man, do you know how many movies I’ve watched??? Probably Awakenings or Patch Adams. I think about those ones the most. Maybe Enigma or Hacksaw Ridge?