Interview with the leader of Buffalo Party of Saskatchewan
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Summary
Wade Syrah is the interim leader of the Bander Party of Saskatchewan and the leader for the 2020 election. In this episode, we talk with him about his journey to becoming the party leader, the challenges he faces, and how he plans to run for re-election in 2020.
Transcript
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there you go okay i'm sitting today with wade syrah the actually are you interim leader or
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the formal leader now of the buffalo party of saskatchewan
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i'm the leader for the 2020 election i'm interim leader until we have a convention it can actually
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happen yes yeah it's difficult these days with with all the bizarreness and uh covid and and
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many other events just trying to keep things in a rush i'm pretty familiar with it it gives me a
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sense of deja vu uh when i was 29 years old i led the alberta independence party into an election
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against ralph klein uh where we got slaughtered uh but it was uh quite a year of scrambling and
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organizing and then trying to herd those cats who were independent-minded people into a working
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group but uh yeah there's certainly a stronger base these days i think for independence in general in
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the west it's it's really been been growing and and we're again it's a scramble on the federal front
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on every province's front to try and get viable movements going to give the electors a choice in
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in that sort of uh thing so i i see so far you guys have 13 candidates registered are you still
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seeking more uh there are a few more who were in communication with at the moment in time but
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uh i told them october 9th uh but they still have to go through our vetting process we're just not
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going to slap people in there we want to make sure that they're viable people and relatable yes of
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course i mean it'd be disastrous uh having the the wrong individual represent uh the party or try
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to represent the constituency which uh one of the challenges you're going to have i i've noticed
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again i guess you haven't had the chance for an agm to establish things like a constitution
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and policies so the site's just showing kind of a broader mission statement which uh makes it
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difficult i guess for candidates to answer to specific things because in an election of course people
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are going to ask a lot of direct questions education healthcare things such as that uh how um can you
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respond to people with those concerns and on how you would represent them uh in the legislature with
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those individual issues absolutely well we're running a pretty baseline platform and our platform should
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be released early next week um but it is going to be kind of baseline we went we talked with all the
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candidates made sure everyone's on board that we're just going to run as base as we can for the moment
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in time but you're here to represent your constituency and i think that's what a lot of people um want to
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start seeing with our government in canada we got that a lot in saskatchewan that the current system we
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have is not working it's dysfunctional for us um you should represent your constituency first your party
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second because what the problems in estevan are not going to be the same as the problems in lloyd minster or
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the problems in melfort so we want to make sure that when you would on regina you need to be that
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voice for your constituency we're all here to work together but you're still elected to represent your
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constituency first oh great okay yeah and whip votes are a real problem in in our system in canada
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with that differences between you know different constituencies i mean the goal and the point of
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this westminster system supposedly is to have these individuals speak for their constituencies but
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reality that rarely happens uh with a a more limited um candidate base you won't have quite
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perhaps the same challenge that uh happened in alberta but i imagine some people will uh accuse
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you of potentially vote splitting and putting something worse in because we really did have
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a terrible circumstance five years ago where uh a lot of albertans were ready for change and they voted
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two ways for it and we ended up with a change that very few albertans really actually wanted for
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four years how do you respond to that possibility well some of the numbers we saw came from alberta
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at the time too because i i'm a political nerd if you want to say as well i understand um some of the
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numbers that you guys had come out of there is that there was a lot of voter apathy where people
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decided they just didn't want to vote and so there was a lower voter turnout for um the conservative
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side whether it's the independent party or the conservatives it just seemed like uh what we
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saw in alberta was there's in the constituencies where there is a big loss is people decided they
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didn't want to vote it was the same thing what we saw in uh saskatoon in a by-election for when ryan
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miley won uh against penner and the reason why ryan miley won he got out all the same vote that came out
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during the provincial election uh penner lost because only half the percentage of the sas party
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voters came out to vote but for vote splitting um every constituency we're running in it's a wide margin
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so even if i in my constituency of warman martinsville if i divide my vote in half
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the ndp still need to find between 1500 to 2000 more voters just to for them to have a chance to even
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challenge us and that's going to be across the board in all our constituencies that we have 12 candidates
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and say we did the vote split say we say the un unbelievable happened that we had less voter
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turnout but the ndp have all their voter turnout we have 12 they currently have 13 seats that's 25 seats
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and then the sas party still have full majority of the province yeah so it's not running out at a
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level where that's much of a concern uh i guess except for perhaps some individual constituencies
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but at least it's something to respond to people with on those so a real challenge you guys have
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this time around is with conventional campaigning i mean for up-and-coming parties getting out face to
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face with the constituents and voters you know the old way and the effective way was to go door to
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door and knock and meet the people but not everybody's welcome to have somebody uh show up their
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door and chat with them after they've shook and shaken a hundred hands that day potentially so
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how are you guys working to get around that to reach out and connect with the potential voters
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right now uh we're still going door to door the only way the rules that we have right now saskatch
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for door-to-door canvassing is that you can go up to the door put your flyer into their mailbox
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ring their doorbell or knock on the door and step back down the steps and then you talk to them and
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you just tell them that hey i put something in your mailbox now if they grab it or not that's another
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thing that's the same thing as if you put in their hands when they walk into the door they're
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going to throw it into the garbage so there's still a door-to-door canvassing but it's not
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up close some personal as much anymore we're down at the bottom the steps so and even going around
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and having some meeting greets uh they were successful but there is also a limitation to
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the success on them because you're only allowed 30 people in a room at one time now too so that really
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limits on how many people we can uh we can talk to and it's it's going to be tough on everyone it's
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just not our party it's every party is having it tough right now the our party is at a handicap
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because we're doing what most parties do in two three or four years we're trying to do it in six
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months and run an election so we are under the gun but we're already seeing a positive impact
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well good it's a workout i mean something that's important is having that other option out there at
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least to bring up subjects in discussion that the incoming candidates might not have wanted to touch in
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the first place as well like something as i've been involved in a lot of smaller parties in the past
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the people you can't understate the importance of having that other voice in there even if you don't
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necessarily win the seat you can set the tone of the election you can get commitments from the winner
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on things down the road and of course the other thing is you're establishing your party and getting
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people to know them uh it's an opportunity um do you have any events coming as you said you've got a
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limitation on the amount of people gathered in one spot and then that's difficult not everybody
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necessarily wants to come out but are there going to be some things coming up in the next few weeks as
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this election progresses there as election progresses we are talking about um doing a quick little spot
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around the province maybe a week long as 12 candidates and it's running all over the province
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uh it is a bit of highway time but if i can hit three or four towns a day and just do quick middle
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a bunch within one week from monday to friday and then get back in my constituency my constituencies uh
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different than most other constituencies i am an urban constituency uh you got two cities plus a town
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and almost everyone in those areas work in saskatoon so the best time to knock on their doors is
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saturday and sundays so it gives me a little bit more time to move around in the province during the
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week so we are talking about doing a couple things throughout the week great so how have people been
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receiving your your campaign so far in general uh with those you've been meeting and
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uh folks who have been responding to your uh presence uh the people i've been talking to
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so far up in warman martinsville and osler there is a positive um even our candidates we just had a
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candidate meeting last night just to see how everyone's going and the buddy checks just to
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make sure everyone's still happy and uh all the other candidates are having actually more success than
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failures at the door there's people who are frustrated across the province whether it's uh the response of
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covid in the province um or the response of agriculture there's there's some lags going on
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right there education is a huge problem right now in our province same as a lot of provinces and
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uh the closure of our industries in our province is a huge issue right now too where the current party
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is closing down our industry and yet they're they're citing to be champions of industry and it's not
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happening since mo's taken over so mo's helping us out a lot uh he's showing that he's not brad wall
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which was to be expected brad left and there's gonna be someone new that always changes things
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but he's just he's really showing there's a whole different change in that shift in that party so
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okay great well and then of course you got that big looming ottawa factor there as well that all of us
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in the west are dealing with and uh you know it's time to to show uh some some pushing back and that
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we've had enough of it so i really hope you guys get a good showing in some writings i mean just
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that in itself will help uh perhaps wake some people up and realize that some individuals have
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had enough that is our hope not just to pull a percentage of the vote away from the current
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establishment but also be able to put some feet down in regina some people in the seats down there for
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our party could show huge amount of frustration in western canada that we're tired of being a colony
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uh when we separated from england it was because we were tired of being a colony we just set up a
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miniature colony in canada and it's time that we take back our destiny as a province whether saskatchewan
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or alberta or manitova or bc and how did quebec get all their power because they stomped their feet
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they got angry and they caused a ruckus that ended up giving them more power as a province why can't we
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have the same thing out here absolutely when quebec does it they pander to when we do it we're called
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selfish jerks but i think that's going to change as it gets larger and more serious in the west and
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and uh frustrated people are standing up and have had enough so thank you very much for your time
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today wade i won't take you away from the campaign too long here you guys have got a lot of ground to
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cover so it looks like you can find more information at buffalopartysk.com uh was there anything else you'd
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like to get out there at this moment in time i think that's our biggest thing right now is
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getting out there we're getting free publicity too so on radio stations who are saying we're
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uh irrelevant and all of a sudden we become very relevant because people are calling in and giving
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them a hard time because they're saying we're irrelevant so we're getting some a lot of good
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publicity going on and yeah it's best thing to do is go to our website uh you can contact all the
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candidates and we're more than happy to contact you back so great well thanks again wade and i'm sure
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we'll talk again at some point absolutely thank you very much for your time