OUTLOOK - The province's Minister of Highways, Fred Bradshaw got to know Outlook and the surrounding area a little more intimately on Thursday, September 9 as he stopped in the area to tour around with local MLA Dana Skoropad.
Among the stops on the pair's itinerary were Gardiner Dam to see the work being done on the spillway crest and chute, as well as a lunch meeting with the RM of Rudy.
Along the way, Minister Bradshaw got a view of what life is like for the people who call this chunk of southwestern Saskatchewan home, an area he says he doesn't get a chance to visit all that often.
"It was great," said Bradshaw, reflecting on the time spent with people of the area. "It's nice to be down here and visiting this territory. Of course, I'm from northeastern Saskatchewan which is a long ways from here, so I don't get down here too often. But I had to get down here to see what the MLA has been doing, and he's been doing great work. He wanted me to come down and look at a couple of things that are going on down here. We wanted to do a tour of the dam to see how it's operating and how the irrigation project is going forward."
One particular area of concern for many locals was the state of major roadways, and Bradshaw says another thing that came up was how positive people are about the irrigation project taking place in the province that will use Lake Diefenbaker to further expand the irrigable land in this part of the province.
"Well, everybody has concerns," said Bradshaw. "The concern with the RM was mainly on their bypass for Outlook. That was their major concern, and of course, the other topic was that they're happy that we're moving forward with irrigation because that helps out the whole community and whole area."
The Minister says the people were friendly on his visit and he's taking their concerns seriously, notably those that came as a result of his meetings with the RM of Rudy and the Council of the Town of Outlook later that afternoon.
"I'll tell you one thing, the people have been very friendly down here," he said. "It's a real nice place to come and visit. They got concerns, but nobody has been derogatory at all. They have their concerns, and they're well taken. As far as the roads go, we were looking at the bypass and various different roads around here. I see there's quite a bit of work being done within the constituency and quite a bit of highway work being done."
