If our children are going to inherit a strong province, if they are even going to stay here, we need to promote those things that can make our province work better: lower taxes, smaller more efficient government, a stronger and freer business sector. We need to work hard at this because there are a lot of entrenched interests in this province who are promoting the exact opposite: higher taxes, bigger government, and a centralized economy.

Those who actively promote these things represent a thin sliver of Saskatchewan society that depends on the status quo, and to heck with everyone else. But they have a big impact on government policy. They include a cadre of bureaucrats, politicians and ivory tower elites. Promotion of the status quo by this cadre could be considered a reasonable - if selfish - position if the status quo was sustainable. But the status quo is living on borrowed time.

When our young people leave because of lower taxes and greater opportunities elsewhere, who will pay for the rising costs of important social programs Who will pay to fill the potholes then How will our children make a living in a province with no jobs, few prospects, and a stagnating tax base

Last year, more than 26,000 Saskatchewan people moved out of the province but only 20,000 moved in; 59% of the working age migrants who leave head for the province of Alberta. You know who these people are. They are your kids, your brother, and your sister just out of high school or university, looking for jobs and careers. They leave out of necessity, taking their education, skills, and potential with them. Even older people are leaving Saskatchewan to be closer to their kids and grandkids, and they are taking their wealth with them.

Go to Calgary, Vancouver, or Toronto, and you will find tens, even hundreds of thousands of Saskatchewan people. Go to a football game in McMahon Stadium and you will find there are more Rider fans than Stampeders fans! If only Saskatchewan's entrenched government leaders had the same energy as those Rider fans. But the sad fact is that under their uninspired mixture of punishingly high taxes and government control of the economy, Saskatchewan has become the country's farm team. A place people often have to leave to become a success.

Some of these defenders of the status quo say that the brain drain is exaggerated, that is doesn't exist. But they may even be victims of brain drain themselves, for their mouths are obviously unconnected to any intelligent organ. These people deny the evidence of their own eyes and experience.

Saskatchewan has the highest dependence ratio in Canada. The highest number of seniors and children compared to working age people. Saskatchewan has Canada's oldest population because so many young people leave. We also have the least-educated workforce in Canada, because many people who get an education in Saskatchewan promptly leave to seek opportunity elsewhere.

Once again, Saskatchewan plays the farm team, educating people for the 21st century economy, at the expense of Saskatchewan taxpayers, and sending them off to build other provinces.

This province belongs to us and our children, as much as to the elites and old-boy networks who defend the status quo. We need to fight for better opportunities for our children. We must fight to put Saskatchewan in the Big Leagues, where we belong!