It's time for Sask. Party renewal, says leadership candidate Tina Beaudry-Mellor

In the lead up to the Sask. Party leadership race in the province, CBC Saskatchewan is interviewing each of the six candidates about their priorities and opinions.

In August, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall announced his upcoming retirement. The party will elect a new leader on Jan. 27, 2018, and the winner will take over the province's top position.

The candidates include Tina Beaudry-Mellor, Gord Wyant, Ken Cheveldayoff, Scott Moe, Alanna Koch and Rob Clarke.

On Facebook, we're allowing our followers to pose their questions, which the candidates will answer live on air on CBC Radio's Blue Sky program.

Candidate Tina Beaudry-Mellor spoke to CBC News host Jill Morgan following her live appearance. Beaudry-Mellor was elected during the 2016 provincial election and represents the electoral district of Regina University.

This interview has been edited for length, clarity and context.

Jill Morgan: Your campaign slogan is "It's time." What does that mean?

Tina Beaudry-Mellor: It means that it's time for a renewal of our party. The premier has talked about that quite a bit. It speaks to a couple of things. It speaks to it's time for a fresh kind of leadership. I'm certainly not going to pretend to be like the premier — I think that's impossible — but I do think I'm a different kind of leader, and I think I have some different kinds of policies in mind. And I think it's time for us to take a fresh look at things in our party. We've always been a mix of both Liberals and Conservatives, that's our roots, and I think we need to get back to some of those social value things, and I certainly think we felt that in the last budget as an example.

JM: How are you different than Brad Wall?

TB: Obviously, I'm female, but I don't want that to be too much a part of this campaign. I'm different in the sense that I'm an urban, professional woman…. I've been an urbanite for most of my life. I'm very willing to learn about rural issues, and have been travelling around the province to make sure that I have a good sense of those issues, but I think I have a pretty good sense of some of the issues that our cities are dealing with, particularly on the social side. As an undergraduate, I worked at the food bank, for example; I have experience in the post-secondary environment. And so I just bring a different kind of range of experiences than the premier has. Both are valuable and important; they're just different.

JM: In a time when we don't see a lot of women getting into politics — it's still predominantly men — why don't you want being a woman to be a part of this campaign?

TB: Because I think it's obvious that I'm a woman, and what I want to be known for and appreciated for is the fact that I'm bringing new policy discussions into the race. I think I'm running a very strong campaign. I think I want those things to be the things people think about, not whether or not I'm wearing high heels and a dress. I hope other women are looking at me and seeing the possibilities, but I want to be judged on my merits as a person; I want to be judged as a competent, professional, formidable candidate in this race, and that's how I'd like to be treated, just as my male colleagues are.

JM: When you talk about new policy, what would you pick out as priority one if you were elected as the leader of the province?

TB: One of our biggest challenges right now as a party is that we do have challenges in our urban seats, in Regina, in Saskatoon, and I think we will have some struggles in Moose Jaw as well. And the issues in urban Saskatchewan are different than the issues in rural Saskatchewan, although there is some crossover and there's certainly some concerns about rural crime. In urban environments there are more concerns about the softer social issues, so there I would say that I've offered a commitment to housing first as one of the things I'd like to see. I've offered a way for us to do that; we have some housing stock already in the Sask Housing Corporation that we can use for those things.

JM: How do you then balance the needs of rural Saskatchewan and urban Saskatchewan, which can be quite different?

TB: Our rural members are a very, very formidable part of our caucus. I think, though, what needs to be balanced is that we need to also look at some of the urban issues.... A lot of our urban communities are very concerned about education, in particular. It's not to say that there aren't challenges in rural Saskatchewan, but certainly the mobilization around that has been largely in urban centres. The way to balance that is that you need a leadership that understands that…. We haven't really had that in the past, and I think that drives everything else. Having a strong rural base as part of our caucus and certainly part of our cabinet will bring the balance, and then the leadership that understands the urban issues, those two things, I think, will meet very nicely.