MLA for Cutknife-Turtleford Larry Doke has been named the new president of the annual Pacific Northwest Economic Regions summit.
Doke served as one of the four vice president’s for four years before assuming the role for the 2019 summit.
“I’ve been involved with PNWER since 2012 and at no point did I ever think I’d be president. What it does is it gives me a better understanding of issues that we may have in Canada and the U.S.”
PNWER has five Canadian provinces taking part including Alberta and Saskatchewan, as well as five America states. Doke says their purpose is to ease cross-border trade.
“Big priorities right now is NAFTA, tariffs, rules and regulations. We have many other things that we are contracted out to do like cyber security, drones all those kinds of things.”
Currently, the 2018Â summit is on its last day in Spokane, Washington with about 600 people discussing issues for the Pacific Northwest. This year one of the discussions at the summit was cattle trade and next year trade will stay an issue.
“70 per cent of our products are exported in Saskatchewan. Trade and getting our grain and oil to market, so whatever we can do to help that along that’s what we’re here to do. We listen to our jurisdictions and their concerns and we put that together.”
Next year’s summit will be held in Saskatoon from July 21 to 25.