Members of the Estevan Chamber of Commerce were in Regina last week for the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce Invitational Dinner.

"Basically the way the evening works," explained Jackie wall, Executive Director for the Estevan Chamber of Commerce, "is at 4:00 pm, there's an open session with the Opposition. All the attendees are in a room with the Opposition. We have the opportunity to ask them questions and hear their platform. It was a great opportunity to see the Opposition and hear from them."

"Then there is a supper and right after the supper, the government comes in. The premier was there, most of the cabinet ministers were there. And it's the same thing, it's an opportunity for them to take questions from the floor. There were a lot of questions already prepositioned from the Sask Chamber through their membership and they went through as many as they could in the amount of time that we had."

"It was great to hear from the government and the new premier gave everyone there a real opportunity to see how things are going to be different under the new administration and to really ask some important questions."

She mentioned that many questions were in regards to issues affecting the southeast. 

"I was very, very pleased that Estevan is top of mind. There were a lot of questions regarding energy, a lot of questions regarding carbon capture and there were also questions regarding the communities that are really reliant upon SaskPower for employment and Estevan is one of those."

"It was one of the highlights of my evening because we went in there wanting some of those answers and they came up before we even had the opportunity to position those questions. It was great to see that the concerns of the Estevan and southeast are not just our regional concern, it goes beyond that and it's getting provincial recognition."

"The premier was still on board with carbon capture. He alluded to the fact that carbon capture goes beyond our provincial borders, it goes beyond our federal borders, it goes global. That was really great to hear and I guess now we're all just waiting to see what the budget will bring forth."

She added that there was no advance word on how the budget will look. The budget will be released on April 10th, 2018.