Jeremy Cockrill (battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Julia Lovett-Squires

Cockrill Convo

Highway twinning, care centre replacement highlights for Cockrill

Jun 11, 2025 | 2:38 PM

With a busy summer ahead and wildfires dominating the Canadian headlines, the Battlefords MLA Jeremy Cockrill sat down with battlefordsNOW for a one-on-one conversation to discuss upcoming projects.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Highway 4 Twinning

Julia Lovett-Squires: “What are some of the things that you’re really excited about?”

Jeremy Cockrill: A couple things come to mind right away…number one: Highway 4, I was driving up to the lake the other weekend to visit some constituents up there and Highway 4 gets so busy in the summer right and whether you know, mostly it’s cabin traffic in the summer but there’s always agricultural producers moving stuff.”

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“Obviously oil trucks as well, a ton of volume moving in and out of the Strathcona facility which is a great thing for our area but it does add traffic to the road so we have announced previously that we will be twinning Highway 4 from the north edge of North Battleford to up to the Hamlin Road. That project is in early design I mean, as the MLA, I’m always poking away at the Minister of Highways (David Marit) to say, ‘OK, where are we at with design, where are we at with the engineering side of things?’”

JLS: “You always hear about how many accidents happen every summer on that highway.”

JC: “For sure and years ago, longtime residents will remember this – years ago, we added the passing lanes that are there now between here and Cochin, which are a great addition. Fatalities have decreased since adding the passing lanes but obviously, accidents still happen. Even by building a new road, you can’t totally reduce what happens on the road.”

District Care Centre replacement

JC: “On the healthcare front, there’s really two projects that I’m working on. You know number one, the replacement of Battlefords District Care Centre, so, that’s the long-term care facility on the Battleford side of the river. It’s a fairly old building; I believe it’s the oldest building in the province providing patient care.”

“You know what, it’s an old building but let me just say and I’ve visited a couple times, the staff there are amazing, the staff do an incredible job in terms of making sure patients are comfortable and well served. So, I mean the staff there deserve a ton of credit for the work they do but it’s an old building and so it’s got some limitations.”

“That’s why we’ve had some planning dollars in now two consecutive budgets to start design and planning on that replacement. We’ve been working with the town of Battleford on a site location.”

JLS: “So, it won’t be built on that site, it will be somewhere else?”

JC: “The challenge with that site is it’s on a floodplain, so you know obviously if you’re going to spend a significant amount of money, you’re going to make sure that building is going to be safe from natural disasters as much as possible.”

JLS: “Was there anything else you wanted to mention?”

Urgent Care coming to the Battlefords

JC: “The other project I was going to just mention … it was announced in the Thone Speech last fall that we were going to be expanding the urgent care centre model around the province to more communities. Obviously, we have the Regina Urgent Care Centre on Albert St. We currently have an urgent care centre in Saskatoon that’s being constructed in partnership with Ahtahkakoop Cree Developments but we’re also looking at adding urgent care to Prince Albert, Moose Jaw and North Battleford.”

“The key thing is, urgent care, it’s that middle ground between the emergency room and a family doctor or nurse practitioner, right that’s another project in our community that’s in a very early stage of planning. Right now, we’re at the stage where we’re engaging the local physician leadership — just in consultation to understand what their current capacity is from a physician roster perspective and how does urgent care fit in with what we’re currently offering both in terms of acute services at (Battlefords Union Hospital) but also primary care.”

JLS: “Do people see a separate building like a (standalone) or do they see a connection to the hospital?”

JC: “Good question, I think that’s even something that is being discussed still at this point. Again, how does it tie in with acute care versus primary care – Regina it’s a standalone building – quite a facility. But that’s a larger community and so, I think the key point though is about finding another access point for people that is not the emergency room but also not appointment-based.”

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