From social worker to party leader, Carla Beck traces her path to politics

LANG — What got Carla Beck into politics was hearing one thing from political leaders and seeing another on the ground.

As a social worker, she was able to help one to two individuals or a family at a time but the people she was helping were all downstream from policy and decisions made in the Saskatchewan Legislative Building.

“I remember thinking if we had more effective public policy, more effective decision making at higher levels of government, that it would be possible to help more people,” Beck said in a recent interview at her family’s home in Lang, south of Regina.

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In the final days of 2014, while working at a women’s shelter in Regina, Beck saw there were 1,000 women and children on the wait list. The shelter had been pushing the province for more funding to try and chip away at the number of people seeking help. Announcements from the government came and went, growth and spending were touted, but the demand continued to increase.

“The rhetoric doesn’t always meet the impact that you see on the front line,” said Beck.

Sitting in the dining room of her parents’ home, the party leader talked about how her own frustrations are mirrored in nurses and teachers throughout Saskatchewan. Leading a party that has been out of power for 17 years, Beck sees growing dissatisfaction with the way things are running in the province.

“Fewer and fewer people are benefiting from the economy and from decisions being made by this government right now,” said Beck.

It was a long road to politics, but Beck still remembers who she voted for when she turned 18. She was attending the University in Regina for a two-year psychiatric nursing program at the time and cast a ballot for Judy Bradley, who is now Saskatchewan NDP party president. It was through Bradley’s daughter, a high school classmate, that Beck met her husband, Guy Marsden. They were married in 1997 and have three children — Hannah, Nolan and Maya.

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Looking back at that first election as a voter, Beck also remembers that her father, Ray, drove her to the polling station at a legion hall in Milestone. He told her at a young age that if “you don’t vote, you don’t get to complain.”

Beck’s parents didn’t talk politics with a capital ‘P’ too much at home, but a general sense of community was instilled in her at a young age. Those values included things like looking out for neighbours and making sure the people around you are doing well.

“I’m a New Democrat by choice,” she said. “I grew up in a town where it wasn’t everyone for themselves.”

That ethos influenced how Beck would interact with classmates at her three-room school. It also contributed to her following in the footsteps of her mother, a woman who was committed to helping people in need through her work as a vocational counsellor.

It’s a path that eventually led Beck to social work.

“Their advice was along the lines of, if you see something that’s wrong, you should speak up,” she said of her parents. “But if you’re going to open your mouth, you had better be prepared to do something about it.”

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That philosophy led to her breaking up fights in school, which on at least one occasion saw Beck catch a punch intended for someone else.

At 16, she stepped up to help another girl her age who was sexually assaulted. Beck recalls sitting and talking with the girl to dissuade her from self harm.

“That’s the first time I remember thinking, ‘yeah, maybe I would like to be a counsellor or be a social worker,’” she said. “The most important thing in social work is the ability to understand where people are coming from, to meet them where they’re at.”

That’s also part of her strategy to get the NDP more seats from rural Saskatchewan.

Growing up on a farm, Beck remembers asking her dad to throw a bucket of baseballs for her and her two sibling after he’d spent a day working in the field.

In Lang, the community’s baseball diamond is called Beck Field. It’s named after her family, which was inducted into the Saskatchewan Baseball Hall of Fame in 2019 for its contribution to the sport.

While Beck also excelled in karate, her family members grew up playing ball on the field that now bears their name. Although some of the paint around the park is faded and chipped, a Beck Field sign clearly displays past championships won by local teams.

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Those roots are something Beck holds dear but, much like the ball diamond in Lang, the NDP in rural Saskatchewan has lost some of its shine.

The biggest challenge in front of Beck is that the most favourable polls and projections in decades show her party still coming in second place to the Saskatchewan Party.

While it’s anticipated the NDP will perform better in cities, the Sask. Party dominated most rural constituencies back in 2020. Beck has made a point during her campaign to visit places that are unique to the province’s rural base, attending things like oil and gas trade shows and other spaces that have not been synonymous with the NDP.

She said it’s been difficult to get underneath 17 years of messaging about her party.

For example, walking into a bull sale this spring, Beck recalls a man asking her “what the hell are you doing here?” Given that the event carried her surname — the Beck Farms & McCoy Cattle Co. Bull Sale — the man quickly realized he knew her dad and had in fact played hockey with him.

Suddenly, the tone of the conversation changed.

“I had the opportunity to say who we were and who we weren’t as the provincial NDP,” she said.

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While reaching out to voters, meeting them on their turf and leading difficult conversations, Beck draws upon her own experiences and small-town roots in hopes of making up lost ground in rural Saskatchewan and restoring her party’s prominence across the province.

Check out the Leader-Post’s profile on Saskatchewan Party Leader Scott Moe here.

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