Cypress Hills—Grasslands

Occupying the southwestern corner of Saskatchewan, Cypress Hills—Grasslands is defined by some of the province's most dramatic and varied landscapes. Its western boundary follows the Alberta border, its southern edge runs along the 49th parallel with Montana, and it reaches northward to the Kindersley area. The riding is home to the Cypress Hills—an anomalous upland plateau that rises to over 1,400 metres, the highest point in mainland Canada between the Rocky Mountains and Labrador—as well as the Great Sandhills, a 1,900-square-kilometre expanse of active sand dunes that rank among the largest in Canada. The largest urban centre is Swift Current, while Maple Creek, Shaunavon, and Kindersley serve as smaller regional hubs.

Candidates

Jeremy Patzer (Conservative) — Born and raised on a grain farm near Frontier, Saskatchewan, Patzer spent a decade in the telecommunications industry before entering politics. He joined the riding's Conservative board of directors in 2015 and won his first election in 2019 with roughly 81 percent of the vote. He is the nephew of former MP David L. Anderson, his predecessor in the riding. Patzer lives in Swift Current with his wife and three children.

Alex McPhee (NDP) — A cartographer based in Val Marie, McPhee previously worked as an election results analyst and political data scientist. According to Elections Canada, he was the first candidate in the country's history to list cartography as his profession on nomination papers. His campaign focused on health-care access, climate policy, and LGBTQ+ rights.

Mackenzie Hird (Liberal) — Hird carried the Liberal banner in Cypress Hills—Grasslands, campaigning on the party's national platform of child care, climate action, and pandemic recovery support.

Charles Reginald Hislop (PPC) — Hislop ran for the People's Party of Canada, advocating for reduced government intervention, lower immigration targets, and the elimination of the federal carbon tax.

About the Riding

Agriculture is the dominant economic force in Cypress Hills—Grasslands. Canola, wheat, lentils, and durum are staple crops across the riding's vast tracts of arable land, while cattle ranching—deeply rooted in the region since the Canadian Pacific Railway reached Maple Creek in 1883—remains a major industry. Oil extraction is a growing sector, with drilling programs expanding in several parts of the riding, and potash deposits contribute to the broader resource economy.

The Cypress Hills themselves are an ecological treasure. Because of their elevation, the hills receive more precipitation than the surrounding shortgrass prairie, sustaining lodgepole pine forests, fescue grasslands, and rare wildflowers that exist nowhere else on the plains. Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park straddles the Saskatchewan-Alberta border and draws visitors for camping, dark-sky astronomy, and historical interpretation of the 1873 Cypress Hills Massacre, a pivotal event in the establishment of the North-West Mounted Police.

With a population of roughly 68,000, the riding is sparsely settled. About 6.5 percent of residents are immigrants, with the largest groups born in the Philippines, Mexico, and the United States. Health care and social assistance, retail trade, and educational services round out the top employers alongside agriculture. The riding's remoteness means that access to hospitals, specialists, and broadband internet are persistent political concerns.

Cypress Hills—Grasslands was created in 1997 and has been held by Conservative or Canadian Alliance candidates throughout its existence. The riding was among the most lopsided in the country in recent elections, reflecting the deep fiscal and social conservatism of Saskatchewan's rural southwest.