Member of Parliament for Souris-Moose Mountain, Dr. Robert Kitchen, reflects back on positives from the past year. 

"From a positive point of view, it's throughout the whole riding and recognizing that the riding is so huge. But overall, from an agricultural point-of-view, and agriculture is the backbone of this riding, it has been a fairly positive year for the majority of our producers, farmers and our ranchers, and that's positive and good to hear."

Kitchen also reflected on some of the challenges from the past year.

He said that other parts of communities in the cities throughout the riding have also been having to deal with various challenges, including the oil and gas sector and "...getting employees to work or to get them, because we unfortunately lost a lot of them."

"Hopefully we can start to see that increase happening because of the great work they do and the stewardship of the land, and these are great jobs and great opportunities for people to get involved."

The inflationary cost of living and increased taxes by the Federal government are challenges that Kitchen cited as a big concern from this year.

"Whether it's the carbon tax that they continue to escalate, as well as the other employment taxes that they continue to add, and it gets coupled by the reckless spending that they do, and they just are continuing to do that."

Not least of all, Kitchen mentioned another challenge from the year being, "...huge changes that this Liberal government did and tried to sneak through in Bill C-21, which was a handgun legislation."

"At the very last minute, they tried to sneak in issue on changing issues dealing with rifles and long guns, which is a huge impact on our local and rural hunters, as well as our farmers...and this sneaky and underhanded move basically is unfairly targeting law abiding hunters and farmers."

Despite all of the challenges from the past year, Kitchen said that as the province continues to grow, he will continue to push forward and try and encourage the Federal government to realize that rural Canada is not to be forgotten.

He also wanted to wish all of his constituents a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a prosperous New Year.