Over the weekend a new president of the Cypress Hills-Grasslands NDP was named.

At the district annual general meeting in Swift Current, now former President James McLauchlan stepped down and announced that Trevor Peterson would be stepping up from his role as vice president to become president.

McLauchlan will be replacing Peterson in the vice president role.

Peterson said that the McLauchlan's decision to step down was based on his want to focus on different things within the executive of the party.

"So James McLauchlan was president for three years, and like I said, we've been a very active executive for the last three years, and he decided to step down to the vice president role, just because he wanted to focus his time on a few other things within the executive."

Peterson said that he has had experience in this role in the past, as he was already the group's president once, and has also run as a candidate for the party in an election in 2011.

Speaking more on the executive group of the organization, Peterson said that he was looking forward to working with them as a president.

Directly following the meeting, a banquet was held in which supper was served and guest speaker and NDP MLA for Saskatoon Nutana, Cathy Sproule, spoke to members attending.

Peterson said that her speech was mostly oriented around federal issues.

"Even though she's a provincial MLA the discussion was connected to federal issues, and so she had a very good message, and so she had a very good message, and it was very well attended and we had good feedback from her speech."

Peterson said that looking towards his new role as president, the Cypress Hills-Grasslands NDP would start preparing for the upcoming federal election.

"I guess we're a year away from a federal election so we're going to start putting together a nomination or a candidate search, and there's a number of people we have in mind for that, and also to start getting ready financially for the upcoming election."

Speaking on the organization's plans for the upcoming election, Peterson said that there were opportunities to win votes when it came to renewable energy as well as helping small towns and communities.

"Well what we see is that, I mean rural Saskatchewan right now is, there's lots of opportunity with renewable energy, also we have some towns and small cities that are really hurting, a lot of that has to do with the decisions of the former Conservative government, but also the provincial Sask government, and so we think there's an opportunity there."