Mayor: Local experience not at table

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This article was published 14/01/2012 (5398 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Wheat City will have to find other ways to put its issues on centre stage, after Premier Greg Selinger failed to elevate the city’s lone NDP MLA in Friday’s cabinet shuffle, Brandon Mayor Shari Decter Hirst said.

“We will have to make sure we have solid and wide lanes of communication to the cabinet and to the premier,” Decter Hirst said. “Drew Caldwell has always had a loud voice in promoting the needs of Brandon and western Manitoba, and it would have been very nice to have the strength of that voice in cabinet. We need to make sure it doesn’t negatively impact the community.”

Brandon has been without a cabinet minister of its own since 2007, when Scott Smith was defeated by Progressive Conservative Rick Borotsik.

Caldwell’s appointment as the premier’s legislative assistant for Westman in 2008 was designed, in part, to act as a stop-gap measure that gave Manitoba’s second-largest city a voice in the provincial decision-making process.

While it gives Caldwell direct access to the premier and his influence, it does not give him a vote at cabinet meetings, where many of the provincial decisions are made.

“I think the down side of this is not the obvious, but that the majority of the people sitting around that table are not aware of the issues in our community,” Decter Hirst said.

“They can read about it. They can hear about it, but they’re not living it. So when we talk about things like the impact of the Brandon University strike, they are at a distance. They aren’t part of our community. That’s always been the power and the strength of the cabinet table. It needs to represent all aspects of the province.”

The Brandon East NDP constituency will be discussing Caldwell’s situation next week, president Stacy Senkbeil said.

“It is something we have talked about a lot over the past couple of years because we believe having a seat at the cabinet table is important. We have had conversations with the premier and other members of the party about having representation in Westman. The one positive thing is, in spite of not having a cabinet seat, Brandon never goes unnoticed in all of the throne speeches and budgets.”

If direct pleas to Premier Greg Selinger have fallen on deaf ears, what would have worked?

Senkbeil said Caldwell has been supportive of his constituency on a provincial level and she remains hopeful that he will be rewarded with a cabinet portfolio.

Decter Hirst, a former NDP provincial party president, said that Caldwell is up to holding a position in cabinet.

“I’m sure Mr. Caldwell’s skill set would have made him eminently capable of handling any of the existing portfolios without having to add a new one,” Decter Hirst said. “We’ve got two strong MLAs in the city and I think Team Brandon will keep doing what we have been doing effectively for the last few years.”

While others remain hopeful Caldwell will finally earn a cabinet post, one of his colleagues in the legislature said his exclusion says more about the government’s priorities than anything else.

“I guess we’ve become pretty used to it,” Brandon West Progressive Conservative MLA Reg Helwer said. “We haven’t had a cabinet minister under the NDP for many years now and apparently, that’s how much they think of Brandon.”

» kborkowsky@brandonsun.com