Zazalak eyes economic development

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This article was published 24/06/2023 (870 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba Liberals’ candidate for Brandon East in this fall’s provincial election says he will focus his campaign on economic development.

A couple of weeks ago, Assiniboine Community College business instructor Trenton Zazalak was officially nominated to run for the party.

It’s the Elkhorn-born man’s second time running at the provincial level, having run for the Liberals in Spruce Woods in 2011. Back then, he placed fourth to current Deputy Premier Cliff Cullen with 318 votes.

Sitting down with the Sun on Friday, Zazalak said he was first approached by the party about running a couple of years ago.

Initially, he was excited about the opportunity, but that changed when the Freedom Convoy protest happened in early 2022 and brought a fresh wave of hostility to Canadian politics.

“I kind of flipped and flopped for a long time and (was) wondering, ‘Do I want to get into this fray?’” Zazalak said. “But at the end of the day, politics have become divisive, but I’m here for the benefit of my community. I see Brandon having a vibrant future, and it needs the right leadership to get it going in the right direction.”

Zazalak said Brandon needs to have a greater role in Manitoba as its second-largest city, especially when it comes to economic development.

In recent years, Zazalak helped run the now-defunct Aurora Project in Brandon.

The pilot project, which received funding from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, provided advice and guidance to newcomers to the country trying to start businesses.

According to Zazalak, the Aurora Project advised 178 clients and helped 17 businesses get off the ground during the two and a half years it operated.

“I tried to help newcomers start businesses, and how we create wealth in our communities is by having strong businesses here,” he said. “But we need more help.”

What Brandon needs, he said, is something like North Forge, a Winnipeg-based startup incubator that provides advice, access to resources and fabrication space to aspiring entrepreneurs.

While the Wheat City has the Creation Nation Makerspace, which provides members with access to woodworking tools, 3D printers, an audio recording booth and more, it doesn’t have the capacity to support larger-scale enterprises.

Zazalak, who helped found that space, said he has seen businesses who couldn’t get off the ground here in Brandon move to Winnipeg where North Forge was able to help them.

He said it’s not just a case of losing businesses to Winnipeg, but also skilled professionals who look elsewhere for opportunities that aren’t available in Brandon.

“There’s not an abundance of really great-paying jobs here,” he said. “People are typically under-employed. We have more education than what we’re getting paid.”

The other side of this coin for Zazalak is education. When people from Brandon go to other communities for programs that aren’t offered here, he said they don’t typically come back.

While the current provincial government has called for post-secondary institutions to better align their course offerings with the current job market, Zazalak said more focus needs to be put on forecasting what workers will be needed in the future.

He wonders if Brandon would be better placed to attract and retain professionals like doctors if training for them could be provided within the city instead of elsewhere.

On health care, Zazalak said he developed an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the system in Manitoba when dealing with his late daughter Tatyanna’s fight against Batten Disease, which affects the nervous system.

Manitoba, he said, needs to do a better job of pursuing preventative care to minimize the burden on the health-care system. He also said Manitoba should look to other countries to see what they do better and see if their successes can be implemented here.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Manitoba has made multiple deals to send patients waiting for certain procedures and surgeries to other jurisdictions like North Dakota as part of an effort to reduce wait times. Zazalak thinks that’s a mistake.

“One of the ways we build wealth is by keeping wealth here,” he said. “Sending that many people out, what does that cost us? Can we not reinvest that back into our own system?”

If Brandon is Manitoba’s second-largest city, Zazalak said it should be considered a medical hub for the western half of the province and given resources accordingly.

With Zazalak’s entry to the race, Brandon East becomes the first constituency in the city to have candidates nominated by the province’s three largest political parties: the Liberals, the NDP and the Progressive Conservatives.

Progressive Conservative Len Isleifson is making a bid for a third consecutive term after first being elected in 2016 and winning re-election in 2019. Local teacher Glen Simard, running for the NDP, was the first person to announce their candidacy in late 2021.

Elsewhere in Brandon, Grant Jackson is the Tory nominee in the race to succeed Cullen, who announced late last year he would not run for re-election. Entrepreneur Michelle Budiwski is the Liberals’ nominee in that constituency.

The only nominated candidate in Brandon West, where PC MLA and former minister Reg Helwer has also announced his retirement from provincial politics, is retired school teacher Bill Marsh. He’s running for the Green Party of Manitoba.

Former Riverbank Discovery Centre general manager James Montgomery announced his candidacy for the PC nomination in Brandon West back in February, but a nomination meeting has yet to be held.

Election day is scheduled for Oct. 4 under Manitoba’s fixed-term election legislation.

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