No shortage of issues in Spruce Woods byelection

Opinion

With less than a week to go, candidates in Manitoba’s Spruce Woods byelection are spending their August days and evenings going door to door in the district trying to win your vote. And the abiding question, of course, is which candidate will measure up come election day on Aug. 26.

Over the last several weeks, The Brandon Sun has taken a lead role in helping voters better understand the three individuals who are vying to represent the electoral district. We’ve followed them along the campaign trail, drilled them with questions for feature stories, and been at the ready when they have the odd campaign announcement.

But we have also made a point of visiting as many corners of Spruce Woods as possible to listen to ordinary men and women in communities scattered across the region to hear what concerns and issues you want to talk about, and what you want to hear on the campaign trail from your candidates. Here’s a little bit of what you told us.

“What’s important is (highways) 2 and 5, that they fix that corner so that there’s no accidents,” said Kelly Wilson, owner of the Glenboro Bake Shop. “Because there’s been a couple fatalities, there’s quite a few accidents there. At least one or two a year.”

Melanie Christison, who works in Holland and lives in Glenboro, said ambulance response times in the event of an emergency are alarmingly high.

“It’s amazing we have STARS because we would never be able to have as many lives saved if we took that away, with all the ambulance departments that have been taken away. Usually if you’re in an incident or an accident where you need 911, you need it now.”

Jo-Ann Verniest, who lives just outside of Holland along Highway 34, said the state of the highway is “pothole city” and desperately needs a full repair, instead of just patchwork.

“It just keeps crumbling because they have big trucks that come, potato trucks, up and down all the time, they’re wrecking the roads,” Verniest said. “They’re not being fixed, they’re being slapped. They’re putting a Band-Aid on.”

Souris resident Cassandra Shand told the Sun that there is a need for more housing in the community. She has been looking for a two-bedroom apartment for a while but is stuck in a one-bedroom space due to a lack of availability.

“One thing this town needs is a really big apartment complex,” Shand said. “We just keep on having so many people coming to town, but there’s nothing available for rent or for sale.

One man in Oak Lake who did not want his name published said the NDP need to make a major push on health-care staff shortages and lower high provincial income taxes before the party would get his vote.

Ches Bollman, the Reeve of the RM of Elton, said the provincial government needs to give more money to municipal governments so they can operate properly. With costs rising so rapidly, he said it’s hard for municipalities to keep up.

“We don’t have the money, because the costs have gone up so much the last few years to do roadwork and every other thing like that,” Bollman said.

Reeve Bollman also said that the area is in dire need of more people who can operate ambulances.

“I think if you get hurt, you’re better to get somebody to drive you than wait on an ambulance, because God only knows when they might show up.”

And we also learned that at least a few residents on Brandon’s North Hill think that it’s less than ideal that Spruce Woods is a mix of both urban and rural voters.

“What I envision I need from an MLA has got to be different than somebody who lives in the Sprucewoods area or the north Rivers area or Souris,” said North Hill resident John Russell.

There are, of course, many other issues that were brought to our attention over the course of this byelection campaign, but health-care access, emergency room closures and the need for extensive road repairs have dominated much of the discussion.

And at the core of the issues is a need for government to be more responsive to the needs of rural Manitobans outside of the Perimeter Highway. And this goes well past the current NDP government under Premier Wab Kinew or even the Progressive Conservative administration of Heather Stefanson or Brian Pallister.

It’s simply too easy for MLAs who are most often sequestered in Winnipeg to ignore what happens outside the capital.

But this has not been the case over the last two months. As we have noted before on this page, political pundits are watching this byelection closely, particularly as Kinew has seemingly taken it upon himself to make this race a close one. Only time will tell if his efforts have borne fruit.

As a consequence, party leaders have been visiting Spruce Woods over the last several weeks, eager to claim the region in a battle that will make no change in government, nor likely offer any of the three candidates much of a profile beyond their own home turf here in western Manitoba.

It’s battleground Spruce Woods. And we’re here for it.

In a few short hours, all three Spruce Woods candidates will descend upon the community of Sprucewoods near CFB Shilo to take part in the joint Brandon Sun — Brandon University public debate, starting at 7 p.m. at the Sprucewoods Community Hall.

Over the course of 90 minutes, our panellists will be bringing much of what we have learned on the sidewalks of Spruce Woods communities to this debate. Whether you have already voted in advance polls or not, we invite residents of the electoral district to join us in Sprucewoods for what promises to be an interesting evening.

Hopefully, we can help some of you make up your minds.