NDP promise puts pressure on Isleifson

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This article was published 15/08/2023 (935 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You really can’t blame the members of the Park Community Centre board of directors, and the residents living in the surrounding area, for feeling a tangible sense of exhaustion over their multi-year struggle to save their neighbourhood gathering place.

Over the past five years, the core area building has faced a potential demolition order at least twice. It has had its capacity limit reduced due to structural issues, and has had hopes of repair, reconstruction and revival lifted, then dashed in a series of missteps at city hall.

In just the past few weeks, the board and neighbourhood have celebrated the joy of a $100,000 funding commitment from Heritage Co-op, but then felt the sting of being denied funding from the provincial government’s $100-million Arts, Culture and Sport in Community Fund.

Our Progressive Conservative government appears to have decided that spending $500,000 on a sculpture garden at the Riverbank Discovery Centre is a higher priority than saving Park Community Centre.

Manitoba New Democratic Leader Wab Kinew has a different opinion. On Sunday, he announced that if an NDP government is elected this fall, it will invest up to $1 million to rebuild the community centre, including space for a daycare centre.

“We’ll commit a million dollars towards a cost-shared project, working not just with the municipal leadership, but here with the community leadership to ensure that we can get a new facility off the ground,” Kinew told the audience.

He explained that “Whenever I come to Brandon, I hear a lot about child care … It seemed like there was a real win-win opportunity here to both support the needed community initiative, and to expand the child-care spaces available to meet the needs of families.”

If both the need and the opportunity is obvious to Kinew, who lives in Winnipeg, why has it been so hard to convince our local elected leaders of the merits of the project? Why has there been so much resistance at the city council table and among city administration? Why have our government MLAs been surprisingly silent throughout the ups and downs of the issue?

That silence has clearly frustrated Brandon East NDP candidate Glen Simard, who criticizes incumbent Tory MLA Len Isleifson for inaction on the Park file. “He (Isleifson) couldn’t get the Park Community Centre the funding it needs, but I will,” says Simard. “I care about Brandon East families, and alongside Wab Kinew I will work hard to ensure that Brandon families have better health care and a thriving community.”

In response, Isleifson says he is “actively working with the mayor and council on solutions for Park Community Centre with hopes, of course, of including a child-care facility.” He claims that “Community centres are of upmost importance to myself and the PC team, hence our $100-million investment in Arts, Culture and Sport in our communities.”

But really, how important can Park Community Centre be to Isleifson and his government colleagues if they wouldn’t allocate a single dollar from the $100-million fund for the Park project?

Park Community Centre board chair Eldon Schmitz is correct in saying that politics should play no role in decisions regarding the centre’s future, but politics are always at play when government money is involved, especially during an election year.

Kinew and Simard understand that, and that’s undoubtedly why they were so quick to make their $1-million commitment after the centre was snubbed by our Tory government. With the Brandon East seat up for grabs, they know their offer of funding — conditional on their winning the election — will earn vital votes for Simard.

Isleifson and his boss, Premier Heather Stefanson, know that, too. And with the provincial election expected to be a close contest between the Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats, they also know that the outcome in Brandon East might determine which party forms government and who gets to be premier.

For that reason, we will not be surprised if the Tories match the NDP’s funding promise in the coming weeks.