With less than two months before the presumptive election date for this year’s provincial vote, the two current candidates for Flin Flon are beginning to unveil campaign priorities.
Both sitting NDP MLA Tom Lindsey and Progressive Conservative (PC) candidate Theresa Wride are beginning to knock on doors and make public appearances to plead their case to voters.
Lindsey told The Reminder that his priorities as a candidate are fixing health care issues, promoting and providing senior care, stopping cuts to the Northern Patient Transportation Program (NPTP), combating privatization, promoting education and boosting northern mining.
“The main priority for us, as a party, is health care,” said Lindsey. “They talk a lot about the disaster that’s happening in Winnipeg with health care, but that same disaster is happening here in Flin Flon. You can’t give birth in Flin Flon anymore, because of cuts that they’ve made. Nurses are running ragged. We don’t have enough health care aides. I’m not sure what we have left for doctors or nurse practitioners. There’s all kinds of questions with health care here. Yes, we have a shiny new facility, but now we need to make sure we’ve got the staff so that we can have the health care that we need here.”
While she has already started door-knocking and obtaining signatures, Wride jumpstarted her campaign with an event featuring Premier Brian Pallister in Flin Flon July 12. The event served as an official public meet-and-greet with both the Premier and the candidate.
Wride has not provided personal comments on campaign issues, the candidate has backed the existing PC platform for the next election - in essence, continuing on a plan of strict financial control, paying down the provincial deficit while increasing infrastructure investments. Wride said voters have voiced concerns with health care.
“I’ve been out door knocking, just to be out there in the community,” she said. “It’s been going out into the communities, just to say ‘Hi’ to folks and give them an opportunity if they have any concerns they want to share with me. There’s people who haven’t voted before who have told me they’re going to make an effort to vote in this round.”
Wride added that she will continue to seek out comment and information from different northern communities during the campaign and take responsesfrom voters into account.
“It’s quite interesting, because there’s different perspectives and hopefully, rather than just highlighting the issues, we’ll be able to have solutions and to offer solutions as well,: she said. “When you’re trying to make a plan, you bring all your ideas and there’s brainstorming and you see what works, what’s viable.”
Ambulance fees and emergency room wait times have decreased in Manitoba under the existing PC government, but emergencyrooms at three Winnipeg hospitals - Victoria General Hospital, Concordia Hospital and Seven Oaks Hospital - either have been or will be converted to urgent care centres. In Flin Flon, the suspension of birth services at Flin Flon General Hospital last November spurred outrage and a petition to the province to restore the service.
Since taking office, the PC government has also privatized several aspects of Manitoba’s general air services, including aerial firefighting and medical transport. “This government is trending more in the process of privatizing things, like LifeFlight.
“It will become that much more difficult for people in the north to have that kind of equitable access to health care,” said Lindsey.
An ongoing review of K-12 education by the provincial government has also become a topic of discussion on the campaign trail. According to the Manitoba School Boards Association, the main goal of the review is to make recommendations to renew teaching, learning, curriculum and improving the existing system of education.
Critics of the review have said it is a front for amalgamating school divisions across Manitoba, pointing at the results of similar reviews in other provinces. Members of the Flin Flon School Division have met with officials with the Ministry of Education on multiple occasions over the past year regarding the review, including a face-to-face session this past spring.
Lindsey believes part of the reason why a provincial election was called before the original 2020 date was to bypass any public ill will following the review’s release.
“This government now has their education review coming up. That’s probably the main reason why Pallister wants to call an election now, so he thinks he’ll have a mandate to do the same to education that’s he’s done to health care - just cutting it, cutting it, privatizing parts, but making it less successful,” said Lindsey. “We haven’t seen this government make any commitments in the north what so ever, as far as funding for pretty much anything. They wouldn’t give any money to Churchill, they wouldn’t get any money to The Pas when they were in trouble. They won’t even release money from the Mining Community Reserve Fund to help communitiesthat are in trouble with mining.”
