Discussions

So...apparently anyone living north of the river in Brandon is now in the Spruce Woods Constituency for Tuesday's provincial election. I live on the north hill and am wondering if I am the only one feeling totally out of the loop on who our options are come election day? The only candidate we have heard from is PC Cliff Cullen who has had two mailers delivered to our Canada Post mailbox. I had to go online to learn that he has three opponents - one from the Green Party, one from the Liberals and one from the NDP all of whom seem to be running incognito as not a bit of campaigning have I seen. Maybe I've been living under a rock and missed them?? I am not a avid follower of politics but I do like to know something about my candidate choices prior to going to the polling booth. Guess I'll just have to read online what they have to say (and note that the Liberal candidate has nothing on the website as she was unavailable when asked for information).  
 
Edited by Grandmama, 2019-09-06 15:49:05

I didn't know of the change either.  
 
I live in Douglas and no one campaigns here probably because really the rural area voters are very few.  
 
as usually we are combined with Brandon that has a lot more people.  
 
Plus this riding no matter how it changes in boundaries as long as even my parents were living goes to a certain party and has never changed as long as I know.  
 
Long time ago we had a problem and couldn't get any help from our MP so actually went to Mr. Dinsdale. Who was a great and lovely man. He assisted greatly even though he didn't represent our riding.  
 
Sometimes I wonder nowadays that it doesn't matter who or what party gets in as they all seem to promise much; break after elected and blame everything on the party before. or if they don't get in blame the party that did get in for things that happened when they were in.  
 
All the blaming no wonder nothing gets done.  
 
On a more humorous note, with the election at same time as the Welcome signs saying "hello" all mixed up. I wonder if some think that there is a new party or person called "Hello".

I'd vote for the Hello party. They sound very welcoming.

I too live north of the river in Brandon and am wondering if we are going to lose a lot of things because of this boundary change . Do we lose things such as road repair ( not that we have seen any this year ), fire and safety services , police protection ? Where do our taxes go ? Maybe our CITY COUNCEL and our COUNCILLOR can give us some input on this .

You are still in the City of Brandon, I don’t really think you understand what the Provincial boundary change is all about. It just means that you will be voting for a different MLA than you used to. Boundary changes take place all the time. It is just based on population size. Brandon East and West just have expanded in population .

 
 
Edited by Bass-ic, 2019-09-06 19:47:49

Why do you assume that you lose those things? Besides the fact that most of what you describe are under municipal jurisdiction (with the exception of road work on the trunk highways that go through that riding, so basically 1st and 18th Streets only), why would those things change?  
 
There was an article... somewhere... maybe CBC, maybe Brandon Sun, maybe the elections website proper (I don't recall where now) that analysed what the breakdown of votes were for the section of Brandon that was brought into the new Sprucewoods riding. The polling stations in that allotted area voted overwhelmingly Conservative, by nearly a 2:1 margin, from what I recall.

It will be a very safe Conservative riding. If you look at a lot of the Conservative ridings, the NDP, Liberal and Green just parachuted in a candidate just so there's a name on the ballot. Many of the candidates do NOT live in the riding, or even in Westman for that matter, especially in the more rural ridings. The exception is Brandon East - there's 3 very good candidates there and I don't envy the choice they have to make. The other exception would be in the Boissevain area, where only the Green party has a candidate actually living in the riding (Dave Neufeld). Not even the Conservative candidate lives there, as with the realignment there would be 2 of them living in the same riding and none in that specific riding.