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All
quiet on the western front With the hustle and bustle going on in Brandon these days, you'd
expect the city might be caught up in election fever. But the
opposition parties are having trouble drumming up If it wasn't for the signs on boulevards, a casual observer might
not guess Brandon is in the middle of a provincial election campaign. The NDP government has been good to Brandon, bringing Hydro development construction at the university, and expanding the regional health centre. It helps that both of Brandon's MLAs are in the provincial cabinet. Brandon East incumbent Drew Caldwell says the hospital expansion sat on the backburner until the NDP formed government. "There is a lot of optimism in Brandon today," he says. "The endangered species known as the building crane has returned to Brandon and western Manitoba." • No controversial local issues • Meir Serfati, a politicla science professor at Brandon University, agrees that the NDP has done a lot for the city in the last three-and-a-half years. As a a result, he says, there has been zero debate in the election campaign about local issues – or any issues. "That's one of the strangest things for me – nothing has appeared as a local issue," he says. "In fact, you'd expect Reg Atkinson, as a former mayor of Brandon, to bring up some ideas important to Brandon, but he has gone out of his way to follow the provincial campaign literature, even in his own literature. So far he hasn't done anything to bring up anything intrinsic to Brandon." Conservative candidate Reg Atkinson set out to knock on every door in the western half of Brandon. He's almost accomplished his goal. He carries with him a sheet of names and addresses, and beside
each, he marks the issues he hears about at the door. "Today
I've had hospitals, roads, health care, taxes, nurses, educaiton,
smoking bylaw..." he lists. Atkinson thinks he has a good chance in the Brandon West constituency. In the 1997 civic election, he beat out Scott Smith, the area's current MLA, in the mayoral race. Even though Smith is a minister in the NDP government, Atkinson says he's got the profile and the platform to beat him. • Turnover would be 'a miracle' • Professor Serfati says the Tories will have a hard time taking back Brandon West, despite the long history the party had there prior to the upset in the last election. Serfati expects the NDP will sweep Brandon once again; quiet campaigns traditionally favour the incumbant. "Given the provincial trend and what's not happened here yet, it doesn't seem to me in the cards that it will turn Conservative again," he says. "I think it would take a miracle, in a way." There is still a chance for Brandon residents to grill the politicians on the issues that are important to them. The Brandon Chamber of Commerce is planning to debates: one for candidates on May 27, and one for party leaders on May 28. Both debates will be held at the Keystone Centre. |
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Watch CBC's Leaders' Debate (aired May 30, runs 38 min.) 
