Vice-principal, former city councillor go head to head in Transcona byelection

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This article was published 17/03/2025 (229 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On the eve of election night, turnout for advance voting in Transcona’s provincial byelection has been “not bad.”

Elections Manitoba said there were 2,231 advance votes cast at the end of day Sunday, out of 17,908 registered voters, with advance voting continuing until 8 p.m. Monday. Election day is Tuesday.

“That’s 12 per cent of the registered voters, which isn’t bad,” said University of Manitoba adjunct political studies professor Christopher Adams.

“For byelections, I usually expect between 30 and 40 per cent turnout and it might even be lower for this byelection.”

The byelection was called following the death of NDP MLA and education minister Nello Altomare, who died of cancer Jan. 14.

Four candidates are vying for the seat: Progressive Conservative candidate Shawn Nason, NDP candidate Shannon Corbett, Liberal candidate Brad Boudreau and Susan Auch, who is running as an independent.

The Green Party of Manitoba said it would not field a candidate out of respect for Altomare.

Adams says the race will come down to Nason, 56, a former Transcona city councillor who worked as constituency manager for former Elmwood-Transcona MP Lawrence Toet, and Corbett, 53, a vice-principal at Transcona Collegiate who was mentored by Altomare.

“A lot of mainstream voters vote for the NDP in Transcona as well as people who would remember Shawn Nason as a city councillor,” Adams said.

Auch, 59, is a former Olympic speedskater and current Realtor. Boudreau, 30, works as a policy adviser to federal Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Minister Gary Anandasangaree.

Extending the advanced polling opportunities right up until the day before the election could help well-organized parties get their supporters to the polls, Adams said. But he also said politics is all over the news right now.

“It’s hard in a byelection to get your own stories out — I’m thinking of the Trump tariffs, the election of the new leader of the Liberal party, the swearing in of the new leader and his cabinet. It’s likely we’ll have (a federal) election called in the next couple of days,” Adams said.

He said motivating voters to cast a ballot might be difficult when the results of the byelection won’t change the fact the NDP government holds a majority of the 57 seats in the Manitoba legislature. The NDP have 33 seats and the Progressive Conservatives have 21.

The polls open at 8 a.m. Tuesday. Elections Manitoba said it expects results to start being reported 60 to 90 minutes after the polls close at 8 p.m., and completed in two hours.

For more information on how and where to vote, go to: wfp.to/transcona.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca