Only two candidates show up at Brandon University for debate

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This article was published 06/04/2016 (3641 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRANDON — Brandon West Tory candidate Reg Helwer mistakenly lambasted the NDP Wednesday for supposedly reneging on post-secondary funding promises, then refused to say how much the Conservatives would provide to universities and colleges.

Helwer told a student provincial election debate at Brandon University that the NDP had reneged on a promise to increase post-secondary grants by six per cent a year each year for five years, but reneged and only increased grants by three per cent.

But at another point in the debate, Helwer told the students, “The Selinger government has frozen funding to students. It’s been a very damaging time for universities in Manitoba.”

“The Selinger government lied to you time and time again prior to the last election — what will they lie about to you this time?” challenged Helwer.

Only Helwer and Brandon East NDP candidate Drew Caldwell — both incumbents — showed up for the two-riding debate.

However, asked in an interview following the debate when the NDP made the six per cent increase over five years promise, Helwer was uncertain, saying it might have been about three years ago. When it was suggested the NDP had once promised five per cent a year for three years, and reneged the third year, providing only 2.5 per cent that year and in subsequent years, Helwer said that sounded right, and speculated he had mistakenly used figures for some form of health-care funding whose details he could not immediately remember.

For his part, Caldwell — the NDP’s first education minister after taking power in 1999 — told students he had cut tuition by 10 per cent and frozen it at 1999 levels.

The NDP has always characterized that now-abandoned tuition control as keeping tuition at 1999 levels and then giving students a 10 per cent rebate, but Caldwell insisted Wednesday that it was always a cut and freeze.

By law, Manitoba allows universities and colleges to increase tuition by only the level of provincial growth, and operating grants have been right around 2.5 per cent for universities and two per cent for colleges.

Helwer declined to say what a Tory government would do. “Those are the responsibilities of our leader,” he said in an interview, declining to say if he expects Leader Brian Pallister to say anything about post-secondary finances before the April 19 election.

Both candidates promised to champion the cause of Brandon University and Assiniboine Community College.

Helwer raised the 45-day BU faculty strlke in 2011.

“The first question I get from people is, ‘Will there be another strike?’” he said. “We are still building the campus back.”

Helwer denied yells from the student audience that he is anti-union: “It has nothing to do with unions,” he said.

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Caldwell accused Pallister of planning to reduce the number of doctors and nurses across Manitoba — Helwer countered by emphasizing that front-line health care workers will not be reduced under a Conservative government.

If anything costs the province lost doctors, Helwer said, it will be Greg Selinger’s promise to increase taxes on Manitoba’s highest earners.

“Those are doctors, and they’re not going to stay here if they’re taxed even more,” said Helwer.

The only other candidate organizers said had committed to coming was Brandon West’s Liberal Billy Moore, who was a no-show. Prof. Kelly Saunders, a BU political science professor acting as moderator, said there’d been no word from Moore about his absence.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Nick Martin

Former Free Press reporter Nick Martin, who wrote the monthly suspense column in the books section and was prolific in his standalone reviews of mystery/thriller novels, died Oct. 15 at age 77 while on holiday in Edinburgh, Scotland.