Five contend for Point Douglas seat
Byelection set for June 13
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This article was published 24/05/2017 (3130 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The constituency of Point Douglas is getting ready to decide who will take the role of MLA following a byelection on June 13.
Five candidates have been nominated since Kevin Chief resigned his seat last December, and The Times spoke to all of them about their platforms.
Sabrina Koehn Binesi – Green Party
Sabrina Koehn Binesi moved to the North End in 2012 and started working at Elizabeth Fry Society of Winnipeg. She volunteers at the Meet Me at the Bell Tower’s kitchen, cooking for the community.
She has worked as an executive office assistant in federal and provincial government departments and has worked as a legal assistant.
The 39-year-old Green Party candidate is an Ojibwe and Cree person from Sandy Bay First Nation and Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation in Nelson House. She told The Times she wants to be a steward for those who don’t have a voice, including nature, and hopefully bring an education centre where green development and different cultures can be fostered.
If elected, she said she will implement a bottle depot right away so that low-income people will have extra money.
“I’m a community activist and environmentalist, and I want to make a change. I want to be engaged with the people. I want to help them change, and I want to grow with Manitoba.”
Binesi said she wants to focus her work on the Canadian corrections system and the Gladue Report. She also wants to reform child welfare policies, because according to her if the government doesn’t stop taking away education funding, it’s going to be hard for kids to thrive in the future. She will base her work on the green economy and support an inter-government relationship.
She added she wants to have more grants and funding available for community organizations and members working to improve their neighbourhoods.
“It’s hard enough for an educated student to get an opportunity to help the community as a grassroots person. If a grassroots person or a citizen can’t even take the initiative to try, because you either have to work, or you have to get the money from somewhere… if that’s not available, what’s going to become of this neighbourhood?” she said.
“Things are going unaddressed, and our people are being neglected and forgotten, and it’s unacceptable.
“We need to find a remedy and interject them into the way that the province delivers services to the community here.”
John Cacayuran – Manitoba Liberal Party
The Manitoba Liberal party named its candidate in February. Born and raised in Point Douglas, 38-year-old Cacayuran is a former gaming investigator for provincial regulatory bodies and worked in the area often. He is a volunteer at the Manitoba Indigenous Cultural Education Centre, Mama Bear and the Bear Clan Patrol and with several Legions.
Cacayuran said if elected, he will evaluate the current system to see where he can tap in.
“I’m going to try to build around that. I hear from an organization that they have yet to tap into the federal government, and I look at them ‘Why not?’ and they say the same thing ‘Because we don’t know how,’” he said, adding he will be able to help them.
Cacayuran added Point Douglas needs to improve its community relations. He said many residents don’t trust each other, don’t trust the police and don’t trust politicians.
“I’m running in Point Douglas because of the potential it brings to the table…There’s a lot of hidden gems in the community, and we want to highlight that,” he said. “(The community is) tired of the promises (politicians) don’t keep and they want a real change.”
“They just need someone to give them help, be able to articulate in a way that best represents them at the legislature.”
This will be Cacayuran’s debut in politics. He worked as the constituency manager for Kildonan-St. Paul MP MaryAnn Mihychuk. He added he gained knowledge of how the funding system works from the federal, provincial and municipal side through his experience working with Mihychuk. He worked with projects to get funding for a theatre in Seven Oaks and numerous organizations that needed help with immigration issues.
To learn more about Cacayuran’s work go to www.facebook.com/John4PointDouglas/
Gary Marshall – Manitoba Party
Gary Marshall, 54, is the Point Douglas byelection candidate and one of the founding members of the Manitoba Party. He currently works as a dialysis technologist in the health care field and said he has watched Manitoba stumble on its economics.
He told The Times he wants Manitoba to have the lowest tax rates in the nation and expects to lower the provincial tax from eight to five per cent, reduce condo property taxes, and ensure that a minimum of 90 per cent of education funding is spent in schools.
“It’s an unusual idea in the economics. I tried it one way and couldn’t get anywhere, so we are trying this way. Running as an MLA is just the natural series of moving into the political world and putting your ideas forward,” he explained.
“Point Douglas is the toughest and poorest neighbourhood, and I think our ideas there will do the people good.”
If elected, he said he would implement strategies to take families out of poverty with increasing the basic personal exemption from $9,000 to $20,000 per person, $40,000 per couple and $48,000 for families with children.
He said the Manitoba Party is based on public finance theory. He said taxation is a penalty and the higher the penalty, the less economic activity the province will see. If Manitoba raises its taxes, people are going to start moving out of the province, and instead of making more money, the province will lose money, he explained.“
A lot of the calculation that you see ‘Oh we are going to cut the PST, and we’ll lose our revenue,’ are based on faulty and very bad premises,” he said. “And that’s why I say they are stuck in the 19th century here.”
Marshall said he wants to take people in lower income brackets out of the tax rolls and let the people in the higher income brackets in, and encourage them to invest in the province giving them a 10 per cent flat tax rate on personal and business income.
To learn more about Marshall’s platform, go to mbparty.ca or call 204-818-0963.
Jodi Moskal – Progressive Conservative Party
Jodi Moskal was among the three names who showed interest in being the Progressive Conservative MLA for the Point Douglas constituency.
Moskal is a 50-year-old electrician who’s been running a family business for 20 years. She volunteered as one of the chairs of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce and said she improved her understanding of the importance of local and small business to communities and how it helps to the economy. She became an electrician in the ’90s, and she speaks to female students about the opportunities that are open to them.
“I think it’s time that Point Douglas has a seat at the table with a strong voice with Brian Pallister and his team. It’s been an area that was taken for granted for far too long and they need a strong voice,” she said.
The neighbourhood needs safety, she said. Safe streets and a safe community.
“People want opportunities to be in social enterprises, and they want support from the government for these social enterprises in the community,” she said.
Moskal said some have told her the area needs a 24-7 women’s shelter and she hopes to make that happen if she’s elected, she said.
Moskal purchased her first PC membership when she decided to run for the nomination. She said the values of the PC government aligns with hers when looking into the public funds and making sure they get where they need to go.
“The people in Point Douglas know exactly what they want, exactly what they need. They just need someone who will take their words and amplify them in the legislature to make sure that what they need and what they want will happen,” she said, adding she will work hard to shine a light in Point Douglas.
To learn more about Moskal’s platform go to http://www.jodimoskal.ca/
Bernadette Smith – New Democratic Party
Born and raised in Point Douglas, Bernadette Smith, 43, is the New Democratic Party candidate and currently works as an assistant director of Wayfinders program in the Seven Oaks School Division and is the co-founder of the Coalition of Families of Missing and Murdered Women in Manitoba (CFMMWM), which she founded after her sister went missing. She has a long history of supporting families of missing and murdered Indigenous people.
Smith has worked with students to help them graduate because she dropped out of school when she was 17 years old and understands the importance of education for youth. After some time, she went back to school and became a youth care worker after she graduated from Red River College.
“I knew the way out of poverty was education,” she said. “I didn’t graduate, and I wanted to make sure kids graduated.”
Talking to residents in the area, she said she listened to stories that resonated with hers.
“I’m running to inspire the next generation that there is hope. You can do something with your life and to make sure that those resources are there,” Smith said. “I want to make sure that there is not as many barriers as I faced.”
Smith has always been an NDP supporter and said the party’s values around families always resonated with her. She became a member of the party two years ago.
If elected she will ensure kids have easy access to education and that they have access to post-secondary education.
“I want to work with the schools and the families to figure out how we can reduce absenteeism and making sure that kids are seeing themselves reflected at school,” she added.
She said she would make sure there are senior programs in the community and that the community centres are working with the kids. She also wants to implement a child care system where foster parents and family members can do co-parenting.
“Our families need support. We need to start building on their strength because there are so many strong, resilient people in this community. This is a very vibrant community that cares about one another.”
To learn more about Smith’s platform, go to http://todaysndp.ca/bernadette-smith-bio