BRANDON, Man. – Progressive Conservative leader Jean Charest paid his one election visit to Manitoba last week, pleading with voters to send a few PCs to Ottawa.
He singled out three
ridings: Brandon-Souris, Portage-Lisgar and Daup-hin-Swan River.
“This country needs the leadership and candidates that I have on the stage with me today,” he told several hundred supporters who showed up for a breakfast speech at the Keystone Centre May 21.
Charest said when he was elected an MP in 1984, Manitoba was represented in the House of Commons by different MPs from different parties who made their voices heard.
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Wants to be heard
“In the last three and a half years, Canadians have not heard the voice of Manitoba in the House of Commons,” he said.
In 1993, Manitoba sent 12 Liberals, one New Democrat and one Reform MP to Ottawa. The Tories were shut out.
Charest told the crowd his party is catching on across the country.
“On June 2, we will give the country a Canadian agenda,” he said.
Brandon-Souris PC candidate and Brandon mayor Rick Borotsik is considered to be in a strong race with Liberal Glen McKinnon, who won in 1993, and Reform candidate Ed Agnew.
Charest did not use his half hour speech to talk about local issues, including agriculture.
Instead, he promoted his proposal to cut taxes by 10 percent and his promise that it would help create one million jobs in four years.
Charest said the Liberal deficit-cutting means there soon will be surpluses.
He said Liberals would rather spend it through more programs, rather than give it back in a tax cut. “Over Jean ChrŽtien’s door is the sign: If you send it, we will spend it.”
He said the PCs would cut taxes, balance the budget and spend $2 billion more on health and education funding.
Although the Tory leader did not talk about agriculture in his speech, the issue arose during a later question period with rural Manitoba reporters.
He was pressed on what he means by offering both the Canadian Wheat Board and farmers more “flexibility.”
Charest defended the board’s record but said individual farmers also need to be able to respond to new markets.
Some dual markets
Charest described it as “allowing some dual marketing in some areas and looking at where the new niche areas of the marketplace are, so that can happen.”
On the issue of Conservative proposals to increase user fees for farmers, the Tory leader said it is important that farmers only be charged for the cost of the services received.
But he did not back away from the proposal for higher user fees, unpopular with farm leaders. “We think it’s the right direction in which to go.”
And he insisted the PC proposal to abolish Agriculture Canada as a separate department by rolling it in with three other departments, including environment, did not mean agriculture would be downplayed.
“What we’re doing is doing away with bureaucracy and overlap,” he said. “Agriculture will not lose its focus in this country, it certainly won’t lose its focus under our government. If anything, the party that I lead has always had a very strong constituent among Canadian farmers and we have always been very, very active in dealing with farming issues ….”
