Any hopes that Thompson council may have had that a visit from Premier Brian Pallister, who made his first public appearance in the city since becoming the leader of the provincial government in 2016, would be the start of a thawing in the chilly relations between the city’s elected officials and the Progressive Conservative government were dashed pretty quickly Aug. 8 when their attempts to get a face-to-face meeting with the premier were rebuffed.
Mind you, Pallister did have a busy schedule that day, hustling off to Flin Flon and then The Pas after making an announcement in Thompson, and he was probably aware that councillors might not be too happy with his government at that time, having just found out the previous week that the city was receiving only half as much this year for road improvements ($200,000) as it did in 2017. Several councillors were in attendance when the premier announced a new $380 million contract for Bell Mobility to replace the province’s aging emergency radio system, though Thompson’s mayor was not part of the official announcement like his counterparts in West St. Paul and Brandon were at simultaneous events in their cities. At least one tried to bend the premier’s ear afterwards, but may not have had much time, given that he was headed off to a radio interview and then out of town for the day’s next appearances.
At the Aug. 13 council meeting, one of the agenda items included a resolution to approve the Association of Manitoba Municipalities (AMM) to lobby the province not to change how it delivers this road and bridge funding in the future, since the previous model allowed Thompson to access up to 50 per cent of such costs to a maximum of $400,000.
That the premier didn’t take the time to meet with the mayor or councillors on this rare visit to Thompson was unsurprising, given that his announcement had no more to do with Thompson than with any other municipality in the province and there isn’t necessarily a reason to have a discussion when you don’t have anything to offer and the demands of the other party – essentially, more money, whether from previously existing programs or other sources such as the possibly inaptly named Mining Communities Reserve Fund – are pretty well known. On the other side, council members seem more interested in scoring political points on this issue than making any actual difference, since the province has made it pretty clear since taking power that they aren’t particularly interested in spending any more money than the previous government and in most cases are actively trying to spend less to cut down the deficit. Why bother negotiating when neither side wants to budge?
Brian Pallister did have time to meet with private citizens, many of them PC party supporters, while he was in Thompson, which is an indicator that the next scheduled provincial election is less than two years away and the parties contested it are becoming more interested in shoring up and expanding their support and raising money for their campaigns. Perhaps some time between now and then Thompson will start to hear more good news announcements from the provincial government as they try to ensure that Kelly Bindle, their only MLA from the province’s north, has a shot at keeping the Thompson riding in the PC column, something that last happened 35 years before he knocked off the longstanding incumbent Steve Ashton in 2016.
Nevertheless, though the premier finally made a public appearance in Thompson more than two years after his party was elected government, at the height of summer no less, the relationship between the City of Thompson and the province doesn’t seem any warmer than it did in the winter. Perhaps things will become more cordial as the weather cools down following the election of a new mayor and council on Oct. 24.
