Local MLAs named legislative assistants

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This article was published 28/01/2022 (1203 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two local MLAs were promoted to legislative assistants in last week’s cabinet shuffle.

Dawson Trail MLA Bob Lagassé was named legislative assistant to Families Minister Rochelle Squires, while Borderland MLA Josh Guenter was made legislative assistant to Health Minister Audrey Gordon.

The appointments were announced in a Jan. 18 Order in Council published on the Manitoba government website.

The title comes with an additional $4,735 on top of the base MLA salary of $97,753. (Cabinet ministers collect $53,519 on top of their base salary).

Legislative assistants don’t have a formal job description. Instead, individual cabinet ministers decide which tasks their assistants take on.

Guenter’s appointment will see him more involved in Manitoba Health, whose vaccine mandates he criticized publicly last summer.

In an Aug. 27, 2021 Facebook post, Guenter shared a letter he had written to Brian Pallister, then in his final days as premier.

In it, Guenter, who is fully vaccinated, stated his opposition vaccine mandates, “both as a matter of personal conviction and on behalf of the constituents I represent.”

Likening vaccine mandates to a “sledgehammer,” Guenter called them “punitive and dangerous.”

“The more government thrashes about trying to get people to take the vaccine, the less inclined my constituents are to listen,” he wrote.

He predicted vaccine mandates would cause school, hospital, and local government staff to walk off the job in protest.