MANITOBA VOTES 2023 – LA VERENDRYE: NDP candidate advocates for rural Manitoba

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This article was published 02/10/2023 (583 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Doing what’s best for rural Manitoba is important to Bianca Siem, the NDP candidate for La Verendrye.

The Ste Anne resident, currently a student at the University of Manitoba studying politics, said she hasn’t always been interested in politics.

“As the world is changing, I realized that young people should be involved and more people should use their voices and feel like they could make a difference,” she said.

Siem is a volunteer in the community and a student leader who serves on multiple boards at the University of Manitoba.

And at 21-years-old, this also happens to be the first provincial election in which she’s eligible to vote.

“I really just want to be able to give back to my community that supported me,” she said adding she hopes she inspires more young people to get involved.

While she may be a political rookie, she’s no stranger to the issues, saying health care is the biggest issue facing La Verendrye.

“There’s not enough paramedics to staff the ambulances and they’re just parked in front of our hospitals and ERs that aren’t open during the night sometimes,” she said. It’s frustrating because people sometimes have an emergency and it’s traumatizing to the families that have to be put into these situations.”

Because of closed emergency rooms Siem said others, such as Steinbach’s, become overwhelmed. Siem said we’re seeing nine-hour waits at ERs now.

“We’re a huge community out here, all of southeast Manitoba that needs health care but we’re just seeing a lack of staffing,” she said.

The rural health-plan announced early in the campaign helped inspire Siem to run.

That includes a commitment to reinstate the rural physician recruitment fund cut by the PC government and double it, work on shorter wait times for ambulances and better cell service, attract more staff to keep rural health centres open, use health technology to connect patients with specialists, and reimburse home-care workers properly for mileage and build more personal care home beds.

“I want to see this go through in rural Manitoba because it’s an actual plan that focuses on retention and training and keeping doctors in rural Manitoba long term,” she said.

She said a conversation with a senior who had moved to La Broquerie for his retirement shed a light on the challenges.

“He told me that he was waiting seven years to find a doctor out here in rural Manitoba and still hasn’t found one,” she said. “His doctor is all the way in the city.”

“I just think there’s so many things that we can do better in rural Manitoba by keeping our staff here long-term and ensuring that we’re making smart investments into treating those health-care workers better to keep our key services running,” she added.

The NDP has also pledged to eliminate the provincial gas tax of 14 cents a liter temporarily to help fight inflation, freeze hydro rates, ban surge pricing for hydro and add a $700 tax rebate for renters.

“A lot of people are feeling that everything is going up right now and we just can’t catch up,” she said. “It’s just getting hard to afford things.”

The NDP have also pledged to tighten up rules on increasing rent, and Siem said it’s important they work with landlords and builders to ensure new housing can be built and rented with fair prices for tenants and a fair return for those creating them.

On Sio Silica, Siem said the decision should be made based on the science.

“We have to make sure that we’re listening to the experts and the Clean Environment Commission,” she said.

The NDP have also promised to fund programs to have meals for students who need it in all 690 public schools in Manitoba. Currently a program is funded in 31 schools.

Siem said her parents emigrated from Cambodia and Vietnam, lived through war and didn’t always have enough food to eat, something they told her not to take for granted. But even here, when she was in school, she noticed some were lacking.

“I saw that there was still some people in my classes that didn’t have lunches at school, and they weren’t able to have that same focus in the classroom,” she said. “If we can make sure every kid has a good start to life, why don’t we do that?”

Francophone education must also be addressed, and Siem said she advocates for the return of the assistant deputy minister of education. Cut by the PC’s that position traditionally focused on French education.

“There’s such a need for French teachers right now but they’re almost burning out in their first year because they’re dealing with those large class sizes and not enough support for them,” she said, adding some have told her they are paying out of pocket for necessary resources as well.

Funding home-care workers adequately with improvements to mileage are also NDP commitments.

Siem is running in a riding that has been a PC stronghold since 2011. However the NDP have a history in La Verendrye as well.

Ron Lemieux held the riding for the NDP for three terms in 1999, 2003 and 2007 before the PC Party took over.

Siem said a vote for the NDP is a chance for La Verendrye residents to have their voices heard.

“I think that if people are wanting a swap in government and they’re upset with the way things are, voting for the NDP and a vote for me would be a commitment to rural Manitoba, a commitment to health care, a commitment to affordability and a commitment to making a better Manitoba,” she said.