Seniors press mayoral candidates for support

Health care, Sunday shopping, transgender and gender diversity issues all part of wide-ranging session at Pat Porter Active Living Centre

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This article was published 13/09/2018 (2023 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Steinbach mayoral candidates were put on the hot seat at the Pat Porter Active Living Centre last night, as the organization hosted candidates John Fehr, Earl Funk and Paul Neustaedter.

The trio responded to a wide range of topics including questions about traffic, health care, Sunday shopping, transgender and gender diverse supports in Hanover School Division, as well as the long-standing sore point for the centre itself-lack of funding for community organizations.

As concerns about traffic were raised, Earl Funk noted the return of an RCMP traffic services division to the Steinbach RCMP detachment. Two officers were added in July, another two in August, and a final officer will join the re-established unit by the end of the year.

GRANT BURR | THE CARILLON
Steinbach mayoral candidates Earl Funk, John Fehr and Paul Neustaedter participate in a question and answer session at the Pat Porter Centre on Thursday night.
GRANT BURR | THE CARILLON Steinbach mayoral candidates Earl Funk, John Fehr and Paul Neustaedter participate in a question and answer session at the Pat Porter Centre on Thursday night.

“We’re already seeing improvement as the amount of tickets is going up exponentially,” Funk told the crowd.

Funk, who chairs the city’s RCMP advisory committee, also spoke of the need for driver education and noted the stop sign rewards program offered earlier this week.

“Handing out coupons for a day, that’s great, but day two, three, four, let’s hand tickets out…let’s get tougher here,” said Neustaedter, adding to Funk’s comments.

Fehr acknowledged the city might yet consider the idea of a municipal police, as was suggested in a question by resident Dave Giesbrecht.

“That might be the next step in better coverage,” Fehr agreed, while still praising the current relationship the city has with RCMP.

Candidates advocated more communication with the province when it came to matters like hospital improvements and more personal care home beds. Neustaedter, who has committed to developing a plan for a community multiplex within eight months of the election, was challenged to commit dollars instead to Rest Haven’s PCH expansion.

“A multiplex is not something that we will be building an entire project in a single term,” said Neustaedter, suggesting city resources wouldn’t be stretched by a single project.

Fehr noted the city’s $1.5 million donation to the Bethesda Foundation was already meant to support Rest Haven’s plans.

“I think the city has done most of what it can do,” agreed Funk, who shared about challenges in moving that project forward, which were shared with him by HavenGroup CEO David Driedger.

“The province’s funding model is not working at this moment. There’s a shortfall from the province,” Funk said, noting Driedger was wary of taking on a bigger financial stake.

“He doesn’t want to go and get more money or have a mortgage on it because if we can’t do it with the Bethesda Foundation and the community we have…what are other communities in Manitoba going to do,” said Funk.

“If that happens and we go ahead and do it, then they change the funding model. So, that’s money we’ll never ever get back from the province.”

Need for tax relief reiterated

The evening circled back on a couple of occasions to the fact that for the last eight years city council has not, despite requests, provided funding to the Pat Porter Active Living Centre.

Former mayor Les Magnussen, an active member at the centre, grilled candidates and expressed his frustration with lack of support for the centre in recent years.

“They can spend thousands of dollars on other stuff but they can’t give this, serving seniors, $12 or $13,000 a year to cover our taxes,” he said.

Fehr said a current $50,000 discretionary fund, used in the past for things like pocket parks and light stand ornaments, could be made accessible to community organizations.

“I think we can do much better than we have,” he said.

Funk maintained the city’s grant process was focussed on seed funding for capital projects, but acknowledged a better relationship with groups like the Pat Porter Active Living Centre needed to be established.

“There was disconnect,” he said, reflecting on the last few years. “That has been a disservice to you.”

The topic allowed Neustaedter to take a different approach, not being tied to the decision to drop funding to the organization, like Fehr and Funk.

“I know that anything you’d get would actually be better than zero for the past eight years,” he said.

Neustaedter said he would advocate for the centre to receive funding to offset its tax bill and promised an announcement on Oct. 17 related to the request.

Sunday shopping gets cold shoulder

Both Funk and Fehr said they would not support Sunday shopping, suggesting lack of local business support.

Local lawyer, David Banman, has begun a campaign to champion the issue, after failing to convince council to add a referendum question on the subject to the Oct. 24 vote. The matter is set to return to city council on Tuesday night.

“Right now the service providers are not saying very much, so I’d have to say they’re most likely not in agreement with it,” Funk said.

“For that reason, I go back to what my heart tells me and I like it the way it is.”

Fehr said he didn’t support a plebiscite when the issue was brought to council in August, because he believed the results would be similar to Banman’s survey results, which showed over 60 percent support for Sunday shopping.

Neustaedter talked about Sundays as “a cherished day for our family,” but also said he wanted to listen to what citizens have to say on the issue.

That prompted an interjection by Fehr, who questioned what relevance a non-binding referendum question would have.

“I just felt that was not a good place to put council in that position, if they felt that the business community was not going to embrace the answers to the survey,” he said.

Diversity question explored

Carmen Koepke sought candidates’ thoughts on a new Hanover School Division policy document that aims to support transgender and gender diverse students and how they felt about all citizens of Steinbach feeling the community was a good, safe place to live.

“For me, it’s very important to love and respect all individuals,” said Neustaedter.

“I think the nicest thing that I can do is look at my track record and see that I’ve hired people from all different communities, whether the LGBT community or people just immigrating here from India,” he added, going on to describe an interaction he had with Indian newcomers at the Mennonite Heritage Village’s Fall of the Farm event.

Funk concurred.

“Love, respect, honour whoever comes from the door…we feed them all,” Funk said, who has promised the return of a regular mayor’s prayer breakfast as part of his platform.

“I can’t say more about this. We need to be open, hospitable to all people. If we are that way then we can tell our story with them and they will listen to our story as we listen to theirs.

“Therefore it’s no longer I that do, but sin that lives in me,” commented Fehr, referencing a Biblical passage in Romans 7.

“I don’t necessarily feel that I need to love exactly what they do, because I might not see it as healthy,” Fehr said.

“I’ve had people working for me that are HIV-positive and I have treated them exactly the way that I would treat anybody,” Fehr offered as an example.

Fehr told The Carillon he wasn’t aware of this particular employee’s sexual orientation and did not use the example because it is something he associates with the LGBTQ community.

“No. It had nothing to do with that,” he said.

Fehr was hesitant to talk further about the subject.

“I don’t have to talk about that because it’s not something that council talks about,” he said, despite the fact that he brought forward a city council motion in 2013 that criticized education legislation to allow gay straight alliances in schools.

“I love you as a person. I don’t like the fact that you’re a bank robber but I love you as a person. Does that makes sense?” Fehr told The Carillon.

Asked if he was drawing a comparison between transgender students in Hanover School Division and bank robbers, Fehr disagreed.

“That’s not what I said. Now, you’re putting words in my mouth.”

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