Democracy, Opportunity and you
2/19/2009 at 8:00 AM
Over the past couple of weeks in Brandon there has been lots of opportunity for people to air their thoughts and opinions on a variety of matters. The discussions around the federal budget stimulus package, the options our community has in relation to that budget and the BSD budget deliberations have caused lots of solid dialogue.
As a daily reader of Ebrandon I follow any discussion closely that affects our community. One conversation that hasn’t happened, which surprises me given the excitement generated around this issue earlier in the winter, revolves around the Senate.
On Tuesday evening an all party committee from the Legislature, including both of our local MLA’s, held a meeting in the CKLQ assembly hall at the Keystone Centre.
The purpose of the committee is to gather the opinions of Manitobans on how nominees for the Senate should be selected in our province. The presentations were fascinating and they covered a wide range of proposals. From my perspective the important ideas were that Senators should be elected and their representation must be accountable.
While they were quality presenters it was disappointing that there were only three of them. For me this is yet another indicator that there needs to be a fresh approach to engaging people who care about the process of democracy. One of the committee members last night actually took the chairperson to task for the lack of advance promotion for the event.
I can pretty much guarantee that an email to Adam here on ebrandon.ca would have engaged a lot more interested parties.
With that in mind I was encouraged this morning as I got a call letting me know that the new website for the PC Party of Manitoba was launched at www.pcmanitoba.com . In a day and age where the average person is looking for reasons and ways to connect in the democratic process, this website is a good start in that process.
If you are interested please check out www.pcmanitoba.com and fire your feedback to the site or let me know at mike@mikewaddell.ca if you have any questions or concerns about the site and I will pass them along.