Empire-Advance

 

There are a number of events coming up this fall that may change our world. Probably the most important for us directly here in southwestern Manitoba are the municipal elections. As I have said many times, civil politics is the most important level of government for us in Manitoba. It’s important to keep an eye on provincial and federal politics and even international politics, but it’s municipal affairs that most closely affect our daily lives and our future.There is a provincial election in British Columbia where current Premier David Eby has called an election long before it was necessary. Mr. Eby says he needs a new mandate to battle the effects of the American tariffs. But it seems more likely that he saw that the opposition parties were in complete disarray and it would be an opportune time to call an election and obtain that much-desired four years of majority government. The polling so far doesn’t look good for Mr. Eby.There was also an election in Quebec recently where the Parti Québécois obtained a minority government position with only 28 per cent of the popular vote.In Alberta, there is going to be a vote on whether or not to hold an independence or separation referendum in that province, as some Albertans have no love towards the federal government. And perhaps not even towards the rest of Canada, but I doubt that there will be enough people in Alberta who vote to have a referendum on separation.And then there are the famous midterm elections in the United States. A lot of people are holding their breath to see if the midterms will go so badly for Donald Trump that he might change his ways depending on the results of the election. I don’t know if I want to predict the U.S. midterm elections because the Democratic Party has gone so far left in the past five years that a lot of people in the middle of the voting spectrum don’t want anything to do with the Democratic Party. One of the most famous known Democrats would be comedian Bill Maher, who has come out many times indicating that the Democratic Party has moved so far left even his liberal views of the political world are having trouble reaching consensus.There are a lot of people in the United States who still think Donald Trump is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but there are a lot of people who are seeing that their grocery bills are going up and their gas bills have gone up and the cost of living is getting out of control for lower- or even middle-class people. So there’s enough uncertainty in the United States, I think right now, to make it difficult to predict how those midterm elections will go. Then in Canada, we might have an early election federally as Prime Minister Mark Carney could pull the pin and try to get a large majority instead of a small majority. It could happen, but I think it would backfire somewhat, though the situation in Canada is such that many Canadians seem to think that Mark Carney is doing a really good job. I will admit that Mark Carney appears to be doing a good job, but there are a lot of things that he has talked about that are simply sunshine and promises and not actual projects. I know there are some projects that have been theoretically approved that would be favourable to Canada, but there are a number of stumbling blocks in the way. One is finances for sure, the other is approval by First Nations people, and then there’s labour availability. They talk about thousands of jobs, and there aren’t thousands of people to take those jobs. Certainly not people with the skills required to build pipelines, highways, and large construction and housing projects. I would say that for the next couple of months we’re going to be experiencing a lot of uncertainty politically, and the only answer is to carry on to do the best you can with what we have at hand. Farmers need to farm, newspapers need to publish, carpenters need to build. We just need to do the best we can with what’s in front of us and go ahead.

I think I wrote recently that a number of years ago while I was in a church service in a little church in Rapid City, Manitoba, a man stood up and actually spoke what you would call a prophecy. It went like this: “You have in your midst all that you need to do what God has asked you to do.” That’s so true; it’s been that way for a long time, and that phrase rings so true with me. The other phrase that I’ve said many times is there are Four F’s in life—faith, family, friends, and finances—and as long as we keep them in that order, we will do OK. May God bless you and yours in the coming days. 

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Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column are the writer’s personal views and are not to be taken as being the view of the staff.