Manitoba’s Liberal leader says his party will be fielding candidates in all 57 ridings for the upcoming provincial election.
Currently, the NDP leads all parties with 56 candidates registered on the Elections Manitoba website. The Progressive Conservatives have 49 and the Liberals have only nominated 26.
“We’re nominating a bunch more today and over the weekend. We’re going to have a full slate,” says Dougald Lamont.
The deadline for nominations is 1:00 p.m. on August 26.
Lamont says his Liberals offer a different alternative to the Progressive Conservatives or NDP.
“We want to tackle a whole bunch of big issues that people haven’t been dealing with for a long time, whether it’s jobs or the environment or health care,” he said.
This week saw the NDP unveil its campaign platform, with health care at the forefront. The PCs also released their anti-meth strategy.
On that issue, Lamont says Brian Pallister’s government should have acted on recommendations the Liberals made a year and a half ago.
“We were the first party to even start talking about meth as a big issue,” he said. “We have to put money into prevention, which hasn’t been happening. There should be billboards, posters, bus benches — all that sort of stuff. We’ve been asking for that for over a year.”
The Liberals are expected to reveal their full election platform in the weeks ahead.
Premier Pallister is expected to officially drop the writ for the September 10 election early next week.