Barriere Mayor Ward Stamer says he is still waiting to hear if his nomination as a candidate in the Conservative Party of Canada Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo riding has been accepted.
“We haven’t heard anything new in regards to the nominations being accepted and the candidates announced. So what we have been doing the last couple of weeks is getting our website up and having it crossover with our Facebook page so people can go back and forth quite seamlessly,” said Stamer, “We are putting our team together, our membership drive has been going well, and I have been talking with a number of people who are asking how they can support me in the nomination process.”
Stamer says he really appreciates the support he has been getting, and he is working hard to touch base with as many people as possible within the riding.
“I have to be so careful though, I don’t want to get around too much as right now we are supposed to be staying close to home and not traveling all over the place. I think it is better right now to just be connecting online and by phone.
“Once the nominations are officially accepted we will get the list of constituency memberships so we can contact them directly, ask for their support, and answer any questions they may wish to ask.”
Regarding the budget that the federal Liberals recently put forward, Stamer says, “I’m not in favour of a lot of things that the Liberals have come up with in their budget. I think they’ve come up with a shotgun approach and spread it all over. I believe they were really lacking in infrastructure. All of our municipalities across Canada have crumbling infrastructure and their budget didn’t really address any of those kinds of things; there wasn’t roads and bridges, or any high ticket items identified.
“Even the childcare monies, and I’m all for enhancing child care, but the system that they have presented also requires the provinces to ‘pony up’, and if they don’t then these programs aren’t going to be able to move forward. I think there needs to be more work done on trying to develop a system where everyone will be able to have affordable child care.
”Stamer said he thinks it’s pretty bad that “we are still 43rd or 44th in the world with our vaccine roll-outs when we’ve got to get back to work. Everybody has been really patient on trying to wait long enough to get vaccinated but it is still going to take quite a while to get ourselves out of this.”
Stamer concluded by saying he feels there is “a long road ahead but with the right party in power the future is bright.
“If we do it right in the first place we don’t need to do it again.”