Candidates are looking to get their names out there as the federal election is underway, with one new party popping up in the southeast.
Lyndon Dayman, the candidate for the Canadian Future Party, is a retired heavy equipment operator and small business owner, and is currently an Emergency Management Officer for the area around Kipling.
He was also active with the Conservative Party of Canada on their board of directors before making the switch to the Canadian Future Party, feeling that the party had lost touch with their grassroots membership.
Why are you running for Souris-Moose Mountain?
"I wouldn't run in any other riding, I actually ran for the Conservative nomination in 2014. I've been interested in running, and with the Conservative Party parachuting an outsider and abandoning their grassroots principles, I decided I had to find a way to try and run against that. So I've joined the very new Canadian Future Party."
What makes you want to run for your specific riding?
"I'm a grassroots guy. I want to represent the Party, and I want to stop Stephen Bonk from being parachuted in (as an) MP. I'm going to be a protest candidate. I'm actually looking for disgruntled conservatives, and I'm looking for people who are unhappy with Jagmeet Singh supporting Trudeau, and I'm looking for liberals who are upset with the way they've been trying to shut down our oil patch."
What are your top priorities if you get into office?
"Setting up a grassroots committee. Have them decide what the issues are and represent them the best I can in Ottawa. I'm not going there to represent myself, I want to go in there and represent the grassroots, the people that want to get involved and make policy here in the riding."
"That's the way this party is set up. Each (Electoral District Association) is kind of autonomous, and we'll set up a board or advisory committee and they will decide ... which issues we're gonna push and which ones we're going to support. It'll be done by the people of the riding, not by the MP."
American tariffs and their effects are a big issue - how would you address that?
"That's been mishandled, I think. I'm not an economist. Trump, (with the) United States tariffs, he's taxing his own people, and I don't see how (we) taxing our own people can be a very effective countermeasure to that. I'd also like to say I'm not an economist, I don't understand all the nuances of it, but it seems to me that If he's putting tariffs on everything, everybody, every country. We should do well without putting taxes on our own people."
"Out West here, like in our riding, the United States is still going to buy what we have to sell. They're gonna buy our potash. They're gonna buy our oil. They're buying our natural gas. They're buying our Uranium and all the minerals, rare earths that we're mining. They're not going to quit buying those, they need them, and they're going to keep buying them even with Trump's tax, and it's the American people that are going to pay that tax, not us. So I don't quite understand why the liberals are taxing us in retaliation, seems kind of counterintuitive."
Many locals are worried about rural crime rates - what would you do to address those?
"First thing is the catch and release, and the bail has to come to a stop. Repeat offenders cannot be turned back out to reoffend again. I mean, the second offence, you have to be held until your court date is done. It's not a large part of the population that's committing the crime. It's a small number of people, and they're repeating over and over and over again."
"As far as the policing goes, I don't know if this is a provincial issue with the Marshal service. I don't know how that's going to affect rural policing. There is a terrible time lag to get the RCMP out to like my rural address. Sometimes there's a RCMP cruiser out closer, but when you call them, you're looking at an hour, two hour at least delay time and that's something that I would talk to my advisory council on and see if we can come up with some Ideas and it's not my would certainly want to work on."
What other issues specific to the riding would you like to see addressed?
"I want to correct some of the issues with gun control. I'm not a big fan of the gun control laws that the Liberals have put in. I personally don't think we should be trying to be a big shot to the world. I think we were producers and builders out here, and we should concentrate on that be traders. Rather than trying to correct all the Ills of the world, we're too small for that."
How would you work with the provincial and municipal levels of government?
"That's a part of the grassroots Grassroots things. I'm not going to Ottawa to represent Ottawa out here. I work with municipalities and towns already, and I believe in everybody doing their part right from the grassroots up. You start with the grassroots, and then you've got your MP, and the MP has to work with the municipalities, and the First Nations in the riding here."
How would you like to see the country grow over the next few years?
"Well, through economic immigration, lower taxes, get the government out of a lot of things, quit being a big shot to the world and growing the economy here and like I said before, we're builders and producers. Things like getting a pipeline down east, maybe getting Quebec's hydroelectricity out here, working across the country east and west to make the best of everything that we do out here."