It may not have been typical, but Leslie Beck and Bill Hanson took their oaths of office for Flin Flon’s city council last week - from the comfort of their own homes.
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Both Hanson and Beck are former city councillors and will join Mayor Cal Huntley and councillors Colleen Arnold, Tim Babcock, Karen MacKinnon and Ken Pawlachuk until November 2022. The two newly elected councillors will fill seats formerly held by Colleen McKee - who sat as a city councillor from 2006 until her death in 2020 following a battle with cancer - and Barry Kreller, who was elected to Flin Flon council in a Oct. 2020 byelection before stepping down from council in March for personal reasons. Hanson, who received the most votes, was first elected to city council in 1992, leaving after one term before running again and winning in 2002. Hanson held that seat again until he stepped down from council in 2018. Hanson works as a carpenter, general repairman and trades lead with the Northern Health Region and is currently the chair of the Flin Flon Public Library board.
In terms of procedure, the council plans to hold the byelection in a similar way as the byelection held last year, with workers outfitted with personal protective equipment and mandatory masks and social distancing inside City Hall. Voters will be pointed toward one of 11 available polling stations in the main chamber, with whichever poll voters use determined by where they live. Election workers will point voters toward the correct poll. Every voter will be given a golf pencil to tick the box of their preferred candidate, which they will then take with them when they leave the hall. With increased COVID-19 cases throughout Manitoba - including variants of concern cases - organizers are carefully monitoring case loads, particularly in the north, before the election. As of press time, the vote is slated to go ahead as originally planned.
The Reminder sent questionnaires to all candidates running in the upcoming Flin Flon council byelection. The answers of all four candidates - Leslie Beck, Bill Hanson, Carrie Hume and Tom Therien - can be found below. Views represented are the views of the candidates and do not reflect the opinions of The Reminder. The byelection is scheduled to take place May 12. Each of the candidates answers can be found here: article continues below