Legislative Mandates for Grant Rigby MLA?

If nominated and elected Member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba for Spruce Woods.

Egalitarian, scientific, libertarian, free-marketing, no one left behind, respectful, democratic, Independent.

Mandates #1-13 are the inventions and copyright of Grant Rigby: August 1, 2025

1. All parents shall elect Education Trustees from among themselves, to comprise a provincial board which shall have authority over Manitoba's public schools and curriculum, and will endure if a government takes over funding and thus ends the local school boards who currently assess school taxes. (Parents replace the Premier as ultimate authority.)

2. Nurses, doctors and hospital administrators to elect representatives tasked to recommend actions to government for continuous improvements to health care efficiency and outcomes, (because they know better than MLA's).

3. Welcome complementary not-for-profit health care cooperatives that might form to offer supplemental services.

4. Create "The Profession of Business Lender" with a code of ethics requiring service in the best interest of the client, and to anyone providing security regardless of loan size. Amend "The Credit Unions Act", and Canada's "Bank Act", to require Professional Business Lenders as staff overseeing loans to small business. And require of all financial institutions who accept deposits from the public that a minimum percentage of deposits be lent to small businesses. Legislate a "Small Business Lending Act" prohibiting bullying spousal guarantees if loan is 150% secured by real estate, and to specify rules for non-adversarial low stress restructuring of secured debt. (Search the internet for "Western Producer Rigby" to read my Oct 16, 2024 published "Did Banks and FCC Slow Productivity Growth" article and the comments.)

5. Reduce the income tax rate for companies that are worker controlled, to approximate the benefit to the economy of thereby ending labour strikes and reducing wealth disparity and its consequent policing and social services costs.

6. Share a portion of the property taxes on industrial and office properties in high tax base regions, with municipalities and first nations having insufficient per capita tax bases to adequately fund basic essential services such as drinking water, sanitation, fire protection, policing. (All children are deserving regardless of where born.)

7. Exempt lands in perennial vegetation from the portion of property taxes used for public water drainage costs, because they retain water same since ice age. Assess grain crop lands at half the full drainage tax rate assessed on barren lands.

8. Enlist political scientists here to imagine appropriate federal democracies, building on Canada's French-English and Nunavut successes, to prevent conflict in a future federation of Israel-Palestine, and of China-Taiwan, and for The Donbas jointly by Ukraine-Russia, and for Greenland with its neighbours.

9. Correct the 1990's omission in the Manure Regulations of any prohibition of toxic air pollution, to prevent the mental, neurotoxic and immunosuppressive hazards of hydrogen sulfide gas fermented in the warm swine lagoons of summer-autumn. (Liquid manure can be subsurface banded into cover crops or between rows of corn, weekly thru the summer.)

10. Support plant and ecology scientists to develop options for advancing species of vegetation that are less susceptible to high heat intensity wildfires, to help protect vulnerable communities and the vast carbon storage in peat moss.

11. Reduce income tax rates for companies having lower scope 1,2,3 greenhouse gas emissions, correlated with lower responsibility for government costs for climate warming induced emergencies, property losses, refugees and defense.

12. Remove Retail Sales Tax from snack foods having nutrition labels reporting low sugar with high fibre or protein content (as advised by consultation with nutrition and medical scientists), to reduce health care costs.

13. If a Premier resigns during midterm, then all MLAs, by virtue of the authority vested only in them by citizen voters, shall select a legitimate new Premier, via secret preference-ranked voting with all MLAs on the ballot. (Because a clique of unelected persons in political parties have no legitimate right to select our Premier.)

14. Enact Preference Ranked Ballot Voting for all levels of government, thus welcoming non-partisan candidates without risk of splitting the majority's philosophical vote, ensuring all our legislators are legitimate by having received a majority endorsement by >50% of voters. (If your first choice gets the least votes, then your second choice gets counted.)


I offer to serve as your MLA for two years until the next provincial general election, to introduce Legislations and Resolutions to achieve these mandates. If elected for these mandates, then the other MLA's ought not impede us.

Search the internet for "Rigby Orchards", and view my website www.GrantRigby.ca (needs revisions) to learn about me.

My family farm is half hour south of Wawanesa. No running water in house when young, grain crops, chore horses, cattle, cream, chickens, eggs, then a first modern hog barn. UW Arts, work camp, UM B.Sc.Ag, grain trade head office, M.Sc.Food. high yield chemical farming, then organic and now developing a carbon sequestering agronomy, fruit growing processing new products and wine marketing. My wife's career has been in canola breeding at UManitoba. Our kids' summers were at the farm and now have professional careers. Family and business brought me into and around Brandon hundreds of times. Understand the culture and economy in Spruce Woods constituency as well as anywhere.

If nominated as a candidate then I shall promptly deliver to each municipal office serving Spruce Woods constituency my ink signed letter of advance resignation as your MLA, to be effective upon receipt by the Speaker of the Legislature of letters demanding my resignation signed by 2/3rds of your local elected municipal councilors and school board trustees, for any stated reasons. This guarantees that I remain alert, responsible and try to be wise.

I shall establish a formal dialogue with all municipal councils and request them to direct my work for projects they decide by consensus should receive provincial support, such as health care, sport facilities, roads, drinking water, etc, because councilors and staff know better than any MLA could. This formal dialogue should endure past my term.

I shall similarly offer the elected student bodies of Brandon University and Assiniboine College the opportunity to help me serve and invite public input, critique bills and imagine useful new legislation most relevant to next generations.

But first, >50 signed nominations would be required, plus a volunteer to serve as official agent. The nomination page to be signed can be printed from: https://www.electionsmanitoba.ca/downloads/chklist_nomination_eng.pdf

And then some of you can inform me via grant.rigby.mb(at)outlook.com how many signatures nominating Grant Rigby you have in hand. If/when 50 signatures are reported, I will select and ask the official agent to receive and file them, (as I prefer not to see who has, or not, nominated me so that I remain uncorrupted regarding who to respond to when MLA.)

The nominations deadline is noon Monday August 11, thus target Thursday August 7.

I have been advancing these concepts to MLAs and MPs for years, but no progress. It seems that only what a Premier or Prime Minister thinks about becomes legislation. But now in Spruce Woods might be the perfect situation for new mandates to succeed into legislation, because no party's win can change the majority government and thus there is no reason to bother voting for any party. But 14 clear mandates for a winning Independent would be noticed by the government as being the will of the people, that they best legislate to be competitive in the next general election.

You now decide if you want these 14 ideas, for our future!

Thanks,
Grant Rigby