The Niverville Chamber of Commerce held a candidates forum at the Niverville Heritage Centre for the upcoming byelection.

The three candidates Nathan Dueck, Louise Billows, and John Falk answered a variety of questions prepared by the chamber of commerce and questions from those who attended the forum. A reoccurring topic of discussion throughout the evening was Niverville's growing business community. All three candidates noted the importance of becoming more than a bedroom community.

The candidates were asked if Niverville needs more Businesses, and if so what type of businesses need to be brought into the town.

Candidate Louise Billows gave her response.

“With a population of 5,000, we can't just be a bedroom community anymore. We need businesses to offset the taxpayers that are residences. We want to have huge recreation here and how are we going to pay for this. we can't go back and ask the existing businesses and the taxpayers over and over again for a project of that magnitude, so when you're bringing more businesses the businesses will sponsor you. I think we should probably start with the ones we have, give them opportunity to expand. I'm thinking of more retail, I'm thinking of art and music. I'm thinking of agribusiness. We are in the bastion of agriculture here, why can't we have utilities board, all kinds of government offices. We should always be respectful of this planet, I hope our kids will have the same future and our kid's kids. I am looking at maybe a bit more of a holistic approach to business.”

Candidate John Falk gave his response.

“Short answer, absolutely yes we need more business, I think that is a foregone conclusion. I think there is basically three main areas and they would all attract different sorts of businesses. Number one we have the Niverville business park which we need manufacturing, we need industrial type of businesses coming in there. There is also the commercial front on 311 by the golf course and then there is the downtown core area. We are obviously limited with the way our Main Street is to some degree with the cemetery, with the school, with a large church on Main Street, but we still have lots of potential, lot's of areas that we can grow that smaller type of retail business in there. I think one of the things is that we have so many home based businesses in Niverville, and some pretty amazing ones. How do you take those home based businesses and get them to the next step where they come into some sort of business start up program or an incubator mall and build from there? I think I see three different types of needs, all of those require vision, they require a plan, and require marketing to do that. I am going to go back to having somebody specifically dedicated to that working for the town of Niverville as an economic business development officer, somebody that can pursue those opportunities and partner closely with existing businesses, bring in new businesses, working to make this more of a thriving community.”

Candidate Nathan Dueck gave his response.

“The answer I assume everybody would guess is yes. Businesses and people and community, we are a symbiotic relationship. As our town approaches 7,000 people in the next 10 years, we have to realize that our current infrastructure does not do us proud. We need stores, we need retail, we need banking, we need industry, we need convenience, and we need services. This will help us grow our population. We need this infrastructure also in place to create local jobs, create a more stable and local economy that we can use to prevent our population from going elsewhere to shop. One of the big things that we have to look at as a citizen of Niverville is that we no longer can look at things like 'Hey let's plan a day trip out to Walmart. Let's plan a day trip out to Rona, let's plan a day trip out to Home Depot.' That's not in our vocabulary anymore. We need to lessen our reliability on our bigger cities like Steinbach and Winnipeg. We need our citizens to support our businesses more than ever. When businesses from outside the community in Niverville see how well Niverville supports it's own they will want to become a part of Niverville and with that we will embrace them and invite them in to join our community as a growing and prosperous town.”

The candidates were also asked how they see Niverville in 10 years, what their priorities as candidates are, what motivated them to run in the byelection, what improvements are needed on Main Street, and what they thought of expanding town council.

The Niverville byelection will be held on Wednesday, September 14, 2016.