BONNYVILLE – The Town of Bonnyville has its first mayoral candidate for the upcoming municipal election.
Elisa Brosseau, who’s currently a town councillor, officially filed her nomination papers on March 22 to run as the next mayor of Bonnyville.
“I feel like I’m up for the challenge,” Brosseau told Lakeland This Week. “I’m ready to take that leadership role and just to help accelerate that vision and bring Bonnyville to the forefront.”
One major goal for Brosseau, if she’s elected mayor, is to continue to focus on "collaborating with other municipalities, organizations, the business community, and citizen groups."
“I just think going forward as more things are downloaded onto municipalities from the province, it will be more and more important for us to work with others, sharing resources. Whether it's financial or human resources or time. I think that’s going to be really key and important,” she continued.
The married mother of three has spent much of her life in Bonnyville. She was born in town, but then her family moved to Fort McMurray. They spent their summers in the area and a large part of Brosseau’s family continues to call the area home.
It was her love of the area and her desire to make it a great place for her children to grow up that piqued her interest when she heard about the municipal election in 2017.
It was around the time she was looking at re-entering the workforce after being on maternity leave for seven years, so she started attending council meetings to see what it was all about.
“I went for six months because I thought ‘if this is something I’m going to do, I kind of want to know what they’re discussing and what decisions they’re making.’ Then, I just found that this was something that I could do and I wanted to do it because I can really help shape the community for my kids, seniors, and everybody else,” she expressed.
Being elected to town council that year was the beginning of Brosseau’s career in municipal politics. The position has kept her busy. She’s currently the chair of Community Futures Lakeland, president of the Alberta Bilingual Municipalities Associations, and chair of the Regional Economic Development Committee.
The development of the Regional Economic Development Committee in partnership with the MD of Bonnyville is what Brosseau describes as her biggest accomplishment as a councillor.
“It really helped to bridge the gap between our business owners and municipalities so that they had somewhere to have a voice that can have input on decisions that are affecting them and helped them and us create what is our economic region.”
With the changes to the Municipal Government Act (MGA), those interested in running for the fall election could file their nomination forms as early as January of this year. Brosseau said she knew she wanted to run for mayor "for a while" but decided to wait for a couple of months to make it official.
“I could have done it in January, but I didn’t think I was ready enough. I wanted to make sure that those people that I have a lot of respect for, I wanted to make sure that they heard it from me and that I was able to have those conversations with them without having everything mumbled out in public,” she noted. “I wanted to make sure that I was prepared mentally and my family was prepared for it.”
A major reason Brosseau decided to put her name forward as a candidate for mayor is because of how important Bonnyville is to her.
“My husband and I, we don’t go anywhere else to shop. We don’t do the big WalMart or Costco shop. We’re local. We support our local businesses, sports teams, and we just live in Bonnyville, and we do everything in Bonnyville. It’s important for people to know that my decision and the input that I have, and those decisions that I make, are based on that and what’s going to help and affect my community.”
At the time of Lakeland This Week’s press deadline, Brosseau was the only candidate for the Town of Bonnyville to submit nomination papers to run for mayor.
