Elected officials from 16 municipalities met in Boissevain Friday to talk about common areas of concern and health care topped the list.

About 25 mayors, reeves, head of council and councillors sat in for a regular meeting of the Western Caucus.

Boissevain-Morton Head of Council Judy Swanson said they spent much of the first part of the gathering talking about health care. “It doesn’t matter what municipality you are in there are always issues and we don’t feel we have enough voice. We are gathering together to come up with a larger voice about what our needs are and come up with some solutions for our areas when it comes to health care.”

“Everybody says staffing is an issue and are there incentives we can do as municipalities or through the province to have people come to work in the rural areas. We’re also looking at paramedics and their training. It has been moved from Brandon to Winnipeg and we’d like to get it back to Brandon. We feel that’s something we have to look at.”

Paramedic training is phasing from one year into two years and now they have to go to Winnipeg for that training and it’s a huge expense. “So we’re saying could we not get this training back to the rural area” said Judy Swanson.

The elected officials meeting in Boissevain said maintaining health care is the number one priority to keeping a community and without adequate services those communities are in jeopardy.

Accessing grants was also brought up around the table. “Many have received word they are getting grants but they are slow rolling out from both the federal and provincial governments.”