Manitoba

I’m in Manitoba as I type this. I am on a road trip to Winnipeg but now I am headed out of Manitoba. The people who live in Winnipeg seem quite a bit happier than those in Toronto. It could be culture, it could be a smaller city thing, or it could be the economy – the economy in Winnipeg is doing much better than the economy in Toronto. I’m a Liberal but I was exited about entering a province that has an NDP government for the first time since Ontario had an NDP government. Manitoba only has two Liberal MLAs – Liberal leader Jon Gerrard and Kevin Lamoureux. Unfortunately, I was unable to meet with Kevin Lamoureux as I had originally hoped. Kevin Lamoureux hangs out at a McDonald’s in Winnipeg every Thursday evening and invites his constituents to come to the McDonald’s at this time in order to talk to him. Sadly I could not be in Winnipeg on a Thursday. Today I got a tour of the Manitoba legislature building. Unfortunately the actual legislative chamber was unavailable to be toured because it is being used for some sort of conference. Regardless, eventually the tour guide discussed the Manitoba government. She said that there are 57 seats in the legislature. The New Democratic Party, she said, has 36 seats. The Progressive Conservatives, she said, have 19 seats. The Liberals, she said, have 2 seats. It is also true that the federal Liberals have only 3 seats in all of Manitoba – Anita Neville in Winnipeg South Centre, Raymond Simard in Saint Boniface, and Tina Kepper in Churchill. The two Liberal seats in the Manitoba legislature are safe Liberal seats so long as the incumbents run for re-election. Jon Gerrard represents the River Heights riding and Kevin Lamoureux represents the Inkster riding. Both ridings are in Winnipeg. If Gerrard didn’t run, River Heights would easily go Tory. If Lamoureux didn’t run, Inkster would easily go NDP. The two Liberal seats in the provincial legislature are safe only so long as the incumbents run. At the federal level, there are sadly no safe federal Liberal seats in Manitoba. Saint Boniface was shockingly close last time. The Tory candidate got an astonishing 35%, and Simard won by only 3 and a half percent. Winnipeg South Centre was also surprisingly close last time – Neville won by only 7 percent. The Liberals in the Winnipeg South Centre and Saint Boniface both had 39% of the vote. Former Winnipeg South MP Reg Alcock lost his seat last time by 111 votes in a shocking upset. Alcock lost to a very right-wing Tory – Rod Bruinooge. Now ironically the strongest Liberal riding in Manitoba, based on the last election, is the Churchill riding. In the Churchill riding, the Liberals got a little over 40% of the vote, higher than the 39% from the other two Liberal ridings in Manitoba. The Liberals won Churchill in the last election by 12%, higher than the Liberal margin of victory in either Saint Boniface or Winnipeg South Centre. But when one considers the fact that former Churchill MP Bev Desjarlais is not expected to run again in Churchill, one realizes that Churchill is not a safe Liberal seat. This is because last time former New Democrat Bev Desjarlais ran as Independent after having failed to be renominated for the New Democrats the previous October. Desjarlais was a socially conservative New Democrat who defied the NDP party whip to vote against the same-sex marriage bill. This disobedience of the whip caused Desjarlais to be immediately stripped of all her critic responsibilities. A few months later she lost the NDP nomination to a 22-year-old woman –Niki Ashton. Some argue that this was not a coincidence. When Conservatives have criticized the NDP over same-sex marriage they have incorrectly stated that Desjarlais was kicked out of caucus for voting against the same-sex marriage bill. What actually happened was that Desjarlais was allowed to stay in caucus after the final same-sex marriage bill vote but voluntarily left caucus after losing the nomination a few months later in October of that year. She could have chosen to remain in caucus but did not because she decided to run for re-election as an Independent rather than standing down after her nomination defeat. In the ensuing election, received about 17% of the vote, splitting votes mostly with the New Democrats but seemingly also split some votes with the Conservatives due to her social conservative stance. This Conservative vote splitting is evident in that the Conservative vote in Churchill actually dropped several percentage points from the 2004 election results. Add some of Desjarlais’ vote to the Conservative total, add the rest to the NDP, and Churchill becomes too close to call between the Liberals and New Democrats. Niki Ashton has been renominated for the NDP and is fighting hard to become an MP. Ashton is the daughter of Manitoba NDP cabinet minister Steve Ashton. So based on how close Churchill is without Desjarlais running as an Independent, it becomes obvious that unfortunately there are no safe seats for the federal Liberals in Manitoba. However the situation in Manitoba is not as bad for non-Tories as it is in Saskatchewan. In Saskatchewan, all federal riding boundaries are drawn so that it is exceedingly difficult for a non-Tory to be elected. The only non-Tory to have managed this feat with any sort of ease in recent elections is Liberal Ralph Goodale. Sadly if Goodale retired, the Tories could easily end up winning all 14 federal Saskatchewan ridings – potentially with less than 50% of the Saskatchewan-wide vote! The federal Saskatchewan ridings are gerrymandered that badly. There is something about Saskatchewan’s population distribution that apparently makes it impossible to draw 100% urban federal ridings in Saskatchewan’s two major cities of Regina and Saskatoon. Instead the federally-controlled Saskatchewan electoral districts commission has been recently drawing Saskatchewan ridings that are about half urban and half rural. There are 8 such ridings in Saskatchewan, 4 for Regina and 4 for Saskatoon. Regina is divided into four and Saskatoon is divided into four. At least half the population of each of these 8 ridings is rural in nature. This disenfranchises the urban voters in Regina and Saskatoon. I believe that wherever possible districts should either be 100% urban or 100% rural. I am against mixing urban and rural areas into a single riding if it can be avoided. This is because like it or not, urban voters and rural voters vote very differently. Ballot box issues for urban voters also tend to be starkly different than ballot box issues for rural voters. Therefore urban areas and rural areas should kept in separate ridings wherever possible. But because this rule is ignored in Saskatchewan, rural Conservative votes plus vote splitting between the Liberals and NDP ensures that a Tory is elected every time in each of the 8 mixed urban-rural federal Saskatchewan ridings with the exception of Ralph Goodale’s Wascana riding. Wascana covers a rural area and part of Regina. Without Goodale this is not a safe Liberal riding. This is illustrated by the fact that in 2000 Goodale himself came close to losing to the Canadian Alliance candidate.

Manitoba also has 3 NDP MPs – Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre), Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North), Bill Blaikie (Elmwood Transcona). Aside from the 3 Liberals, the rest of Manitoba is represented by Tories – eight Tory MPs including three within the city of Winnipeg. Manitoba Tory MPs tend not to be as homophobic as Saskatchewan Tory MPs are. Nevertheless Manitoba Tory MPs are all socially conservative. But as I say the Tory MPs from Manitoba are usually not as socially conservative as Tory MPs from Saskatchewan. To give one example, thanks to the split urban-rural federal ridings of Saskatchewan urban residents in part of Saskatoon are stuck with the extremely socially conservative MP Maurice Vellacott who has made some rather anti-gay comments and has remained incredibly hostile to any LGBT rights.




Manitoba is the only prairie province where the federal NDP holds any seats. What’s more, all the prairie federal NDP seats are in inner city Winnipeg. Since the loss of Churchill, the federal NDP has held no rural prairie seats. In other words the traditional rural prairie base of the federal NDP is largely gone. The rural NDP base for the provincial Manitoba NDP is also relatively weak outside Northern Manitoba. Similarly, based on the most recent Saskatchewan election, the rural NDP base for the Saskatchewan provincial NDP is gone outside of Northern Saskatchewan. Considering that neither the federal NDP nor the Alberta provincial NDP has EVER had a base in rural Alberta, it becomes obvious that the NDP (both the federal NDP and its prairie province chapters) no longer has its traditional rural prairie base, with the exception of Northern Manitoba and Northern Saskatchewan.