The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Five years ago, few people outside of northern Manitoba had heard of Niki Ashton. Now half a decade after being elected MP of the Churchill riding, she has more name recognition than most of her House colleagues. It's all thanks to ambition, something in which Ashton has never been lacking. We certainly saw that in 2011 when she threw her hat into the ring to lead Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, the NDP, despite her limited political experience. We saw it when she convinced pot-stirring documentarian Michael Moore, an icon of the Left, to somehow compel Vale to maintain its nickel smelter in Thompson. Heck, we saw it back in 2006 when, at the tender age of 23, Ashton, having won the NDP nomination against all kinds of odds, put up respectable numbers in her first election. In each case, Ashton did not reach her goal. She lost her NDP leadership bid badly, Vale is still closing its smelter and the northern Manitoba voters of 2006 weren't ready for someone so young as their MP. But one gets the sense that Ashton views these not as failures, but as learning opportunities. And the more learned the MP, the better the job she can do for her constituents. Not that she hasn't stirred up strong feelings among her critics. In 2011, Ashton was called upon to vote on a bill that would abolish the long-gun registry _ despised, in her riding _ and destroy all data therein. The data-destruction component mattered because Quebec wanted to get its hands on the files to create its own provincial long-gun registry. So Ashton, who had previously voted to kibosh the registry, switched her vote out of concern that destroying the data was bad for jurisdictions that wanted their own registries, of which Quebec was the only one. It wasn't the end of the world. The registry was still abolished, as everyone knew it would be. And Ashton is unlikely to bleed much support over the episode, since folks who feel strongly about the registry were probably voting Tory. Raising her hand to maintain the long-gun registry served the purpose of keeping Ashton pure in the eyes of the NDP faithful. That will serve her well when, I would bet almost anything, she takes a second stab at the NDP leadership whenever Tom Mulcair steps down. That will be 2015 at the earliest. By then Ashton will be in her mid-30s with seven years of House of Commons experience. Earlier this year, we saw how a young, left-leaning politician could take the reins of a major Canadian party when Justin Trudeau became Liberal leader. Some polling suggests Trudeau could actually become our next prime minister despite his relative inexperience and divisive policies. Could Niki Ashton one day be on the same stage as Trudeau and Stephen Harper for a prime ministerial candidates' debate? Could she win? It seems highly unlikely at this point, but things change rapidly in life and in politics. One thing's for sure: Ashton lacks neither the energy nor the ambition to at least try, if that's what she really wants to do.
