Niki Ashton hopes to be part of something truly historic.
With polls showing the NDP could win this fall’s election, the incumbent MP faces the once-unlikely prospect of representing northern Manitoba from the government benches.
“This is a critical election,” says Ashton, who launched the Flin Flon portion of her re-election campaign last Thursday,
August 20.
“More people are seeing the NDP as the true alternative when it comes to change and getting our country on the right track.”
Ashton, 32, has been busy on the campaign trail promoting her vision of the Churchill-Keewatinook Aski riding, made up mostly of her former riding known simply as Churchill.
At her Flin Flon campaign launch, she and supporters gathered outside the Flin Flon Post Office – a deliberate choice since the NDP wants to reverse Canada Post’s plan to end home mail delivery.
Ashton says Flin Flonners still want door-to-door delivery and that there are better ways to continue to ensure Canada Post’s profitability.
“This is really about supporting our public service,” she says. “It’s something that we as Canadians value. It’s about supporting good-paying jobs and good, dependable services and communities here in the North, which we deserve as northerners.”
Ashton, whose campaign launch brought out several striking tradespeople from Hudbay, says her party supports legislation to prohibit federally regulated industries, including mining, from hiring replacement workers in the event of a strike.
She says replacement workers create “damage for families, for communities.”
Ashton supports a $15 minimum wage for workers in federally regulated industries, along with a child-care plan meant to ensure affordability and more stable and gainful employment for those who work in that sector.
Then there’s protecting the “fundamental Canadian value” of “building inclusive communities.” She references changes to the mandate of Friendship Centres and a sense of uncertainty over future federal funding for those institutions.
“I recognize the important role the Friendship Centre plays here in Flin Flon in terms of building bridges,” Ashton says, adding the NDP promises “long-term sustainable funding” for Friendship Centres.
Ashton says she has been honoured to represent northern Manitoba in Ottawa since 2008. Her efforts haven’t gone unnoticed by the press, with Maclean’s magazine naming her Best Constituency MP in 2012.
She says the NDP’s rise in the national polls — indications are the party could form at least a minority government — is no accident.
“It’s pretty clear that more and more Canadians are tired of the divisive politics we’ve seen under [Prime Minister Stephen] Harper, tired of the kind of cuts and the attack on services and institutions [that have occurred],” says Ashton.
One change for Ashton in this campaign revolves around her former riding of Churchill absorbing a small portion of a Conservative riding to become Churchill-Keewatinook Aski.
She says by far the largest community added to the riding is Peguis First Nation, with a population of about 7,338, and that the new communities are not big Conservative supporters.
Ashton was first elected in 2008 with 47 per cent of the vote. In 2011 she was reelected with 51 per cent support.
The federal election will be held Monday, October 19. The Reminder will continue to profile candidates in Churchill-Keewatinook Aski and the northern Saskatchewan riding of Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River.
