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.
Who will it be? The Conservative Party will be approaching prospective MP candidates for the Churchill Riding in the coming days. Nazir Ahmad, president of the Conservative Association of the Churchill Riding, has at least four people in mind whom he will ask to run. "We will be strong contenders this time around," promised Ahmad, a Flin Flon accountant and city councillor. "I think things look very positive." The two other major parties have already named their MP candidates for the next federal election, which could be called as early as April or May. The NDP are going with popular incumbent Bev Desjarlais, who beat out her nearest opponent by 13 percentage points in the 2000 election. Carrying the Liberal Party banner will be Chief Ron Evans of Norway House, a well-spoken candidate eager to reclaim the constituency for his party for the first time since 1997. Once at least one person puts his or her name forth to run for the Conservatives, Ahmad will call a nomination meeting, which requires a two-week notice. This will be the first federal election in which the new Conservative Party of Canada, born out of the merger of the PC Party and Canadian Alliance, runs a candidate. See 'Party' P.# Con't from P.# Had those two parties joined forces for the 2000 election, the result would have been a third place finish in the Churchill riding. The Canadian Alliance secured 18 per cent of the vote while the PC Party got five per cent. Nevertheless, Ahmad is optimistic the conservatives will turn the corner. "We are not entirely new," said Ahmad. "We are a party with a history behind us and we are finally united and strong, and we have a young and very able and experienced leader (Stephen Harper)." On a national level, many conservatives Ñ and non-conservatives Ñ believe the Liberals' sponsorship scandal could help tip the political scale to the right for the first time since the early 1990s.
