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.
By Jonathon Naylor One New Democratic Party is not always like the other. The federal NDP likes to equate itself to its provincial counterparts, especially the highly successful New Democrats of Manitoba. Of course it's not really a fair comparison. There are many important differences between the Manitoba NDP and the national NDP. Whereas the provincial version opposes the long-gun registry and supports Stephen Harper's tough-on-crime agenda, the federal version is just the opposite. Whereas the provincial version's last leader, Gary Doer, backed the war in Afghanistan, the national version's last leader, the late Jack Layton, wanted to yank our troops out even before their NATO commitment was up. And whereas the provincial version ends a subsidy to give Manitobans broad access to highway bussing, the federal version talks often about subsidies as a way to improve the life of common folk. I could go on, but suffice it to say that the Manitoba NDP is a decidedly centrist cousin to the official opposition down east in Ottawa. That's something people in Flin Flon and Snow Lake certainly know. While they overwhelmingly favour the NDP at the provincial level, their support is far less overwhelming at the federal level. In last year's federal election, Flin Flon actually went Conservative _ albeit by one vote over the NDP. And the Tories got over half the vote in Snow Lake. The NDP's Niki Ashton still won the vast Churchill riding by a large margin, but neither she nor her supporters can be encouraged by the results in these two communities. Nor can they be thrilled with a proposed expansion of the Churchill riding that could help loosen the NDP's stranglehold on one of Canada's largest federal electoral districts. Consideration As The Reminder recently reported, the Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission for Manitoba has proposed a new electoral map for consideration at public hearings this fall. It would maintain the present geography of the Churchill riding while adding the northern half of what is now the Selkirk-Interlake riding. Churchill and Selkirk-Interlake are ideological opposites. While the NDP took Churchill with a decisive 51 per cent last year, the Conservatives won Selkirk-Interlake by an even wider margin, 65 per cent. Selkirk-Interlake has been in Reform, Canadian Alliance or Conservative hands since its creation in 1997. Churchill has been mostly NDP, but occasionally Liberal, since 1979. That said, the northern half of Selkirk-Interlake is fairly sparse and is by no means guaranteed to tip the Churchill scales in the Tories' favour. But one must wonder whether this federal riding _ bordered entirely by Tory blue _ is about to get a whole lot more competitive. Local Angle runs Fridays.
