Colour these seats a safe Tory blue

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This article was published 22/06/2004 (7808 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE number of red, orange and green lawn signs that dot the rolling hills and vast prairie fields in southwestern Manitoba indicate the Liberals, NDP and Green Party are giving chase here.

But without doubt, this is Tory country, and you’ll be in a tough battle in the two ridings that make up this part of the province if your sign isn’t blue.

In the 2000 federal election, the combined Alliance-Conservative vote in both Brandon-Souris and Portage-Lisgar outstripped the Liberals by more than 16,500 votes. By comparison, Manitoba’s safest Liberal seat, Winnipeg South, was won by Reg Alcock with a 5,100-vote margin over the combined right wing vote.

No matter, neither Brian Pallister, the incumbent Conservative MP in Portage-Lisgar, nor Merv Tweed in Brandon-Souris is counting his chickens just yet.

“I think it’s very important we get people out to vote,” Pallister said when asked how confident he is about winning.

The Brandon-Souris seat has no incumbent. Tory Rick Borotsik, upset by the merger of his party and the Canadian Alliance, decided not to run again.

Tweed, who represented Turtle-Mountain, a provincial riding that falls within the Brandon-Souris area, resigned his provincial seat to run federally.

“It feels good at the door,” he said. “But things can change very quickly.”

Brandon-Souris encompasses the entire southwest corner, including Brandon, Virden, Killarney, Souris, Elkhorn and Rivers.

Portage-Lisgar is home to the municipalities of Winkler, Morden, Altona and Portage la Prairie, and also has several Winnipeg bedroom communities, including La Salle and Sanford.

Both these ridings are mainly rural, with few visible minorities (1.5 per cent in Brandon-Souris and 0.7 per cent in Portage-Lisgar), and few immigrants. Unemployment is at just over four per cent in both ridings.

Large Mennonite communities and Hutterite colonies are heavily influential in the politics of the region, particularly in Portage-Lisgar.

And while health care and education are important here, agriculture is the key issue. Right now, all talk is of the ongoing mad cow crisis.

Tweed and Pallister both say the Liberals have just not done enough.

Tweed’s biggest challenger, Liberal Murray Downing, says the government needs to stop focusing on the U.S. border opening as the be-all and end-all, and start looking at diversifying markets.

Both Tweed and Downing say testing every slaughtered animal for BSE would go a long way toward opening up markets like Japan.

Downing, the Reston, Man., grain farmer who led farmers to Ottawa to demand aid six times in 2000 and 2001, said he would never have run for the Chrétien Liberals but feels Prime Minister Paul Martin’s Liberal party is entirely different.

And he says nobody should be preparing Tweed for the victory lap just yet.

He departed from Liberal policy on same-sex marriage saying he is against it, a reflection of the views of most residents in this socially conservative part of Manitoba.

Six candidates are seeking the Brandon-Souris seat, including New Democrat Mike Abbey, Green Dave Kattenburg, Communist Lisa Gallagher, and Colin Atkins of the Christian Heritage Party. At an all-candidates forum at Vincent Massey High School in Brandon last week, the six had a chance to explain their platforms. Atkins, Gallagher, Kattenburg and Abbey all stayed true to their party lines. Atkins railed against homosexuality and Gallagher against big business, and Kattenburg urged the students to stage a peaceful revolution in favour of “the supremacy of our mother, planet earth.”

Abbey spoke of increasing child care grants and proportional representation.

In Portage-Lisgar, Pallister is up against Liberal Don Kuhl, New Democrat Daren Van Den Bussche, Green Marc Payette, Communist Allister Cucksey and Christian Heritage’s David Reimer.

Pallister is campaigning against the Liberal spending record and the sponsorship scandal, and says he’d like to see more money put into rural policing and a better student loan program that takes into account the unique needs of rural students. He also promises to work to give aboriginal women marital property rights.

Kuhl, a potato farmer and former Winkler councillor, admits he’s in a hard battle.

Van Den Bussche, a Portage la Prairie firefighter, said that although Pallister is a seasoned politician, it’s not a slam dunk for him. Van Den Bussche is campaigning against NAFTA and western alienation.

“We pay our taxes like loyal subjects, but we don’t get our roads fixed,” he said.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca