Cheerleader Harper in town

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This article was published 23/04/2015 (3847 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Manufacturing and research will rule the day as Prime Minister Stephen Harper embarks on his post-budget, pre-election tour in Winnipeg today.

Harper, who attended the Jets game Wednesday night, will spend the next two days in the city. There will be a flurry of photo ops and announcements following the release of his government’s 10th budget on Tuesday.

Harper’s first stop was at the Jets game, but he apparently didn’t splurge on a hometown jersey, wearing a Team Canada one instead. Sitting next to him was former NHL player and Manitoba native Sheldon Kennedy.

Harper could be seen prior to the puck drop taking photos with fans near his centre-ice seat, eight rows up from the Jets bench.

Today, Harper is expected to stress the budget’s offerings for manufacturers during a visit to FC Woodworks in Transcona, a firm that makes wood counters, cabinets and furniture.

Canada is looking to manufacturing to ease the economic hit of plummeting oil prices. The budget included numerous investments in the sector, including extending the accelerated capital cost allowance for investing in machinery and manufacturing equipment for another decade, until 2025.

Manufacturing accounts for about one-10th of the country’s gross domestic product and employs 1.7 million people. In Manitoba, it is the largest private-sector employer, with 64,000 jobs, and it accounts for about 11.5 per cent of the economy.

The industry took significant hits in the last decade from both a high Canadian dollar and the global economic slowdown. In Ontario alone, about 300,000 manufacturing jobs disappeared from 2000 to 2011.

Generating goodwill in large manufacturing sectors — particularly areas in southern and southwestern Ontario that have many parliamentary seats up for grabs — will be critical to Harper’s re-election effort this fall.

Harper will attend an event later today at the Victoria Inn that’s related to public health, which may build on his global maternal health initiative.

He may also announce on Friday details of the promised National Research Council facility, which is to be built near the airport. The new facility, which Harper announced last fall, will focus on aerospace research.

The government has slashed the NRC presence in Winnipeg since 2012, when it decided to change the focus on the federal agency. It closed the Institute for Biodiagnostics, which was moved to Winnipeg from Ottawa in 1992. The two existing NRC buildings on Ellice Avenue are up for sale.

There was no indication whether Harper would visit the Canadian Museum for Human Rights for the first time while in Winnipeg this week. Harper did not attend the opening ceremony last September and has been in the city only once since then, for a brief visit just before Thanksgiving.

Although the museum was conceived by the late Izzy Asper when Jean Chrétien was prime minister, Harper made the concept a reality in 2007 when he agreed to make it a federal institution and provide operating funding.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca