The politics at play in Manitoba’s sprawling north

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This article was published 07/10/2015 (3682 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

2011 election results in Manitoba by polling division

Black outlines reflect current riding boundaries. Click on a poll to see which candidate placed first there, and what riding it was a part of.

NDP MP Niki Ashton says her Liberal challenger, Rebecca Chartrand, has few roots in the riding. Chartrand says the Ashtons have had a monopoly on power in the north for too long. Ashton says northerners are desperate for change in Ottawa. Chartrand says that change includes a new MP for Churchill-Keewatinook Aski.

As speculation about the outcome in the province’s sprawling northern riding grows, so have the mild barbs traded between the two top candidates. But one thing Ashton and Chartrand agree on is the long list of problems the riding faces.

The survival of the northern railway and the Port of Churchill, struggling since the Canadian Wheat Board was dismantled, is a perennial issue. A roller-coaster of job losses and relocations have struck Flin Flon, Thompson and other resource towns thanks to slumping metals prices. In its 41 First Nations, Churchill-Keewatinook Aski has a catastrophic backlog of overcrowded, substandard housing. Federal funding for education and child welfare has never matched what children receive off-reserve. Most recently, northern chiefs have expressed concern about the erosion of the band constable program.

“Obviously there are a lot of people who want a change from the status quo,” said Chartrand after a speech to Thompson’s chamber of commerce Wednesday. “There are a lot of people who think the riding has been neglected.”

Chartrand is seeking to replace one of the province’s most dynamic MPs and score a rare Liberal win up north. Churchill-Keewatinook Aski has been represented by a New Democrat in Parliament for most of the last 40 years. The last time the Liberals won it was thanks largely to divided NDP loyalties, when the area’s NDP MP Bev Desjarlais split from her party over gay marriage and ran as an Independent, siphoning off votes from Ashton in her first bid for office. Liberal Tina Keeper won that election in 2006 and served two years in Parliament before the minority government fell.

“It’s a race,” acknowledged Ashton Wednesday in Gillam on her way to Fox Lake. “The overarching issue is the failure to have a federal partner we can work with.”

But Ashton also notes that northern issues are best understood and tackled by an MP who lives in the riding, which Chartrand never has.

“Being here and living here is pretty critical in getting a real sense what the issues are,” said Ashton.

Chartrand grew up in the North End and ran for Winnipeg city council last fall. She says she has family in the riding, and stresses the importance of electing an indigenous MP.

“My heart is in this community because my family is dispersed throughout the riding,” said Chartrand. “I don’t know how much closer you can get.”

One national prognosticator has suggested there’s a 63 per cent chance Chartrand will win the riding. But, there are almost no reliable polling data in the north, and it’s not clear Chartrand’s campaign has the cash or volunteers to match the experienced machine built by Ashton and her provincial cabinet minister father, Steve.

New northern grand chief Sheila North Wilson said the riding’s NDP loyalties run deep.

“I don’t get the sense that’s changing,” said North Wilson, elected grand chief of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak last month. “You talk to the elders, that’s what they say. They trust the NDP.”

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But Wilson said she also has the sense this election is earning more attention from northerns, including First Nations chiefs, one of whom challenged his colleagues to a contest recently to see which reserve could get the best voter turnout on Oct. 19.

Democracy in the north takes determination. It takes more time and big money, well over $100,000, to be able to wage a full campaign that reaches voters in remote, fly-in locations. Chartrand spent the summer driving across the riding, visiting First Nations reserves especially. Ashton has been doing the same, boating in between the Island Lake communities or taking the unreliable train to Churchill to save money. This race hasn’t seen any local debates, not even ones traditionally held on the radio. And, turnout tends to be low, often under 50 per cent. In the riding’s First Nations, turnout is typically only 35 per cent, not helped by the paucity of advance polls on smaller reserves.

The Conservatives placed second in the riding in 2011. This time, the party had a hard time finding a candidate. Kyle Mirecki, a former staffer in the Prime Minister’s Office and now a law student at the University of Manitoba, will fill the spot.

August Hastmann, a longtime teacher in northern First Nations communities, is running for the Green Party and Flin Flon native Zachary Linnick is running for the Libertarian Party.

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca