Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia

This riding takes the western end of Winnipeg and adds the Rural Municipality of Headingley beyond the city limit. Ferry Road, the airport's eastern edge and Notre Dame Avenue close it off north of the Assiniboine River; Park Boulevard, Corydon Avenue and Shaftesbury Boulevard do the same to the south. Charleswood lies along the river to the southwest, St. James and Assiniboia north and east along Portage Avenue, and the Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport sits near the centre.

Candidates

Steven Fletcher (Conservative) — Fletcher had held the riding since 2004 and was seeking a third term. He took an engineering degree and later an MBA at the University of Manitoba; at 23, driving to a job in northern Manitoba, he was severely injured when his car struck a moose and has used a wheelchair since. Made parliamentary secretary to the health minister in February 2006, he spent the 39th Parliament on that file, pressing for compensation for hepatitis C claimants left outside the original settlement window and working across party lines to cut trans fats out of the food supply.

Bob Friesen (Liberal) — Friesen had led the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, the country's largest farm organisation, since 1999, and stepped down in 2008 to seek the Liberal nomination here, announcing his candidacy alongside Stéphane Dion at a caucus meeting in Winnipeg. He brought an unusually detailed grasp of supply management, trade negotiations and farm income programs for a candidate in an urban seat.

Fiona Shiells (NDP) — Shiells worked as a ministerial assistant at the Manitoba legislature. She had run provincially in River Heights in 2007, sat on the University of Winnipeg's board of regents and co-chaired the Manitoba Young New Democrats.

Brian Timlick (Green) — Timlick, retired and living in Winnipeg, stood for the Green Party.

Mark Price, a residential support worker, ran for the Christian Heritage Party.

About the Riding

This was settled, comfortable, mostly detached-housing Winnipeg. St. James had been a separate municipality until it was folded into the city in 1972 and kept a distinct postwar character, its bungalows and small commercial strips lining Portage and Ness. Charleswood, across the Assiniboine, was more affluent and more wooded, with larger lots and river-valley frontage; Assiniboia filled out the remainder, and Headingley added farmland and riverbank west of the Perimeter. The Assiniboine Forest, more than 700 acres of aspen and prairie held inside the city, sat between Grant Avenue and Wilkes Avenue.

The airport gave the constituency its economic distinctiveness and, in 2008, its sharpest federal grievance. Air Canada said in June that it would close its Winnipeg flight attendant base by 1 November, along with the Halifax base, cutting roughly 145 positions here as the carrier trimmed costs against rising fuel prices. The Manitoba government applied to the Court of Queen's Bench for a declaration that the closure was unlawful, arguing that the Air Canada Public Participation Act obliged the airline to keep an operational centre in Winnipeg alongside those in Montreal and Mississauga. The case was live during the campaign, and no candidate here could sidestep it.

The countervailing story was CentrePort. The Manitoba legislature passed the CentrePort Canada Act unanimously in 2008, designating roughly 20,000 acres in Winnipeg and the neighbouring Rural Municipality of Rosser as an inland port and creating a corporation to develop it for trade, warehousing and distribution. The Winnipeg Airports Authority also had a replacement passenger terminal in preparation. Both promised employment, and both turned on road, rail and customs decisions made in Ottawa.

The riding was older and more established than most of Winnipeg, predominantly English-speaking, with long-settled German, Ukrainian, Scottish and French communities and a growing Filipino population. Health care, pensions and crime were the recurring subjects at the door, along with the terms on which federal infrastructure money reached the city.