Kildonan—St. Paul, MB — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Kildonan—St. Paul

North Winnipeg and the country immediately beyond it were joined in this riding, which took in North Kildonan and the Garden City district inside the city and then jumped the Perimeter Highway to pick up the rural municipalities of East St. Paul and West St. Paul: postwar bungalows, newer subdivisions, big-box retail and, further out, acreages along the Red River. It had been drawn by the 2003 Representation Order out of Winnipeg North—St. Paul, Winnipeg North Centre and a piece of Winnipeg—Transcona, and first went to the polls in 2004.

Candidates

Joy Smith (Conservative) — Smith was born at Deloraine in February 1947 and took a Master of Education at the University of Manitoba in mathematics and science. Twenty-three years of classroom teaching followed, along with the 1986 Hedley Award for Excellence in Research and, in the 1990s, work as a liaison for private and home-schooling organisations. She sat as a Progressive Conservative member of the Manitoba legislature for Fort Garry from 1999 to 2003, then took the new federal seat in 2004 and was returned in 2006. Her Motion M-153, calling on the House to condemn the trafficking of women and children across international borders and to adopt a comprehensive strategy against it, passed the Commons unanimously on 22 February 2007, and she spent 2008 working on the plan it demanded.

Ross Eadie (NDP) — Self-employed and living in the riding, Eadie made energy the centre of his campaign. He argued that existing fossil fuel taxes should be redirected into measures that reduced dependence on them, pointing to the energy-efficient houses going up in East St. Paul.

Lesley Hughes (Liberal) — Hughes was a Winnipeg journalist and broadcaster who had co-hosted CBC Radio's morning programme in the city and worked for years as a freelance writer. The Liberal Party withdrew its endorsement of her during the campaign; because the nomination deadline had already passed, her name remained on the ballot under the Liberal label. She campaigned on personal security, arguing that safe neighbourhoods came from prevention — training, economic opportunity, youth programming and active neighbourhood associations — rather than from policing alone.

Kevan Bowkett (Green Party) — A researcher by occupation, Bowkett framed the riding as one built on cheap oil and asked how it could stay prosperous without it. He wanted prices to carry the full long-term health, ecological and social cost of what they bought.

Jordan Loewen, a draftsperson, ran for the Christian Heritage Party on neighbourhood upkeep, and Eduard Hiebert, a farmer from St. François Xavier, stood as an independent promoting the "vote 123 preferential poll," a method he had devised as a remedy for the single-mark ballot's limits.

About the Riding

Traffic was the recurring municipal grievance. The Chief Peguis Trail stopped at Henderson Highway, and the proposed extension east from there to Lagimodière Boulevard was put to residents at a public open house at Douglas Mennonite Church on 6 March 2008. Crime and community safety featured in nearly every candidate's material, as did the cost of driving in a riding where almost everyone did.

The settlement history showed in the census returns. About a quarter of residents reported Ukrainian origins, the second-highest share of any federal riding; a fifth reported German origins; and at roughly fourteen per cent the riding had the largest concentration of Polish ancestry in the country. Those figures traced back to the waves that filled north Winnipeg from the 1890s onward and left a dense network of parishes, halls and credit unions behind them.

Economically the riding was suburban. Most residents commuted elsewhere in Winnipeg to work in health care, education, retail and public administration, while Garden City Shopping Centre and the strips along McPhillips Street and Henderson Highway supplied local jobs. East and West St. Paul added market gardens, small livestock operations and new exurban housing. Smith had held the seat since its creation and was seeking a third term, with the New Democrats rather than the Liberals mounting the local opposition to her.