Selkirk—Interlake, MB — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Selkirk—Interlake

This riding filled the land between Lake Winnipeg and Lake Manitoba, running north from the edge of Winnipeg through Selkirk and Stonewall to Arborg, Fisher Branch, Riverton and Ashern, with the Icelandic settlements of Gimli and Winnipeg Beach on the big lake's western shore. It also reached east of the Red to take in Beausejour and the Rural Municipality of Brokenhead. Peguis, Fisher River, Little Saskatchewan and Lake St. Martin were among the First Nations inside its boundaries. The riding had been re-created for the 1997 election out of pieces of Selkirk—Red River, Portage—Interlake, Provencher and Churchill.

Candidates

James Bezan (Conservative) — A Russell native born in 1965, Bezan took his training in livestock technology at Alberta's Olds College. Livestock marketing occupied him through the 1980s and 1990s; he launched his own firm in 1996, later ran the Manitoba Cattle Producers Association as its chief executive, held seats on several cattle and food-production boards, and kept a family farm going near Teulon throughout. Elected in 2004 and returned in 2006, he chaired the Commons agriculture and agri-food committee. His campaign message was disaster relief: with the harvest stalled around Arborg and Fisher Branch, he had been pressing for AgriRecovery assistance to help drowned-out producers buy feed and recover lost input costs.

Pat Cordner (NDP) — Retired and living in Selkirk, Cordner also put farm finances first, saying producers simply could not afford the cost of the goods they needed to stay in business and that federal help should cover part of it.

Kevin Walsh (Liberal) — A foster parent from Winnipeg, Walsh campaigned on Lake Winnipeg. He argued the pollution overwhelming the lake — from algae, farm runoff, processing plants, Winnipeg's sewage and sources south of the border — demanded far more money than the government had committed, and contrasted the federal pledge with his own party's larger proposal.

Glenda Whiteman (Green Party) — An educator living at Arnes on the lakeshore, Whiteman said it was not too late to save Lake Winnipeg, but that doing so meant being far more diligent about what went into the groundwater and about the wetlands that had been drained across the region.

Jane MacDiarmid, a teacher, stood for the Christian Heritage Party and called for more help for farmers hit by the summer's flooding.

About the Riding

The weather wrote the 2008 campaign here. More than 100 millimetres of rain fell on the cropland around Arborg over a single weekend in August, and a further 73 millimetres arrived over the September long weekend. Hay, forage and pasture were drowned, cattle producers could not put up enough feed for the winter, and grain still stood in saturated fields when the writ was issued. Federal-provincial AgriRecovery payments for cow-calf operators in the Interlake and Westlake were being negotiated as the campaign ran, and the provincial hog-barn ban given royal assent that October covered the Interlake as well.

Lake Winnipeg itself was the riding's other permanent file. Nutrient loading from farmland, municipal sewage and upstream sources had made summer algal blooms steadily worse, threatening a commercial fishery that supported communities along both shores and a tourist economy built on beaches and cottages. It was the lead issue for both the Liberal and Green campaigns.

Selkirk, a city of roughly 9,500, was the industrial centre. Manitoba Rolling Mills had operated on its riverfront since 1913 and was by 2008 part of Gerdau, the largest private employer for many kilometres, and the Selkirk Mental Health Centre stood nearby. Gimli, laid out in 1875 as the reserve of New Iceland, still held the largest concentration of Icelandic descent outside Iceland and hosted Íslendingadagurinn on the first Monday of each August.

Around one resident in five was Indigenous, and conditions on the riding's reserves — housing, flooding, water systems and schooling — were persistent concerns that rarely surfaced in the parties' national messaging. The seat had gone to Reform, then the Canadian Alliance, then the Conservatives at every election since it was re-created.