Winnipeg North, MB — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Winnipeg North

Main Street and McPhillips Street carry the traffic through this compact riding, which fills the wedge of the city between the Red River and Winnipeg's northwestern limits. Inside it sit both the oldest working-class districts in the city and the postwar and 1970s subdivisions that spread north toward the perimeter highway. The seat reappeared on the map in the 2003 redistribution, assembled from the abolished Winnipeg North—St. Paul and part of Winnipeg North Centre. Liberal Rey Pagtakhan had represented that predecessor territory from 1988 until 2004, when the redrawn constituency went to the New Democrats.

Candidates

Judy Wasylycia-Leis (NDP) — Wasylycia-Leis studied political science and French at the University of Waterloo, finishing in 1974, and took a master's in political science at Carleton two years later. She won the Manitoba constituency of St. Johns in 1986 and served in Howard Pawley's cabinet as minister of culture, heritage and recreation. She entered the House of Commons in 1997 for Winnipeg North Centre and transferred to Winnipeg North when the boundaries changed. As NDP finance critic she asked the RCMP in late 2005 to examine how the government's income trust announcement had been handled; the force closed its investigation in February 2007 without concluding that the announcement had been leaked. Her private members' work won parliamentary backing for fetal alcohol warning labels on alcoholic beverage containers and drove a long campaign against candy-flavoured cigarillos.

Ray Larkin (Conservative) — A controller by trade and a Winnipeg resident, Larkin ran on crime, telling voters that longer sentences were what the riding's neighbourhoods needed and that his party was the only one prepared to legislate them.

Marcelle Marion (Liberal) — Marion practised law in Winnipeg and carried the Liberal banner.

Catharine Johannson (Green Party) — An accountant living in the city, Johannson stood for the Greens in the party's first general election under Elizabeth May.

Frank Komarniski, a construction worker, ran for the Communist Party. Roger F. Poisson stood for the People's Political Power Party of Canada, a Winnipeg-based party he founded and led, which Elections Canada registered two weeks into the campaign.

About the Riding

The constituency runs from William Whyte and Dufferin beside the rail yards out through St. John's, Luxton, Inkster, Tyndall Park, Garden City, Jefferson, Maple Glen and the southern half of The Maples. Seven Oaks General Hospital on McPhillips Street, Maples Collegiate, the Garden City Shopping Centre and the light industry strung along the rail corridor supply much of the local employment.

The distance between the riding and the rest of the city is stark. Median household income in the North End was recorded at $22,934 in 2005, less than half the $49,790 figure for Winnipeg as a whole. No federal seat in Canada holds a larger share of residents of Filipino origin, and Tagalog and Punjabi are spoken in a substantial number of households. Ukrainian, Polish and Jewish institutions founded when the North End served as the city's immigrant reception district still operate, and a large urban Indigenous population lives in the riding's southern neighbourhoods.

Two federal files dominated doorstep conversation in 2008. The first was crime: the Conservative platform's proposed changes to the Youth Criminal Justice Act were pitched at ridings like this one, and Larkin made the argument the centre of his campaign. The second was immigration, where processing delays and family sponsorship backlogs generated steady constituency casework. Housing repair, addiction services and persistently low turnout in the poorest polls filled out the local agenda.