Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Cypress Hills—Grasslands

This is the southwest corner of Saskatchewan, bounded by Alberta on one side and Montana on the other, and it is the emptiest country in the province. Short-grass prairie, the sand dunes of the Great Sandhills, the wooded plateau of the Cypress Hills that the last glaciation left uncovered, and the badlands of Grasslands National Park all sit inside it. Swift Current is the only city; Maple Creek, Shaunavon, Assiniboia, Gravelbourg, Eastend, Val Marie and Leader are the towns that hold the rest of it together.

Candidates

David Anderson (Conservative) — Anderson was born at Frontier in 1957 and finished high school there, took a political science degree at the University of Regina and a Master of Divinity at the Canadian Theological Seminary in 1990, and farms in the riding. He sat on the Eastend School Division board from 1994 to 2000, chairing it for the last three of those years, and was elected to Parliament in 2000 as a Canadian Alliance candidate. In the 39th Parliament he served as parliamentary secretary to the minister of natural resources and, on the Canadian Wheat Board file, to the minister of agriculture, which made him the government's principal spokesman on the effort to end the board's single-desk marketing power. He had also chaired the National Prayer Breakfast in Ottawa since 2006.

Scott Wilson (NDP) — A video producer from Caron, near Moose Jaw, Wilson ran for the New Democrats in one of the least promising ridings in the country for his party.

Duane Filson (Liberal) — Filson farms at Woodrow, south of Gravelbourg, and stood for the Liberals.

Bill Clary (Green Party) — Clary worked as a care giver at Leader, in the riding's northwest corner, and ran for the Green Party.

About the Riding

Dryland grain farming and cattle ranching built this country and still define it. Durum, spring wheat, canola, lentils and mustard come off the flatter land; the rougher terrain around the Cypress Hills and the Frenchman River valley runs cattle. The beef sector was still working its way out of the damage done by the 2003 BSE border closure, and high feed grain prices in 2007 and 2008 squeezed feeders even as they enriched grain growers.

Oil and gas had become the fastest-changing part of the local economy. Horizontal drilling with multi-stage fracturing had unlocked the Lower Shaunavon tight oil formation from 2006 onward, and with crude at record prices through the first half of 2008 the rigs, service companies and camp trade around Shaunavon and Maple Creek reshaped several small towns. Gas production continued around Leader and Hazlet. Saskatchewan's sales of Crown petroleum and natural gas rights passed a billion dollars for the first time in 2008, and the five largest such sales in the province's history all fell in that year.

Grasslands National Park, established near Val Marie to protect the last significant tracts of native mixed-grass prairie, and the Great Sandhills, covering roughly 1,900 square kilometres, were both points of friction between conservation objectives and the ranchers who hold grazing leases. The dinosaur research centre at Eastend and the Cypress Hills park sustain a modest tourism trade.

Federal politics here ran on farm policy. Anderson's role in the Wheat Board fight made the campaign partly a referendum on marketing choice, a proposition that had strong support among the riding's producers. The Green Shift was attacked relentlessly as a tax on the diesel, propane and long-distance trucking that a riding this size cannot avoid. Grain handling and the continuing abandonment of branch rail lines, which push farmers into ever longer hauls to inland terminals, were the other durable local grievance.