Macleod, AB — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Macleod

From the outer edge of Calgary to the Crowsnest Pass, Macleod took in most of Alberta's southwestern quarter: the foothills ranching country, the Porcupine Hills, the dry farmland east toward Vulcan, and the mountain communities on the British Columbia boundary. Okotoks, High River, Claresholm, Nanton, Vulcan, Fort Macleod, Pincher Creek, Turner Valley and Black Diamond all fell inside its boundaries, along with the municipal districts of Foothills, Willow Creek, Pincher Creek and Ranchland, Vulcan County, the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass, the Kananaskis Improvement District and part of Cardston County. The riding also contained the Kainai (Blood 148), Piikani 147 and Siksika 146 reserves.

Candidates

Ted Menzies (Conservative) — Born at Claresholm in February 1952, Menzies farmed there for close to thirty years, raising wheat, barley, canola, peas, lentils, chickpeas and spice crops. He had served as president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association and of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, which he represented at the World Trade Organization ministerial at Cancún in 2003; he helped found Grain Growers of Canada and sat as a director of the Alberta Barley Commission. Elected in 2004, he served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Cooperation from February 2006, adding international trade in January 2007, and from October 2007 until dissolution he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance.

Jared McCollum (Green Party) — A doctor of traditional Chinese medicine practising in Okotoks, McCollum argued that the Greens sat in the political middle and were both fiscally and socially responsible. He campaigned on federal health funding and on agriculture, contending that loan programs only handed farmers more debt and that the better answer was to connect producers to their own communities and encourage local eating.

Stan Knowlton (NDP) — Knowlton was an administrator from Brocket, the community on the Piikani Nation in the Oldman valley west of Fort Macleod.

Isabel Paynter (Liberal) — A retired nurse living in High River, Paynter ran for the Liberals in one of the least hospitable seats in the country for her party.

Marc Slingerland, a Lethbridge teacher, ran for the Christian Heritage Party.

About the Riding

Two very different economies shared the district. In the north, Okotoks and High River had become commuter towns for Calgary, with 17,145 and 10,716 residents respectively at the 2006 census and among the fastest growth rates in the province. Okotoks had built its planning around the carrying capacity of its Sheep River water supply and capped its own population at 25,000, which drew national attention and put the town at the centre of arguments about how far the Calgary region could expand. Both needed schools, interchanges and health facilities faster than they could be funded.

South and west lay ranching and farming country of long standing, cow-calf operations on the grass between the mountains and the plains and grain on the flatter ground toward Vulcan and Arrowwood. Oil and gas supplied the other half of the rural economy — Turner Valley was the birthplace of the Alberta industry — and the chinook winds near Pincher Creek and Cowley had made the foothills the province's first significant wind power district.

The campaign's agricultural arguments landed here with force. American country-of-origin labelling rules took effect on 30 September and threatened the cattle trade that underpinned the foothills. The fight over the Canadian Wheat Board's barley single desk had run through a producer plebiscite and the Federal Court and was still unresolved, and the sitting member's background as a wheat growers' association president made him an identifiable figure in it. Water allocation in the South Saskatchewan basin, already fully committed, shaped farm and municipal planning alike.

The reserves inside the boundaries brought housing, education funding and consultation over resource projects into the race, though federal campaigns in Macleod had historically been settled by the ranching and small-town vote. The financial crisis and the Liberal carbon tax proposal formed the backdrop, as across rural Alberta.