NORTH BATTLEFORD, Sask. – Alexa McDonough, federal New Democratic Party leader, was late.
While the Friday evening crowd buzzed in the hall, local candidate and nine-year MP Len Taylor stood outside with a clump of locals, anxiously waiting.
Then, more than half an hour late, the leader arrived and quickly got to work.
A Maritimer she may be, but McDonough showed she knows how to play to the traditional grievances that have motivated generations of prairie New Democrats.
Part of the delay had been spent at a crossing, watching a grain train roll by. “I was delighted to see such a long train still running on the Prairies.”
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The crowd laughed, giving McDonough a launching pad for criticism of the grain-hauling mess of the past winter and higher freight rates, a defence of the Canadian Wheat Board and a promise of NDP support for rural Canada.
She even found a way to embrace a Saskatchewan icon.
A few days earlier in Regina, prime minister Jean ChrŽtien had chided the NDP for its spending promises. Fiscally conservative T.C. Douglas would never endorse such a plan in these debt-ridden times, he said.
In front of this crowd, many old enough to have voted for Douglas in the 1950s, McDonough responded.
The Liberals cut health spending by 40 percent, she said.
“You (ChrŽtien) will never walk the path that Tommy took,” said McDonough, daughter of a wealthy Halifax social democrat who sold future Saskatchewan premier Allan Blakeney his first CCF membership. “Don’t even try to fill his shoes because you are well out of Tommy Douglas’s league.”
The crowd cheered.
Look at party history
The 1997 NDP campaign has been filled with moments like that. It has modest goals, appealing for support by remembering the past.
The party offered proposals on the need to spend more on health and education, to create jobs and to restore public faith in government.
Yet no one expected the NDP to end up being able to implement promises, and public opinion poll numbers were mired near the bottom. They just want a few more seats.
The campaign features a plea to return the country to a time when there were enough New Democrat MPs to hold governments accountable for spending cuts and tax breaks for the rich.
In 1993, the NDP was reduced to nine MPs and no official status in Parliament.
McDonough’s goal, in her first campaign as leader, is to win at least 12 seats, including her own in Halifax.
The day the election was called, McDonough set the tone as she stood in the House of Commons lobby.
“Do you know what’s wrong with this place?” she asked, gesturing behind her. “It has been out of balance. We need more New Democrats to restore some balance.”
