SWAN RIVER, Man. – Between sliding into the ditch on a treacherous country road and navigating the puddles and slush on Main Street one day recently, Rosann Wowchuk has got her shoes full.
She’s also got her hands full with the current provincial election campaign. The pundits have tagged the campaign in Swan River as a two-way race to watch on April 25.
During the first week of the campaign, the leaders of both the ruling Progressive Conservative party and New Democratic Party opposition made the trek to “the Valley,” as it is known.
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Wowchuk, a farmer and teacher from Cowan, Man., and the agriculture critic for the NDP, won this hard-core Tory area in 1990 by only 233 votes.
This time, she’s running against Fred Betcher, a popular PC farmer from Swan River. Local lawyer Tim Gray is running for the Liberals.
The large and removed riding stretches from the Saskatchewan border to the shores of Lake Winnipegosis, and is about 320 kilometres long. People in the valley rely on agriculture, forestry and fishing for jobs, but Wowchuk said more than 20 percent of her constituents are unemployed.
“People are leaving the valley. They’re going out west, going to different areas,” said Betcher.
Coffee shops here buzz with talk about an often-controversial $80-million waferboard plant that the U.S. company Louisiana-Pacific has built in the riding, which could provide 450 jobs. Cruising around the massive plant (and muddy roads) with the help of local auctioneer Otto Hart and his four-wheel drive, Betcher can’t contain his optimism.
He said the plant’s payroll will be $6 million per year and will provide another $15 million to people who cut poplar trees and haul them from private woodlots and nearby crown forests.
Betcher predicts the plant will provide jobs for farmers in the off-season and may attract 100 families to the valley, starting this fall.
“I just feel it’s the beginning of an era for the Swan River Valley,” he said.
Wowchuk said she welcomes the plant, but she is guarded in her praise. “We want jobs,” she said, “But we want quality air, we want a sustainable harvest.”
Pollution controls relaxed
Wowchuk said the plant originally was to have top-notch pollution controls, but the government quietly approved plans in February that would let the company use a different system, which she said is less effective.
Betcher said Wowchuk’s questions have hurt her, while his party’s endorsement of the plant will help him win. He also said the NDP has come under fire for its position on the pregnant mare’s urine industry.
Pulling into the yard of PMU farmer Darrell Lumax, Betcher said there are 32 PMU farms in the valley that bring a total of $1.5 million into the local economy per year. He finds Lumax shaking his head as he listens to a phone-in radio show on the industry.
Wowchuk said the Conservatives are trying to lump her party into the camp of animal rights’ groups, which are not popular in this area.
But she said her party supports PMU farmers, though it might question environmental and health aspects of the industry. In fact, she even rents pasture to a PMU farmer. And she said her party was in power when the industry began in Manitoba. “If we wanted to oppose the PMU industry, we would have done it a long time ago.”
