Peter Penashue was the loneliest man in Cartwright that day. The newly elected Conservative MP for Labrador had rolled up in the coastal town early in the campaign to find not one person at the scheduled event.
But as they were leaving town, he said in a phone interview this week, a taxi pulled them over and the cabbie asked for posters and buttons to distribute. It was an reassuring sign that there was support to be tapped in a riding that historically has been a Liberal stronghold.
Boosted by a surge of support from Mr. Penashue’s Innu people and helped by vote-splitting between the Liberals and NDP, the Tory squeaked to victory.
Knocking off the Liberal incumbent in a riding that has been held by the Grits for 58 of the last 62 years will give him much-needed credibility as he goes to Ottawa, where he may be almost as lonely as that day in Cartwright. Mr. Penashue was the only Tory elected in a province that shut out the party three years ago, at the height of an anti-Conservative mood, and clearly isn’t ready to embrace them again.
“It puts a little more pressure on me to consider the interests of other areas of [the province] that wouldn’t normally be bestowed on the member for Labrador,” the new MP noted. He is an obvious candidate for cabinet but stressed that he will play whatever role Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants from him.
How interested Mr. Harper will be in the province’s issues remains to be seen. With a majority secured by voters farther west, the government will have less need to hold out an olive branch to Newfoundland and Labrador, where the party has been rebuffed twice. But Mr. Penashue’s presence in caucus will be a reminder of the Tories’ conditional pledge during the campaign to assist a hydro mega-project on the Lower Churchill river.
“There’s a lot of local support for economic development,” said the one-time Innu activist and former deputy grand chief.
