Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar NDP candidate Nettie Wiebe talks with supporters at a BBQ in Saskatoon on Thursday, April 28, 2011. Wiebe lost be a couple hundred votes to the Conservative's Kelly Block during the previous election.David Stobbe for the Globe and Mail
Up and down the gritty core streets of Saskatoon, opportunity should be waiting for Jack Layton.
The streets are lined with aging homes, many of them in disrepair and filled with people down on their luck. They make up a slice of a booming city in a province where the New Democrat brand was born decades ago under the fabled Tommy Douglas. Liberals are mostly a non-factor here and races are, as such, tight between Tories and the NDP. It would seem to be an ideal situation for the surging Mr. Layton, who hoped to drive home a few electoral wins with a Saskatoon campaign stop Thursday.
"Young and old, rural and urban, farm families and families in the factories - we need to bring everyone together," Mr. Layton told a crowd of hundreds, in a speech that included only a brief reference to Mr. Douglas.
As it happens, though, Mr. Layton's brand of New Democrat no longer rings true here in much of his party's homeland. It's too urban, too Eastern and too socially motivated for many here.
The Saskatchewan NDP grew instead out of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, a largely socially conservative group of farmers. It wasn't uncommon for Saskatchewan to vote in the NDP provincially and still elect right-leaning MPs. Some still refer to the CCF here, decades after its demise.
Meanwhile, the Saskatchewan economy has picked up under current Premier Brad Wall, whose Saskatchewan Party is a right-leaning collective of conservatives and liberals. The energy sector is booming and many fear it would suffer under the New Democrat cap-and-trade plan. Finally, the Conservatives made friends here by blocking the foreign takeover of the treasured Potash Corp.
"They [voters]say: It's one thing to have these [NDP]guys here. But on the national level, when you're in charge of international trade and international economic development, I'm not sure we're all necessarily socialists," said former conservative premier Grant Devine, now a rancher. "We're making money in oil, we're making money in potash, we're making money in natural gas, we're making money in agriculture. So, don't wreck what we have here."
Even former New Democrat premier Roy Romanow agrees that, to some extent, the NDP is now a tough sell. (Mr. Layton again attacked the "big banks and oil companies" in his Saskatoon speech.) "What the big challenge will be is, in the last few years, Saskatchewan is perceived by a lot of Saskatchewan people as having an unprecedented boom time based on resources," said Mr. Romanow, whose provincial NDP collapsed under his successor. "To that extent, people will not want in many cases to readily give up what they think is the safer or more acceptable economic route to go."
New Democrats here hope to win at least one riding - Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar, which NDP candidate Nettie Wiebe lost by 262 votes to Conservative Kelly Block in 2008. It was Ms. Wiebe's third close loss to Conservatives, and she's back again this time, appearing with Mr. Layton at a rally Thursday.
An organic farmer, Ms. Wiebe hopes Mr. Layton's message can put her over the top - particularly along the inner-city streets of Saskatoon, where at-risk and impoverished voters, including a large aboriginal population, are looking for social programming.
"I think the legacy [of the NDP in Saskatchewan]is very strong, and it depends on where you engage it," Ms. Wiebe said. "We're talking about people whose prospects either look dim or harsh - that's what a jail looks like - or whose prospects could look much more positive and possible. And that's what I'm telling you about sharp contrasts."
Ms. Wiebe has received the bulk of federal party support in Saskatchewan, other local candidates say. But she's up against a strong opposing campaign - Conservative phone banks in Eastern Canada are flooding the riding with calls.
"I get phone calls every day, the Conservatives telling me where to vote. They're pouring cash into it. They've done my street three times," said Calvin Vandale, 50, who rents a small home in the core and is on disability assistance. He's supporting the NDP.
"If you live on this side of town, you can see it - the poverty.… I think it's time for change," he said. "But some are just Conservatives, and they're not going to change."
That benefits candidates like Ms. Block and Conservative Brad Trost, running in nearby Saskatoon-Humboldt. They'll draw most of their support from farms and small towns, once the NDP base.
"The NDP have sort of abandoned the agrarian populist movement," Mr. Trost said. "Those sorts of New Democrats no longer exist in the country, and that's why they're no longer the relevant force they were in Saskatchewan."