Manitoba Liberal leader Jon Gerrard campaigns for Elmwood candidate Regan Wolfrrom Sunday March 22, 2009, in Winnipeg.The Canadian Press/Brian Donogh
Life as a Liberal in Western Canada has its ups and downs but, lately at least, mostly just the latter.
Manitoba Liberal Leader since 1998, Jon Gerrard is still standing. But once again he's back to where he started — as a party of one. Not that he really got that far, but in the past at least he had some company.
Now, however, his long-time partner in the legislature, Kevin Lamoureux, is the MP for Winnipeg North and Mr. Lamoureux's old provincial seat of Inkster, vacant since he stepped down last year to run federally, is up for grabs.
In the past decade or so, provincial Liberals have enjoyed brief bursts of popularity in Manitoba polls, but never at election time.
In the 13 years Mr. Gerrard has led them, they've never drawn much more than about 13 per cent of the popular vote. Last time, in 2007, they managed just over 12 per cent. The latest polls show support sliding into single-digit territory.
Ever the positive thinker, the party leader refuses to accept those bleak numbers as a harbinger of Oct. 4's election results.
"I guess I'm an incurable optimist but I'd rather be that than the other way."
Mr. Gerrard, a pediatrician, is certainly not a quitter. Lean and fit and looking younger than the 64 he will turn Oct. 13, he has spent most of the past 20 years as an elected member of either the House of Commons or the Manitoba legislature, working briefly as a doctor during the transition.
He was the MP for Portage-Interlake from 1993-97 and has been member of the legislature for the old-money Winnipeg riding of River Heights since 1999.
He's been a politician almost as long as he was a practising physician. But he hasn't had a sniff of power since the fall of most western Liberals over the gun registry in 1997. That's when he lost his one-term federal seat to the Reform party after redistribution changed the boundaries and the name to Selkirk-Interlake.
His daily routine when the Manitoba legislature sits includes asking for permission to speak when announcements are made. With just one member — or even when it had two — the Liberal party has no standing and no automatic right of response. In fact, it hasn't had official party status since 1995.
"I'm here because I truly believe in the people of Manitoba and our province of Manitoba," Mr. Gerrard says. "I think we need a government that looks after people better."
It was what he felt needed doing in health care that drew him in.
"This is the reason that I got in initially. The critical decisions in terms of the future of health care in Manitoba and in Canada are made at the political level."
Born in England and raised in Saskatoon, Mr. Gerrard has a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Saskatchewan, a medical degree from McGill and a PhD from the University of Minnesota.
He stays fit swimming and jogging, and once ran the Boston Marathon.
If only hard work were able to guarantee success, he might do a lot better than most pundits expect on election night. Under his hand, Liberals have rebuilt their membership, more than tripling it to around 7,000 since the last election, and also refilled the campaign war chest.
He defines liberalism more by what it isn't – the heavy-handed law-and-order approach of the Conservatives or the top-down bureaucratic style of the NDP.
Even his wife wonders why he stays at it, he admits, but Mr. Gerrard can't even speculate on what he might do after he leaves politics.
"At this point, I'm 100-per-cent focused on doing the best we can Oct. 4 ... The people will tell me what I'm doing after Oct. 4 and we'll go from there."
The Canadian Press