Ashton, 29, kicked off her final week of campaigning prior to the leadership vote March 24 with a vision to hold a Prairie breakthrough conference in 2013 in Lethbridge, Alta.
"It's a community where we haven't ever won but we've done increasingly well there," she said. "It's symbolic of the kind of work we need to do."
In 2004, the NDP was a distant third place in Lethbridge, a city of 84,000 people southeast of Calgary. Last May, the party was second and nearly tripled its vote from seven years earlier. However, the NDP still tallied less than half the vote of winner Conservative Jim Hillyer.
Still, Ashton said, it's a place to start.
"We need to set the groundwork for a western breakthrough."
The NDP hold only three seats on the Prairies — two in Manitoba and one in Alberta. The party actually earned the highest vote share in Saskatchewan — 32 per cent, compared to 26 per cent in Manitoba and 17 per cent in Alberta. But its Saskatchewan vote share didn't translate into any actual seats.
Ashton thinks that can change if the party puts the same effort into wooing back the West as it did to winning Quebec.
In 2011, the NDP earned 59 of the 75 seats in Quebec. It was more than just a breakthrough, considering prior to that, only two NDP MPs had ever won a seat in Quebec and the party never held more than one seat there at the same time.
The Quebec win was due to a large number of factors — the complete collapse of the vote of the Bloc Quebecois, disenchantment with the Liberals and the popularity of then NDP leader Jack Layton.
It was also the result of more than six years of on-the-ground grunt work, and policies and positions that took into account Quebec's interests.
In particular, the party's 2005 Sherbrooke declaration, which recognizes the right of Quebec to draft its own referendum question on separation, helped drive nationalist voters in Quebec to join the "Orange Crush."
Ashton said she is inspired by what the party did in Quebec and believes there is room to repeat that success in the Prairies.
"There is tremendous potential for the NDP to be seen as the alternative to the Harper Conservatives," she said.
The NDP did get its start in the West and has won provincial majority governments in three of the four western provinces.
She said the party needs to get a good handle on issues that are important to Prairie voters and develop policies and plans to ensure voters know the NDP is there for them.
Original Article
Source: vancouver sun
Author: Mia Rabson
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