Paul G. Thomas and Curtis Brown, Eds. Manitoba Politics and Government: Issues, Institutions, Traditions

Paul G. Thomas and Curtis Brown, eds. Manitoba Politics and Government: Issues, Institutions, Traditions. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2010. 452 pp. Notes. $29.95 sc. This is an excellent and diverse collection of papers which, in earlier versions, were presented at a conference held at the University of Manitoba in 2008 focused on analyzing Manitoba's politics and society. Its contents range from descriptions of Manitoba's political institutions and political parties to analyses of social exclusion in the province: the persistence of poverty, and its inordinate concentration among Aboriginal peoples. pivotal, though not necessarily the best, essay in the collection is Jared Wesley's Culture in Wesley emphasizes the search for moderation and compromise in Manitoba politics. He presents this alleged effort to seek reconciliation for its own sake as an unalloyed virtue. Many of the essays either reinforce Wesley's appreciation of Manitoba politics, or interrogate it. Gerald Friesen's essay, The Manitoba Political Tradition, based on interviews with key political players, also outlines efforts of political parties and social groups to find centre ground in Manitoba. But at least one of his informants, Leslie Turnbull of the survey research firm, Viewpoints, hints that a large section of Manitobans are marginalized and play no role in the search for consensus in Manitoba society. Even the NDP's efforts to include women, Aboriginals, and visible minorities as candidates have done little to reduce hard-core poverty among these groups. Jim Silver's Segregated City: A Century of Poverty in Winnipeg, argues that the character of poverty in the city has changed, but mostly for the worse. While the poor in the inner city in the early twentieth century were mostly underpaid workers and their families, today's poor are workless and often viewed as unemployable. Nelson Wiseman's The Success of the New Democratic Party, bridges the divide among essays in the collection that focus on the conciliatory aspects of Manitoba political culture, on the one hand, and the firm exclusion of a significant minority of Manitobans from anything that resembles citizenship in a prosperous, democratic society. He traces the changes over time in the membership, ideology, and policies of a party that began as an oppositional, egalitarian force but has evolved into a brokerage party of diverse elites. Along the way, while becoming Manitoba's natural governing party, the NDP has pioneered within English Canada in such areas as home care for seniors as well as in childcare. …

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