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The barb is veiled but aimed at Martin.

Despite the contempt in which he holds the Liberal Party, Martin says he is disappointed there was no tacit agreement between the left of centre parties. “It couldn’t have been formal but on an informal basis we could have pulled our punches around the country. We’re wasting time and resources fighting each other. The only way Stephen Harper sleeps at night is the knowledge that we will beat the shit out of each other.”

He says Falcon Ouellette will be a loss to the progressive left “once I defeat him handily.”

Yet what once might have been a foregone conclusion looks far from that as you drive around a riding that ranks as one of the poorest in Canada. There are lots and lots of red Falcon Ouellette signs.

If the Liberal candidate is to dislodge the institution that is Pat Martin, he is going to have to mobilize First Nations voters who have often not turned out in the past. Less than half the registered voters showed up in 2011, enabling Martin to win with just 14,000 votes. His Liberal challenger says if he can get indigenous and Filipino voters to the polls, he’s looking at a “massive win.”

That is a weighty conditional clause. But Falcon Ouellette has focused on what he calls “the great divide” between native and non-native Canadians, trawling for votes in rooming houses, where mothers are raising three kids in one room while an addict is sniffing gas one floor up.

“It’s not a racial divide, it’s a socio-economic divide,” he says. Like many Liberal candidates, he is enthusiastic about the party’s free-spending platform. “The child benefit commitment will have a profound impact on Winnipeg Centre,” he says. “It will give that single mother $18,000 a year and allow her to do something with her life.”