Election 2011: rabble.ca has chosen 10 key ridings across Canada for progressives to watch in the run-up to the May 2 vote, and asked local writers to assess them. The profiles highlight why the riding profiled is important and issues local campaigns are focused upon.

At first glance, the current electoral battle in the Vancouver Island North is simply a case of the Conservatives and the NDP slugging it out again in a riding that has swung back and forth over the last decade. Underlying this swing, however, may be outcomes that will decide the future of a significant part of British Columbia.

Vancouver Island North was created in 1996, sending its first MP, John Duncan, to Ottawa in 1997. The riding straddles both sides of the northern half of the Inside Passage and comprises the regional districts of Comox Valley, Strathcona, and Mount Waddington. To the east across the water lies a big chunk of the central coast. Key population centres are Campbell River, Comox, Courtenay, Port Alice, Port McNeill, Port Hardy and Alert Bay. The islands of Quadra, Denman, and Hornby round out the riding.

The current MP, the (now) Conservative Party’s Duncan, is Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. He took the riding from NDPer Catherine Bell in 2008 with a margin of about four per cent of the total vote. Duncan, first elected to Parliament in 1993 as a Reform Party candidate, had, in turn, been booted out by Bell in 2006 who captured the riding with a measly one per cent. In a previous flip flop, Duncan beat Bell by less than a per cent in 2004.

It wasn’t always this way. In elections of 1997 to 2000 when Duncan was with the Canadian Alliance, he easily dominated his left of centre opponents. Back then, the federal Liberals had a larger footprint pulling in almost 21 and 25 per cent of the total vote, respectively. Those long ago Grit votes seem to have largely evaporated since, now going equally to the Conservatives and NDP. The transition point was in 2000 when the NDP came in a distant third. The Greens from 1997 to 2008 never topped eight and a half per cent.

The current contest now pits Duncan against the NDP’s Donna-Rae Leonard. Leonard is a Courtenay city councilor with a history of local involvement in civic matters. Filling out the slate are the Liberal’s Mike Holland, a Comox lawyer, and the Green’s Sue Moen, a small business consultant. The Marxist-Leninist Party is running Frank Martin. Jason Draper is running as an independent.

Several features of Vancouver Island North make it an interesting riding to watch and one with a number of issues likely to resonate strongly with local residents, even if these same issues happen to be sleepers to the rest of the country. First, Aboriginal people make up a large fraction of the population, approximately nine per cent. Given that Duncan runs the Ministry notionally responsible for their well-being, their vote for or against the Conservatives is likely to carry a lot of electoral clout.

Next, geography is likely to loom large in the riding: Sitting as it does at the top of the Inside Passage, the Conservatives support for increased oil tanker traffic along the coast may rub a lot of voters the wrong way. Jobs and more jobs may be the official mantra of the Conservatives, but separating these from emerging environmental concerns might be tough for Duncan to pull off. Given that the three key industries in the area are forestry, fishery, and tourism, it is easy to see how a major spill could clobber the last two and put the local economy into the hurt locker for years. The NDP wants to keep the current ban on tanker traffic, a position likely to find a lot of grass roots support. Tankers in the Passage might seem to be a natural for the Greens, but their poll numbers haven’t budged leaving the NDP to own the issue.

The latest polls show a surge for the NDP across the country, now running just behind the Conservatives. What that may ultimately translate to in Ottawa is anyone’s guess, but if Vancouver Island North is any kind of a bellwether for either the fortunes of the Conservative’s dream of a majority government or an NDP breakthrough, then this is a riding to watch.