After a short election campaign, and a tough year as a female Member of Parliament, Leah Gazan handily won her Winnipeg Centre riding, one of only seven NDP members left in the federal government. 

Although it was expected the election would be called sometime between the early spring and the fall, all other candidates in the riding were either appointed or approved by acclamation because of Gazan’s strong relationship to the riding. 

“We fought for the humanity of every person in this community, that all people regardless of where they find themselves, will be treated with dignity and respect, and with love because that’s what we are about in Winnipeg Centre,” Gazan announced at her campaign headquarters. 

“That’s what makes us the centre of the universe and the best riding in the country!” she enthusiastically declared.

Rahul Walia entered the race for the Liberals, and canvassed the whole riding four times, starting before the election was declared. At age 23, he was one of the country’s youngest candidates.

“Its been overwhelmingly positive,” Walia told The Leaf midway through the election, with lots of people willing to talk about the issues they cared about when he stopped by. Residents were candid about the threat of Trump, about the war in Gaza, and about housing. In particular, Walia said, “people want to talk about issues, like crime, but in a compassionate way, in the sense that we are…looking at being tougher on root causes.” This would include better wraparound supports for people with addictions, Walia emphasized. “We don’t have as many detox centres as we need.”

Walia pointed out that the median annual income in Winnipeg Centre is $35,000, and has bounced between being the second or third poorest riding in the country. With little change in wages over the last decades, he said, the fees for people to access private mental health services are way out of reach. But Walia said he also noticed a sense of resiliency in the riding. “If you give us a little bit of hope, we can take it and run with it,” Walia said. 

This year, all the windows at Leah Gazan’s office on Sargent were broken. But in a story about harassment directed at women MPs, which has risen dramatically in recent years, Gazan said that Indigenous women in Canada have experienced higher levels of violence directed at them, and it was one of the reasons that she couldn’t step back from her role as MP. She also acknowledged that “people are hurting,” and that one of her jobs in the federal government is to fight to improve people’s lives materially. 

On the campaign trail, Gazan attended many community events, She has a committed constituency base. Many supporters remember encouraging her to run, before she had ever entered politics. At one event, grandmothers brought out their younger family members, especially their granddaughters, to hear her speak, and to acknowledge the important support Gazan was able to arrange across party lines for issues they felt were fundamental to women in Winnipeg; especially bringing much needed support to one of Canada’s last stand-alone clinics for women’s health. 

On CBC’s election day programming, a Liberal political advisor on its flagship Power and Politics show suggested that the riding would likely be lost, saying that he had heard that Jagmeet Singh had actively avoided visiting Gazan. In reply, an NDP commentator shook her head and dismissed his comments. Singh, she said, didn’t need to visit the riding because the seat was one of the few that was safe.  

Given the negative polling as election day came close —which proved correct in the case for Singh, but wrong when it came to Winnipeg Centre— Gazan may have seen the writing on the wall. The inability to connect to voters in an authentic way, and to take their ideas to parliament and fight for them wasn’t what people felt the national NDP had been doing before Trump arrived on the scene. This lack of connection only grew worse when Trump did.  

Gazan has always liked to joke that growing up, her family was married to politics. At election debates and rallies in the runup to voting day, she shared that she was an activist before she decided to run, and would always continue her advocacy for the people and organizations in the riding that she loves. 

“This was a hard night for us as the NDP”, she announced to a happy, and relieved crowd once the vote was counted. “We won because we believe in human rights. We need people holding the Liberals to account to fight corporate greed.  We fought for women’s rights, LGBTQIA rights. We will not stay silent when trans kids are being attacked in school; Winnipeg Centre will have none of that. We fought for climate justice.”

For everybody that didn’t vote for me, I love you. To all of you that came out to win a really tough battle, I love you. I’m so proud to be a representative of this community,” said Gazan.