Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Oct 18/00) - Tonight will be either a starting point or a dead end for the Canadian Alliance in the Western Arctic.

A small group of Yellowknifers headed up by David Wind is organizing a meeting to gauge interest in running an Alliance candidate in the coming federal election.

No one knows much about how it will go, but one thing is for sure -- the Canadian Alliance Party is going to have a tough row to hoe to get a foothold in the Western Arctic, which has voted Liberal for the last three elections.

"At the moment we're just taking it one step at a time," said Gary Peaker.

Peaker, one of the founding members of the Reform Party, has come up from Calgary at the invitation of Alliance headquarters to help assist in making the Western Arctic part of the Alliance's first national election campaign.

The invitation came following a request from Wind, who is spearheading a drive to run an Alliance candidate in the next election, rumoured to be called for Nov. 27.

"We want to have a credible candidate running and a credible campaign to convince people that the current government is not the best available to us as Canadians," said Wind.

Wind is one of the organizers of the gathering aimed at gauging interest in forming an Alliance constituency association, believes the newly-created party presents a valuable option for Western Arctic voters.

One of the differences, Wind and Peaker said, will make fielding a candidate more difficult.

The Alliance, they said, has far tighter controls built into its candidate selection process than other parties, including a detailed questionnaire each prospective candidate must complete and a detailed selection process that relies heavily on rank and file members.

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in Yellowknife Library Public meeting room A.