What Manitoba needs now is a leader By: Tom Brodbeck Posted: 7:00 PM CST Friday, Nov. 13, 2020

COVID-19's second wave has not been Premier Brian Pallister’s finest hour.

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This article was published 12/11/2020 (1503 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

COVID-19’s second wave has not been Premier Brian Pallister’s finest hour.

The premier’s combative, stingy and shortsighted governing style has not served Manitobans well during one of the worst crises the province has faced in its 150-year history.

The results are now being felt: Manitoba has the highest active cases per capita in the country and the third-most COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people. Intensive care units are at near-capacity, and hospitals and personal care homes are quickly running out of qualified staff.

Where is Pallister in all this? It’s hard to know.

His public availability continues to be sporadic (only a handful of news conferences since the beginning of October). When he has addressed the public, he’s been mostly quarrelsome, defensive — sometimes weepy — and usually lacking the kind of statesmanship the public looks for during times of crisis.

Since the news of eight deaths at the short-staffed Maples long-term care home and new lockdown measures were announced this week, Pallister has only spoken once publicly. He hasn’t held a media conference since Tuesday.

Pallister has always fashioned himself as a take-charge politician, a steady hand the public can rely on during tough times.

We haven’t seen that steady hand during the pandemic. We’ve seen a politician focused mostly on himself. He seems more concerned about optics and how issues reflect on him personally, than on working co-operatively to get results.

He has not spoken about his government’s flip-flop on the five-person gathering rule, nor made any public comments in recent days about record COVID-19 numbers. He’s been missing in action.

On Tuesday, Pallister balked at the idea of asking the Canadian military for help, saying requesting such assistance would demonstrate a lack of confidence in Manitoba health-care officials.

Meanwhile, he continued to complain critics have misinterpreted his government’s decision to shut down its pandemic incident command centre in June (a move widely seen as a major failure in preparing for the second wave of COVID-19).

He said the leaders of that team were hard at work throughout the summer, but admitted they didn’t go “deeper into some of the departments” in planning efforts, the way a centrally run incident command team would.

It means some emergency planning fell by the wayside, including a failure to plan for more contact tracing. The province fell substantially behind on doing follow-up with people who test positive for COVID-19 and tracking down close contacts. That allowed for a more rapid spread of the novel coronavirus.

The province also failed to ensure personal care homes had the staff needed to handle an expected surge in cases. Manitobans discovered this week Maples asked the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority for staffing support prior to its Nov. 6 tragedy, and was denied.

All of this happened under Pallister’s watch.

When asked if the province was slow to invest in those areas, a defensive premier called it a “false accusation.”

Pallister has trouble accepting constructive criticism. He’s not good at admitting mistakes. He allows vanity to get in the way of good decision making.

“The criticism that our health leadership, our elected and non-elected health leadership, hasn’t been at this every step of the way, every day, is wrong,” he said.

What Pallister has been focused on is cracking down on “scofflaws” who violate public health rules to help get the spread of COVID-19 under control.

“Hitting them in the pocketbook is going to be the way we help to change behaviour,” he said.

It’s hardly the kind of Churchillian leadership Manitoba needs right now.

Pallister has always fashioned himself as a take-charge politician, a steady hand the public can rely on during tough times.

We haven’t seen that steady hand during the pandemic. We’ve seen a politician focused mostly on himself. He seems more concerned about optics and how issues reflect on him personally, than on working co-operatively to get results.

Pallister has trouble accepting constructive criticism. He’s not good at admitting mistakes. He allows vanity to get in the way of good decision making.

Those are dangerous traits in a leader during a time of crisis.

It’s something the premier may want to reflect on over the weekend, as he plans his next public address and decides what Manitoba’s next move should be.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca