Help! Manitoba’s Tories have fallen, and they can’t get up

Opinion

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This article was published 27/12/2022 (728 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was supposed to be the year the Progressive Conservative party turned its political fortunes around. Even a nominal improvement in public opinion polls would have given the Tories reason for optimism. Instead, 2022 was a year of disappointment and failure for a party that just can’t seem to reconnect with Manitoba voters.

The game plan was simple: replace Brian Pallister, the former premier, with a more congenial, less-combative party leader who could appeal to moderate voters in the all-important swing ridings of Winnipeg. The party was in desperate need of someone better suited to modern-day politics who could embrace traditional conservative values — fiscal responsibility, a market-based economy, less government — but also resonate with progressive voters.

That someone would be longtime Tory MLA Heather Stefanson. Even before she won the PC party leadership in October 2021, though, Stefanson — Manitoba’s first woman premier — showed a level of arrogance and disconnectedness that almost immediately began to derail her party’s rebuilding efforts. When asked during the leadership race about her government’s fatal error of ignoring the advice of outside experts during the third wave of the pandemic, her response was cringeworthy: “coulda, shoulda, woulda.”

The gaffes piled up quickly soon after. When asked a sensitive question about a mother of two who died after she was among 57 critical-care patients airlifted out of Manitoba during the pandemic, Stefanson responded by bragging about her son’s high school hockey team championship victory. Manitobans later learned the premier violated the province’s conflict-of-interest rules by failing to disclose the sale of family-owned properties worth millions of dollars. She broke election finance regulations by spending $1,800 during the party leadership race before the campaign officially began. And in June, the premier — who desperately needed to demonstrate a more progressive brand of politics — chose not to walk in the Pride Winnipeg parade, drawing the wrath of event organizers. It was an irreversible blemish on her record.

Any hope of turning the party’s fortunes around was fading fast. By June, the Opposition NDP opened up a 10-point lead in public opinion polls. Worse, the gap in Winnipeg, where the Tories need to at least tie the NDP in popular support to win government, widened to a staggering 28 points — an almost insurmountable deficit.

Stefanson’s fatal error in 2022 was failing to distance herself from Pallister. She embraced most of his unpopular policies at a time when she needed to differentiate herself from him. Stefanson extended Pallister’s misguided policy of cutting education property taxes while underfunding health care. She continued to weaken the regulatory authority of the Public Utilities Board by interfering in Manitoba Hydro electricity rate setting. Surprisingly, the premier embraced Pallister’s ideological opposition to supervised drug-consumption sites, despite overwhelming evidence from around the world that they save lives. She also adopted the former premier’s longstanding policy of freezing operating grants to the City of Winnipeg, which has caused significant harm to services (and is not winning the Tories any accolades in the capital city).

In a desperate bid to boost public support in the fall, Stefanson and the Tories launched a 1990s-style “tough on crime” agenda. It was more political theatre than genuine crime prevention. Stefanson announced that her government would “no longer put up with the heinous acts of crime committed by the most violent criminals in our society” and would double down on those with outstanding warrants. “Enough is enough,” said Stefanson, in an unconvincing, if feeble attempt at right-wing populism.

The tough-on-crime gimmick was a bust. A Probe Research survey conducted between Nov. 22 and Dec. 5 showed the Tories didn’t move the polling needle one iota.

To add salt to the wound, Stefanson continued to rank last in popularity among provincial premiers in December, according to an Angus Reid Institute quarterly survey. She held the last-place position the entire year. For Stefanson and the Tories, 2022 was a year they would probably rather forget.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca