Ouellette’s star still on the rise

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This article was published 24/10/2014 (3784 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The day after Winnipeg’s mayoral race, Robert-Falcon Ouellette wasn’t answering the cordless phone at his South St. Vital home.

This wasn’t because the University of Manitoba administrator was avoiding calls from well-wishers following his moral-victory, third-place finish. Rather, one of his five children had plunked the phone in a vase full of water and flowers sent by Manitoba Opposition Leader Brian Pallister.

The morning after Ouellette garnered nearly 37,000 votes and 16 per cent of the popular vote, political parties began courting the PhD-educated, photogenic and well-spoken Cree educator, who went from being an unknown fringe candidate to a mayoral contender during the six-month campaign.

Ouellette attracted the vast majority of his votes not through an extensive volunteer apparatus, but on the basis of his charisma, as well as what he represents. He is a highly educated, comfortably middle-class, suburban indigenous professional.

“I think what he had was a certain kind of presence, partly being indigenous. He’s a handsome guy and he spoke very, very well and he’s a natural politician,” said University of Winnipeg political studies Prof. Allen Mills. “In that rather overused word, he was a little bit of charisma in this election, and people saw that.”

Sitting at a stool in his kitchen, Ouellette said he understands why parties would come calling. He said he has reservations about being co-opted and also fears party membership would require him to espouse political values his current supporters do not share.

Nonetheless, Ouellette said he would entertain serious offers to run at the provincial or federal level.

“Yeah, I would. I’d be a fool not to,” he said, noting it would also be unwise to run against Brian Bowman once more. “If he’s even vaguely successful or likable, there’s no way he wouldn’t be re-elected and I would waste four years of political capital to go into a losing battle with him?”

Chris Leo, a retired University of Winnipeg political science professor, said Ouellette and Bowman ran similar campaigns — ambitious and not likely achievable — but Winnipeg voters didn’t care.

Mills said he believes Ouellette appealed to left-leaning Liberals who would have supported Wasylycia-Leis.

Probe Research pollster Curtis Brown agreed Ouellette drew some voters away from the second-place finisher. “He was a compelling candidate,” Brown said. “You have to give him credit for the type of campaign he ran.”

Ouellette said in hindsight, he could have been more competitive if he had access to more money and better networks. He conceded he had no idea how his supporters got to the polls, as he could not approximate the sophistication of either Bowman or Wasylycia-Leis.

“My feeling is people just liked Rob so much, they were going to vote for him no matter what,” his wife, Catherine Cantin, said from the other side of the kitchen, where she was preparing lasagna.

Ouellette said he got the sense his campaign was gaining momentum in October, but he couldn’t quantify it. “I felt the ground shift two weeks ago, but I didn’t know how it shifted,” he said.

In addition to considering his political future, Ouellette said he’s developing a business plan for something he fears will annoy both the University of Winnipeg and his employers at the University of Manitoba.

He wants to create a privately funded, elite university that would cater to indigenous students in Winnipeg.

“I think the educational institutions in Manitoba are not meeting the requirements of a lot of aboriginal people,” he said. “There’s a need for an indigenous university in the city of Winnipeg.”

Ouellette said he would like to run such an institution, which would have about 500 students and high tuition fees to match high academic standards. Too many university graduates cannot write well, he lamented.

An endowment fund would help cover the tuition costs for such a university, which he figured would attract international as well as local students.

— with files from Aldo Santin

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca