Home, then the house Kelvin Goertzen has always put what's best for his family ahead of politics, and that's why the longtime Tory MLA from Steinbach is just filling in as premier for a few weeks By: Dan Lett Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Friday, Sep. 24, 2021

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This article was published 23/09/2021 (1192 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Before he lets the reporter leave his office on the second floor of the legislature, Premier Kelvin Goertzen has one more thing he insists on revealing.

For more than an hour, Goertzen has shared huge tracts of his origin story as a politician. But now, at the conclusion of that conversation, he walks over to the mammoth wooden desk that has served premiers for decades and points to a wooden pullout tray concealed above a row of drawers.

Goertzen eagerly calls the reporter over, pulls out the tray to reveal a yellowed, dog-eared photocopy.

It’s a 1996 Progressive Conservative caucus staff list that was no doubt placed there by then-premier Gary Filmon. Among the people on it is a young intern named Kelvin Goertzen.

“I couldn’t believe it when I found this,” Goertzen says with a big smile. “What are the odds?”

About as long as those on the Steinbach MLA becoming Manitoba’s premier.

To put that observation into context, Goertzen’s ascension to the first minister’s office was unlikely not because he’s ill-suited for the job. In fact, just a few weeks in the position, more than a few people remarked that it’s too bad he decided to sit out the current Tory leadership race, a decision that made him eligible to serve as interim premier following Brian Pallister’s sudden retirement last month.

His quiet and articulate manner, conciliatory tone and tendency to answer direct questions with direct answers certainly created a stark contrast with Pallister’s bellicose style.

The odds were long because Goertzen has made conscious and deliberate efforts to contain his personal ambition when political fate provided him with opportunities to compete for other, more powerful and high-profile jobs.

Almost every major decision he has made in his political life has been indelibly connected to the needs of his family: wife Kim and 14-year-old son Malachi. Goertzen has been courted several times for other jobs in politics, including the leadership of the provincial party and as a candidate in the federal riding of Provencher.

In both instances, he says, “the timing just wasn’t right for my family.”

Shortly after being sworn in as premier, Goertzen told reporters about how he and his mother were forced to live in provincial housing after his alcoholic father’s death. It was an experience that prompted him to reassess his aspirations for much of his time in public office.

“My dad died when I was 11, and some might say that I’m too much of a doting father,” he says. “But I’d rather be accused of having spent too much time investing in my family than too little.”

Goertzen was first elected to the legislature in 2003, just four years after the Tories’ devastating loss in the 1999 election. The once-dominant party was left fractured and would languish for the next decade-and-a-half with three different leaders.

His quiet and articulate manner, conciliatory tone and tendency to answer direct questions with direct answers certainly created a stark contrast with Pallister’s bellicose style.

Goertzen says he strongly considered taking a shot at the leadership in 2012, after Hugh McFadyen left and before Pallister was acclaimed. But when it came to family, it still wasn’t the right time; Malachi was just four years old, and the thought of taking on all the additional duties of a party leader did not seem feasible.

“It’s not that I wasn’t interested in leadership, but I wasn’t interested enough to pay the price,” he says. “And there is a price to be paid.”

Opportunity would come knocking again a year later when longtime Provencher MP and cabinet minister Vic Toews decided to resign his post in prime minister Stephen Harper’s government. Provencher was one of the safest federal Tory seats in the country and winning the nomination there was tantamount to winning the seat in an election.

After conversations with Toews, Goertzen says he and Kim talked it over and decided to make the jump to federal politics. But there were doubts about the personal costs to come.

“We were going to run federally. We had basically decided we were going to do it. And then we started to go through it we just realized the price was more than we were willing to pay,” he says.

“So, we made the decision to stay here. Do I regret sometimes not being able to serve in Ottawa? Sure, because I would have loved it. But I would have missed this opportunity, too.”

He’d have missed the provincial party’s triumphant return to power in 2016, an electoral win that suddenly made Goertzen one of the most important people in Pallister’s new government. After 13 years in opposition, and having taken on the role of opposition house leader, Goertzen said he was ready for the challenge of government, even if his political sensibilities had changed.

He acknowledges that when he entered the legislature in 2003, he was as partisan as they come. But the more he worked with MLAs from other parties to navigate the often-arcane rules of parliamentary procedure, his edges softened and he began to think the best role for him in the new government was Speaker of the Legislature.

True partisans think of the Speaker’s chair as a B-level, perfunctory role. But for Goertzen it would have been a chance to immerse himself in the rules and procedures of the legislature, something he had come to love. It was not to be. In a truly ironic twist, Pallister tapped Tory MLA Myrna Driedger, who had been opposition health critic, for Speaker and Goertzen, the house leader, was asked to serve as health minister.

“In 2016, when we formed government, I didn’t lobby for Speaker. I didn’t lobby for anything. And when I became health minister, there is a certain legend or lore that I didn’t enjoy it, which wasn’t the truth at all,” he says, adding he and Driedger met for coffee at Assiniboine Park after their appointments.

“We did remark a bit on the irony that I was in health and she was the Speaker. But I actually think it was good for both of us.”

Goertzen says the relentless pace and constant pressure of his 2 1/2 years as health minister were real eye-openers. When Pallister transferred him to education in 2018, many interpreted the move as a demotion, or evidence that he didn’t like the job.

In fact, he loved the job but needed the move.

“I found it exhilarating, and I found it incredibly challenging,” he says. “But it is also exhausting. There’s no question that after 2 1/2 years of that kind of constant, seven days a week, always dealing with crises — and it’s a very emotional department — health ministers get tired. And I think I had some of that.”

Now, as he serves out his brief stint as first minister — he will be replaced by a new Tory leader sometime in early November following the Oct. 30 leadership convention — he said he often thinks back to when he was in his late 20s and had to decide between law, his first choice of professions, and politics, which he had been around most of his adult life.

“I was just starting in law, and I loved the law,” he says. “I was talking to one of the folks I know in the legal field and he said something that has stuck with me: ‘You’re gonna regret whatever you do because you’re choosing between two things that you love. You love the law and you love politics. So, if you go into politics, you’re going to miss the law. And if you go into law, you’re going to miss politics.”

Goertzen pauses, reclining in a leather armchair perched in front of a grand fireplace in the most powerful office in the province.

“And he was absolutely right.”

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca

Dan Lett
Columnist

Born and raised in and around Toronto, Dan Lett came to Winnipeg in 1986, less than a year out of journalism school with a lifelong dream to be a newspaper reporter.

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