Stefanson, Tories face reckoning in Fort Whyte Two former Blue Bombers, WSO boss battling for Pallister’s seat in once-safe PC stronghold By: Carol Sanders Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Monday, Mar. 21, 2022

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Byelections aren’t usually game-changers, but political watchers are keeping a close eye on Tuesday’s race in Fort Whyte to see if the Tories struggle to hang on to the Progressive Conservative stronghold.

“If the results are close in what is normally a fairly safe seat or if the seat actually flips and the Liberals or the NDP win, that could be a big deal,” said Probe Research Inc. principal Curtis Brown.

“That could be a sign of something else, a sign of things to come.”

One of those things could be the fate of the governing Tories in the general election due by Oct. 3, 2023.

“Byelections can be an opportunity for voters to express displeasure with the government and, certainly, we’ve seen in our polling over the last couple of years a lot of voters — (especially) in suburban Winnipeg — haven’t been happy with the government, and are more likely to prefer the NDP,” said Brown.

The PCs are expecting their star candidate, entrepreneur and former Winnipeg Blue Bomber Obby Khan, to win the seat vacated Oct. 4 by Brian Pallister after he stepped down as premier in August.

The NDP also have a star candidate in former Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra executive director Trudy Schroeder. The Liberals are running another former Blue Bomber, Willard Reaves, a retired Manitoba Justice Department employee.

“This has been a pretty competitive race,” said Brown. “All three big parties have been really working hard trying to win this seat.”

Two other candidates are running in Fort Whyte: independent Patrick Allard, who made a name for himself protesting pandemic public-health restrictions, and Green Party of Manitoba’s Nicolas Geddert, who ran in the 2019 election in Elmwood and said the byelection is a training exercise for party youth to prepare for 2023.

“This has been a pretty competitive race. All three big parties have been really working hard trying to win this seat.”
– Probe Research Inc. principal Curtis Brown

The vote could also be seen as a report card for Heather Stefanson as premier.

“It is really the first opportunity that voters in the province have had to cast judgment on her party at the ballot box since she became premier,” Brown said. “We know that the leader of the party does have a significant bearing on how people vote and how they feel about the parties themselves.”

Stefanson was not made available for comment Monday.

The PCs, lagging in the polls behind the NDP in vote-rich Winnipeg, elected Stefanson Oct. 30 to replace Pallister as party leader, allowing her to be sworn Nov. 2 in as the first woman to lead Manitoba’s government.

The new premier hasn’t, so far, been able to revive the party’s lagging popularity. An Angus Reid Institute survey released Friday had her in last place among Canadian premiers with a 25 per cent approval rating in Manitoba. The byelection in Fort Whyte — a South Winnipeg constituency that has been held by the PCs since its inception — could be another measure of support for the premier.

“It is really the first opportunity that voters in the province have had to cast judgment on (Heather Stefanson’s) party at the ballot box since she became premier.”
– Curtis Brown

“If it’s close or if it goes against the conservatives, she’s going to have to answer some difficult questions,” said Brown.

Another indicator of how well each of the parties are doing will be voter turnout.

“With a byelection, it’s the most committed people who are going to go and vote,” he said.

A total of 2,335 people voted in advance in Fort Whyte — just 430 fewer than the number of people who voted in advance of the 2019 general election, Elections Manitoba spokeswoman Alison Mitchell said Monday.

Turnout for the affluent constituency in 2019 was just over 60 per cent. Pallister received 5,619 of the 9,889 votes cast, with the NDP and Liberals finishing a distant second and third, receiving 1,757 and 1,731 votes respectively.

Khan said he’s “cautiously optimistic” Fort Whyte will remain Tory blue.

“We’re not taking anything for granted,” he said Monday, slipping into sports analogies. “We’re going hard today and tomorrow, all day. “I’m leaving nothing in the tank. I’m leaving it all on the field but I’ll be ready to go with a full tank on Wednesday morning, hopefully, when I win this election.”

The campaign has amounted to a “real race” over the past month, the NDP’s Schroeder said Friday at a media event at her campaign headquarters.

“Conservatives have had a history of feeling that this was just completely safe, they didn’t have to work for this, they didn’t have to go out and actually engage with the community because they could take, really, Fort Whyte voters for granted.

“What we’re hearing at the door is that people who have been lifetime conservatives are just so angry. The skill set that I bring to the legislature is one of actually being able to make things happen, being able to collect the resources and the people to make wonderful things happen for Manitoba.”

Reaves, who was the first candidate to enter the race, said he was feeling great ahead of election day.

“I’ve done as much as I possibly can and then some to get the word out, to let people understand that I’m there to represent and not just… grab a seat like Pallister did,” the Liberal candidate said Friday at a media event.

“I am a lifetime public servant, and serving the community and the people in my riding, especially, in this province, that is something has been very dear to me.”

The Liberals issued a press release Monday morning making the erroneous claim that Khan was using the former offices of Caspian Construction on McGillivray Boulevard as a campaign office, noting a Khan campaign sign was posted on it. The release called for Khan to explain his relationship with the company’s owner, Armik Babakhanians.

Khan said his campaign has never had office space in the building formerly occupied by Caspian, whose owner bribed Winnipeg’s former chief administrative officer Phil Sheegl to win the contract to build the controversial Winnipeg Police Service headquarters downtown, the chief justice of the Manitoba’s Court of Queen’s Bench ruled in a lawsuit decision released last week.

The sign likely ended up on the building because campaign volunteers saw it as a “high-traffic, high-visibility area” and requested permission to post it there, Khan said. The sign was removed after the Liberals’ “negative smear,” said Khan, allowing he may know Babakhanians (“I know a lot of people in the city,” he said) but they’re not friends.

“For a guy like me who’s always tried being so positive and a community leader and a champion, it’s really sad,” said Khan, who faced criticism earlier this month after it was revealed he received provincial funds for an e-commerce venture helping local firms struggling under pandemic restrictions in 2020, more than a year before the byelection was called.

— With files from Danielle DaSilva

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca