State of province speech tones of Tory eulogy By: Tom Brodbeck Posted: 7:00 PM CST Thursday, Dec. 8, 2022

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/12/2022 (748 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was probably Premier Heather Stefanson’s last official state of the province speech.

A year from now, the Tory MLA for Tuxedo will, in all likelihood, not be the premier of Manitoba. She probably won’t even be the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba.

Barring some shockingly unforeseen shift in the political landscape, the PC party will lose government after the next election (by law on or before Oct. 3) and Stefanson will most likely make a graceful exit that night.

Not surprisingly, her Thursday speech to a luncheon crowd of about 1,000 at the RBC Convention Centre sounded more like a eulogy than a state of the province address.

Stefanson was ranked dead last among provincial premiers again this week in an Angus Reid Institute poll, with a dismal approval rating of 26 per cent. It’s roughly where she stood a few weeks after she was sworn in as premier Nov. 2, 2021. There’s been no growth for her party in the polls over the past year.

It’s been a lousy 13 months.

Is it all her fault? No. Stefanson inherited a hot mess from premier Brian Pallister, who drove the party’s approval rating to its lowest level in decades.

It would have been a herculean task for anybody to turn those numbers around, given the entrenched unhappiness of voters with the current Tory regime. Still, Stefanson did her share to contribute to that malaise as a cabinet minister, most notably during her disastrous term as health minister, when 57 critically ill COVID-19 patients were airlifted out of Manitoba for care during the pandemic.

Since becoming premier, Stefanson has made numerous gaffes, including bragging about her son’s high school hockey team when asked during question period about the tragic death of a mother of two.

Is it all her fault? No. Stefanson inherited a hot mess from premier Brian Pallister, who drove the party’s approval rating to its lowest level in decades.

She has also been unwilling to abandon many of Pallister’s misguided policies, including a decision to cut school property tax cuts, at a time when health care is underfunded.

She had an opportunity to accept overwhelming evidence from around the world that supervised injection sites help reduce fatal overdoses for people with drug addictions. Yet, she stuck with Pallister’s ideologically driven position that they’re not a good fit for Manitoba.

At a time when Stefanson should be embracing progressive policies, she pulled out a page from a 1990s Tory playbook and launched a new “tough on crime” agenda, where politicians pretend they’re going to lock up all the bad guys.

Stefanson has, to a large degree, been the author of her own misfortune.

If there was anything left to be said Thursday that could provide a hint of some bold action ahead, some new direction that might change the minds of Manitoba voters, the premier didn’t reveal any.

If there was anything left to be said Thursday that could provide a hint of some bold action ahead, some new direction that might change the minds of Manitoba voters, the premier didn’t reveal any.

In a speech laden with more partisan rhetoric than usual for an event of this kind, Stefanson tried to contrast what she believes are the main differences between the Tories and the Opposition NDP. It was an unconvincing exercise.

“As you know, there is going to be an election next year,” said Stefanson, drawing a lukewarm response from the business crowd. “During that election, Manitobans will face an important decision.”

She warned the crowd the NDP would “cancel over 13,000 surgeries for ideological reasons” because of its opposition to private clinics (the NDP never said it would cancel surgeries) and it would “defund police” (it didn’t say that either). She said a Tory government would continue to “stabilize” Manitoba Hydro, where the NDP would run it into the ground financially.

Stefanson’s main message, though — which she repeated several times — was her party plans to pull out all the stops to crack down on crime to “ensure violent offenders are not walking on our streets.”

If the premier wants to make crime a partisan issue, then she also has to wear the fact Manitoba’s violent crime severity index has jumped 19 per cent since the Tories won office in 2016.

It’s a tough sell, considering under the Tories (including Stefanson’s time as justice minister) violent crime in Manitoba has soared.

Whether that’s government’s fault or not doesn’t matter. If the premier wants to make crime a partisan issue, then she also has to wear the fact Manitoba’s violent crime severity index has jumped 19 per cent since the Tories won office in 2016.

“So there is a choice to be made, folks, and I’m confident that Manitobans will make the right choice next year,” Stefanson told the assembled crowd.

They always do. However, Stefanson probably won’t like what they decide.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca

Tom Brodbeck
Columnist

Tom has been covering Manitoba politics since the early 1990s and joined the Winnipeg Free Press news team in 2019.

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