Message will be sent in Fort Whyte

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/03/2022 (1012 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Although her name will not appear on the ballot, Premier Heather Stefanson will be very much in the minds of voters when they turn out to vote in the March 22 byelection in Fort Whyte.

The riding is generally considered one of the safest seats for the governing Progressive Conservatives, who have held it since it was created in 1999. Two leaders of the PC party — Hugh McFadyen and Brian Pallister — have represented Fort Whyte. In short, losing Fort Whyte is an outcome most Tories simply cannot contemplate.

Still, many of those same Tories know this byelection comes at a very precarious moment for the party and Ms. Stefanson.

Across the province, the PCs are struggling to find support. According to a recent national poll, Ms. Stefanson has the lowest approval rating of any Canadian premier. In Winnipeg, polls published in this newspaper show the Tories bleeding support to the Opposition NDP.

There was hope among party faithful that when Ms. Stefanson assumed the leadership last November after Mr. Pallister’s departure, she would provide a bump in support and put the Tories back on track to compete in the 2023 provincial election. Those hopes have more or less been dashed as Ms. Stefanson has struggled to demonstrate competent leadership.

Her efforts to alleviate the huge backlog of surgical and diagnostic procedures have largely flopped. She has personally been caught up in controversy over the failure to disclose millions of dollars in real-estate transactions to the conflict-of-interest commissioner. And most recently, she demonstrated a profound political insensitivity in a question-period exchange with the official Opposition.

Last Tuesday, Ms. Stefanson was asked whether she would order an inquiry in the case of Krystal Mousseau, a 31-year-old from Ebb and Flow First Nation who died during an attempted airlift to an out-of-province ICU. The premier declined to directly answer the question, opting instead to use her first opportunity to respond to congratulate her son’s high school hockey team for winning a provincial championship.

NDP Leader Wab Kinew was quick to point out that Ms. Mousseau’s children will not have a mother to help them celebrate their various life achievements.

All of these missteps come at a bad time for PC byelection candidate Obby Khan, a successful restaurateur and former professional football player. Mr. Khan has the charisma and profile to succeed in politics, but first he must somehow avoid being dragged down by the underwhelming performance of the PC party and its leader.

The Tories are also aware the Liberals and New Democrats are running strong candidates — Willard Reaves, another former football star, and Trudy Schroeder, former executive director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and a well-known presence in Fort Whyte.

Mr. Khan and the Tories may also face a minor threat from the far right in the form of independent candidate Patrick Allard, a contractor and anti-vax protester. Although he is not running for a registered party, any votes he receives will likely come at the expense of the Tories.

Apart from the appeal of other candidates, the real threat the PCs face in this byelection relates to the performance of their current leader. Will voters in this “safe” riding continue to support Ms. Stefanson, thereby providing a morale boost to beleaguered Tory supporters? Or will Fort Whyte turn its back on the Stefanson government by handing it a defeat or a demoralizingly narrow victory and, in the process, foreshadow the grief that may lay ahead in the 2023 general election?

The only certainty is that these questions will be answered late Tuesday evening.