Setting up jobbers to get squashed

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/05/2015 (3792 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Professional wrestlers have a couple of terms they use to describe the skinny, unfortunate nobodies who are sent in to do battle with the bigger, stronger and fancier stars.

These poor unfortunates are known as “squash boys” or “jobbers.” Squash boys are tasked to put up a good fight against the better known fighters, but with the knowledge that, in the end, they would be squashed. Many squash boys or jobbers put in years getting squashed in the hopes of being picked as a future star.

I have always thought that politics has its own versions of the squash boy. Like the unknown party loyalist who is asked at the last moment to run in an unwinnable seat so his or her party can claim to have run a full slate of candidates.

There are other examples of political squash boys, including many of the folks who have served as Manitoba’s finance minister during the past six years or so.

For the record, there have been five finance ministers since 2009. Premier Greg Selinger, chief architect of 10 NDP budgets, delivered the 2009 spending plan before he became leader of the party later that year. That is a remarkable record of turnover in a job that is normally among the most stable in politics.

Selinger was as competent and sophisticated as any finance minister Manitoba has seen. He had, and continues to have, an encyclopedic knowledge of government finances that allowed him to get the upper hand with both reporters and opposition critics.

After Selinger became leader, however, he turned to a variety of NDP colleagues to lead finance, most of whom have failed spectacularly.

In 2009, when Selinger became premier, he gave the nod to Rosann Wowchuk, a veteran cabinet minister who served as a deputy premier in former premier Gary Doer’s cabinets. While her folksy charm and soft-spoken manner served her well as minister of agriculture, it did not translate well to finance.

She was passionate when talking about agriculture, but on the broader issues facing the finance minister, it was difficult to shake her from a few well-worn, scripted lines. It made her seem stiff and unfamiliar with the specifics of her post.

Wowchuk was followed by Stan Struthers, another respected rural cabinet minister with a low-key style. Like Wowchuk, Struthers had trouble answering questions that were off-script. His performance when delivering the 2013-14 budget, which contained the now infamous one-point PST hike for infrastructure, remains one of the worst in recent memory from a provincial finance minister.

Struthers struggled so much with the PST hike he was replaced in 2013 by Jennifer Howard. It was one of the best things Selinger did as premier.

Howard took the finance portfolio and stabilized messaging on the PST hike. Where her predecessors had been slaves to talking points, Howard was a quick thinker who could actually listen to the questions she was being asked and formulate an answer that made sense. Her confidence and communication acumen earned her kudos from business and municipal leaders.

Howard would have been an excellent choice to table this year’s budget, if not for the fact that she and four other cabinet ministers resigned last fall and demanded Selinger resign. The premier would ultimately win a leadership vote. Howard was not invited back into cabinet last week when Selinger shuffled the deck again.

Which brings us to Greg Dewar. Selinger said he promoted the career backbencher to the finance chair because Dewar demonstrated an interest in, and a keen knowledge of, fiscal matters. And while that is a good place to start, it is not enough to ensure the province is getting effective leadership from what is easily the most important portfolio in government.

Dewar’s budget-day news conference was an echo of the Wowchuk and Struthers experience. Dewar’s decision to wear work boots as the traditional finance minister’s footwear was good schtick. However, his performance went quickly downhill from there.

Like Wowchuk and Struthers, Dewar could only offer scripted responses to questions. That created awkward non-sequiturs where Dewar stammered answers that had little connection to the questions he had been asked.

It also appeared Dewar did not know what was in the budget speech. Dewar was asked when he would make further amendments to Manitoba’s balanced-budget legislation now that the NDP government had pushed back, yet again, the deadline for retiring the deficit. Despite the fact an amendment was one of the pledges included in the budget speech, Dewar denied there were any plans. When pressed, he looked awkwardly at his notes, and denied again that anything was in the works.

Dewar may be knowledgeable about fiscal matters, but he is not an effective communicator and did not seem to be fully briefed on the budget speech. It was a disappointing performance for a government that is struggling to convince voters it should be allowed to govern beyond the 2016 election.

Were there others in cabinet who could have done a better job? After eliminating the dissidents and mutineers that tried to force him from his job, the ranks are pretty thin for cabinet. It appears now that one of the hallmarks of Selinger’s time as premier is that he has, save for one example, been unable to find finance ministers who were as good or better than he was. As a result, Manitoba has suffered through a series of affable squash boys and jobbers who were destined to fail.

We can criticize the ministers who filled the finance portfolio for their shortcomings, but the real problem here is the man who decided to put them in a bout they could not win.

 

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca