PCs didn’t listen, and paid for it

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This article was published 06/10/2023 (752 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There is a truism in politics that the moment a government stops listening to the priorities of the public, their time in office is coming to an end.

That reality caught up with Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative government on Tuesday. The PC party was defeated by the NDP in a provincial election that pitted tax cuts against health care, a tough-on-crime agenda versus roots-of-crime solutions and hard-right ideology against moderate sensibilities.

In all three cases, the latter prevailed.

The NDP cruised to victory in almost all parts of Winnipeg, home to two-thirds of Manitoba voters, and won most of its usual seats outside of the capital city, including in the north. The victory was decisive: 34 NDP seats to the Tories 22. The collapse of the Liberal vote — a recurring theme in Manitoba elections since the mid-1990s — and the resignation on election night of its leader Dougald Lamont (who lost his St. Boniface seat to the NDP), cemented Manitoba as a two-party province, at least for the foreseeable future.

The reason for the PC party loss was clear: the Tories, including their leader Heather Stefanson, stopped listening to Manitobans. Even when they did listen, they did not hear — or chose not to hear — what the public was saying.

The Tory government cut taxes when few Manitobans were asking for it. It focused on austerity when the public demanded investments in front-line services, particularly in health care.

When crime rates soared across the province, the Tories responded with ineffective incarceration-based policies while the public was more interested in social and economic interventions that prevent crime in the first place.

Those discordant views carried over into the provincial election when the PC party doubled down on tax cuts, austerity measures and a renewed tough-on-crime agenda.

Stefanson promised Manitobans when she took over as party leader in November 2021 that she would listen to the public. The implication was that her predecessor, former premier Brian Pallister, did not listen well to the priorities of Manitobans and that she would be different. She was not.

Public opinion polls have shown most Manitobans want government to rehabilitate health care and front-line services after years of cuts and freezes to hospital budgets, public schools and infrastructure. Instead of promising that in this election campaign, the PC party offered $2.3 billion in tax cuts over four years versus only $442 million in new spending. The Tories promised to use almost all of the recently announced increase in federal health care transfers to cut taxes.

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When Stefanson was asked in a leaders’ debate during the election campaign how she planned to tackle homelessness, she responded by saying she would boost funding for more police officers.

At a time when most Manitobans are looking for civility and respectful dialogue from their politicians, the PC party ran one of the most toxic and divisive election campaigns in recent Manitoba history.

If Stefanson, who announced on election night she is stepping down as party leader, were truly listening — and hearing — what the majority of Manitobans were telling her, she would have governed very differently and offered voters a more appealing set of campaign promises. She failed to do so at her peril.

Stefanson and the PC party suffered the fate of any government that puts its own political agenda ahead of the priorities of the public.

That truism held as steady as it ever has in this election.