Reach-for-the-bottom allies offer whiff of foul election recipe desperate Tories might cook up By: Tom Brodbeck Posted: 2:16 PM CDT Tuesday, Jun. 6, 2023

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This article was published 06/06/2023 (880 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“Can’t afford these two? Imagine adding Kinew,” an electronic billboard flashes on Portage Avenue, across the street from Polo Park shopping centre.

It features an image of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh on one side and Manitoba NDP Leader Wab Kinew on the other. The inference is that if Kinew and the NDP win the provincial election slated for Oct. 3, this will be the triumvirate ruling Manitoba and Canada.

It’s not a Progressive Conservative party ad. It was bought by a conservative group that calls itself the Canada Growth Council, which recently launched a “Manitoba Watch” campaign to influence the outcome of October’s election.

However, the billboard, and the messaging behind it — including Kinew’s criminal convictions from 19 years ago and a domestic assault charge he faced a year earlier — do give Manitobans a sneak peek into how ugly the upcoming election campaign is expected to be.

“Wab Kinew wants to be premier, but Manitobans just can’t trust a man with his character,” the Canada Growth Council states on a website it created called meetthendp.ca. “Wab has a record of violent aggression. He was accused of domestic violence by a common law partner, who claimed the wannabe premier threw her across the room.”

The Canada Growth Council has no official ties to Manitoba’s PC party. It’s listed as a “partner” of the Canada Strong and Free Network, a pro-conservative group formerly known as the Manning Centre for Building Democracy (named after former Reform party leader Preston Manning).

It appears the group, which has been targeting voters with text messages this week, plans to take an active role in the election. It’s setting the tone for what is shaping up to be a campaign focused squarely on Kinew’s dark past.

“Wab pleaded guilty to refusing a breath demand, assault, failing to report for bail supervision, and breaching a court-ordered curfew,” the group writes on the website. “He was also convicted for drunkenly assaulting a taxi driver, whom he berated with racial slurs, to make matters worse he lied about what happened in his book.”

The group takes aim at other aspects of the NDP, including an attempt to conflate the party’s support for supervised injection sites with British Columbia’s safer drug supply program (and twisting it into a preposterous claim that an NDP government in Manitoba would “distribute free heroin and hard drugs on our streets”).

The main focus, though, is on Kinew. It’s a line of attack the Tories appear ready to emulate, as they have done in the past.

Government Services Minister James Teitsma provided a glimpse of that on the final day of sitting at the Manitoba legislature last week, when responding to a question by NDP MLA Nahanni Fontaine.

The problem for the Tories and their conservative allies is that dredging up Kinew’s past again could be seen as gratuitous and an overreach, considering the events occurred nearly two decades ago.

“She sits on that side of the house talking about accountability, talking about standing up for women,” said Teitsma. “And yet, she sits next to a leader (Kinew) who does none of that, who avoids accountability… who won’t admit responsibility, who leaves in his wake a trail of victims and then turns around and blames them for his actions.”

It’s not the first time Tory MLAs have brought up Kinew’s criminal past in the house. But they’ve been ramping it up of late and it’s expected to be a central theme in their campaign.

But will it work? There’s nothing new to report about Kinew’s past. He publicly acknowledged long ago the struggles he faced with anger and alcoholism in his early 20s, and committed to turning his life around. By all accounts, he appears to have done so.

There are holes in Kinew’s story: he has never adequately explained why the version of his assault on a taxi driver in 2004, which he recounts in his book The Reason You Walk, differs considerably from court records.

According to the prosecution, Kinew sucker-punched the cab driver through an open window and hurled racial slurs at him. Kinew claims the cab driver chased him and they got into a hockey-like brawl on the street.

Kinew was also conspicuously silent in his book about charges of domestic assault he faced the previous year. Former partner Tara Hart told media in 2017 that during an argument one night in 2003, Kinew threw her across the living room, leaving rug burns on her knees. Kinew, who has repeatedly denied the accusation, was charged with two counts of assault. The charges were eventually stayed for reasons that remain unknown.

However, none of that is new. It was all reported in 2017, two years before the last provincial election in 2019.

The problem for the Tories and their conservative allies is that dredging up Kinew’s past again could be seen as gratuitous and an overreach, considering the events occurred nearly two decades ago.

There is a line in politics campaign strategists know they can’t cross without facing the risk of a voter backlash. The extent to which they’re prepared to venture into that political minefield depends on how desperate they are to turn their political fortunes around.

The Tories, who are facing almost certain defeat in October, are pretty desperate right now. They may be willing to take on more risk than they have in the past.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca