Tories may be counting on scared voters on election night

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This article was published 14/08/2023 (799 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As most informed observers know, Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative government has a steep hill to climb to win a third term in the Oct. 3 election.

Now just weeks away from a writ of election, the Tories are burdened by anger and resentment over austerity measures that have left education and health care reeling, and are profoundly estranged from provincial public servants and their unions.

Although they’ve closed the pre-writ polling gap provincewide, they are facing an uphill battle in Winnipeg.

In short, this is a government that has worn out its welcome years earlier than it really should have.

What can the Tories do to pull a victory from the jaws of likely defeat? It seems increasingly likely that Premier Heather Stefanson and her party will try to exploit a tangible fatigue among non-Indigenous voters with Indigenous issues that are, for obvious reasons, closely associated with the NDP and its leader, Wab Kinew.

This is hardly a new observation; for years now there has been a concern among political observers that the Tories would try to subtly scare voters into resisting the idea of electing Manitoba’s first First Nations premier.

But recent events — such as Stefanson rejecting calls to participate in the search of a Winnipeg-area landfill for the remains of missing Indigenous women thought to be victims of a serial killer — have certainly brought the Tory strategy more into focus.

She caught a lot of people off guard last month when she announced that the province would not cover any of the cost of the search — estimated by a feasibility study at between $84 million and $184 million. Prior to that statement, Stefanson had sounded all the right notes on a very emotional and political volatile subject.

For months, she had played the part of the compassionate first minister, expressing a commitment to working with the families of the missing women, and the broader Indigenous community, to “get this right.” Stefanson was also key in convincing the company operating the landfill to cease operations indefinitely while details of a possible search were examined.

But as Indigenous anger over delays and political posturing reached new heights, and the price tag for a full search came into full view, Stefanson pivoted and turned her back on the whole idea.

Her rationale for abandoning plans to search the landfill was as thinly veiled as it was poorly reasoned.

She claimed the search might interfere in the ongoing criminal investigation. Almost no one in the legal community — including police and prosecutors — rushed to endorse that view. The search of the landfill would take years; the accused in the killings will go on trial next year.

Then, she further claimed it was too dangerous for the people doing the search. Consultants who drafted the feasibility study and others with expertise in forensic digs said her argument was, well, rubbish.

The end result was this: a premier who manufactured tenuous reasons for abandoning the search, and in so doing deliberately stoked the rage of the Indigenous community and non-Indigenous Manitobans who support the effort. And she did it less than 60 days before a provincial election campaign begins.

Why would any sane political leader with realistic hopes of retaining power trigger this kind of grief before an election? The only possible explanation is that she not only does not fear the blowback on this issue, she is inviting it.

The truth is that right now in Manitoba, there is a discernible anger among some non-Indigenous citizens over the cost of a search and the ongoing discussion of related issues such as unmarked residential school graves, missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and Orange Shirt Day.

It deserves to be mentioned, once again, that this is not necessarily a new concern about the broader Tory electoral strategy. Quietly, the Tories have always operated on the belief that when it was time to cast a ballot, Manitobans would hesitate to elect an NDP government led by Kinew.

In other words, although Kinew is, by most objective metrics, ready to take on the job — he is as experienced as most political leaders who seek to run a government — there have always been concerns that voters in Manitoba were not ready to give him the chance.

The Tories clearly believe scaring Manitobans about Kinew and his Indigenous heritage is a card they are willing to play.

In 2019, the Tories ran a “Wab Risk” campaign to exploit Kinew’s unsavoury past, including criminal charges for domestic assault.

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His checkered past is a matter of public record. And the Tories are fully entitled to exploit that in a bid to stay in power.

But in doing that, and ignoring the distance Kinew has put between his past and the person he is today, it is also fair to accuse Tories of summoning it as a way of triggering some white fright.

Elections are, at one point or another, showcases for our baser instincts and values. If it comes down to winning or losing, all political parties will seek out the lowest common denominators and willingly wade into the gutter.

But there is a limit to what voters are willing to accept when it comes to dirty politics. Stefanson needs to ensure that in a bid to trigger white angst, she does not mistakenly trigger Tory angst.

dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com

Dan Lett
Columnist

Dan Lett is a columnist for the Free Press, providing opinion and commentary on politics in Winnipeg and beyond. Born and raised in Toronto, Dan joined the Free Press in 1986.  Read more about Dan.

Dan’s columns are built on facts and reactions, but offer his personal views through arguments and analysis. The Free Press’ editing team reviews Dan’s columns before they are posted online or published in print — part of the our tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.