Too many people still bought into PCs’ poisonous election campaign

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/10/2023 (751 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The tone could not have been more different.

In her concession speech in the 2023 provincial election, Premier Heather Stefanson had kind words for premier-designate Wab Kinew, calling his win “historic.”

“Wab, I hope that your win tonight inspires a future generation of Indigenous youth to get involved in our democratic process — not just here in Manitoba but right across the country,” she said.

The tone was conciliatory and ironic; she could have even added that the Wab way is the right way, after all.

After weeks of running a campaign that made fun of Wab Kinew’s Anishinaabe name, spending thousands of dollars on ads likening him to every Indigenous stereotype possible, and referring to him as the joker in a deck of playing cards full of Indigenous women, queer and BIPOC peoples, Stefanson’s words rang pretty hollow.

Because, by employing nearly every racial, gender-based, and anti-LGBTTQ+ attack possible, Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative Party made sure the 2023 provincial election did far more to dissuade “Indigenous youth to get involved in our democratic process” than inspire them.

Over the past few months — and particularly in the final two weeks of the campaign — Stefanson and her Manitoba PCs ran on ideas that weaponized Indigenous women’s remains in a landfill, drew upon anti-LGBTTQ+ sentiment by proposing “parental rights,” and suggested that darker-skinned people were dangerous because they want to defund police.

My Free Press colleague Dan Lett called this strategy an attempt to forge a “coalition of the angry.” The anger he’s referring to was fuelled by racism, homophobia and transphobia.

It’s true the majority of Manitobans rejected these views, but many didn’t.

Despite their very angry campaign, Stefanson and her Conservative colleagues still earned over 200,000 votes, won 22 seats, and garnered over 42 per cent of the popular vote.

One could say this was about other elements of the PC platform, but let’s be honest; none of those appeared in the final days. If ever there was proof that more anti-racism, inclusivity and diversity conversations are needed in this province, this election might be it.

It was like Kinew predicted Stefanson’s campaign strategy during his now-infamous August speech, when he said that the campaign against him would not be run on issues but “at least partially be about the fact that I’m somebody who sometimes wears my hair in a braid.”

It’s also as if Stefanson forgot why Brian Pallister was removed as premier, too.

Pallister wasn’t forced to resign by his own party members because of health care or hydro, but due to his ignorant, incorrect and divisive comments about Indigenous peoples.

In a case of history repeating itself, Stefanson, in fact, is facing her own sort of Pallister-esque rebuke, as several within her party have condemned their party’s campaign.

In a case of history repeating itself, Stefanson, in fact, is facing her own sort of Pallister-esque rebuke, as several within her party have condemned their party’s campaign.

Her former PC colleague and deputy premier Rochelle Squires, for example, was a guest on the Free Press’s Niigaan and the Lone Ranger podcast and called her party’s campaign “regrettable”; so much so she found it impossible to appear at campaign events.

For those keeping score, that makes two Manitoba premiers removed from office now for spreading misinformation and sowing division between Manitobans and Indigenous peoples (take note, future leader of the PCs).

The worst part of the 2023 election campaign, though, is that the rest of us are now left to pick up the pieces. After toying with hate like playing a card game — literally the ad the Conservatives used — Stefanson gets to resign and walk away with no consequence.

Some have said that the “real” Heather Stefanson didn’t truly believe the anti-Indigenous, anti-LGBTTQ+ and anti-BIPOC sentiments of her campaign.

If so, this is worse.

Hate ain’t a game. If it is, it is something for rich, privileged and protected people who never have to worry about being shot by police, having children taken away by child welfare agents or having human remains left in a landfill.

Among the nearly two-fifths of Manitobans who supported the Conservative platform are police officers, health-care workers, teachers, child-welfare workers, lawyers and guards.

These Manitobans have spent weeks bombarded with messages that certain races are irredeemable, certain genders and sexualities are dangerous and brown people, gay people and men with a braid are unfit for office not because of their ideas, but because of who they are.

What do people do when they encounter individuals they have been conditioned to think are irrevocably, impossibly and inherently different?

Here’s a hint: it’s not good, and might just explain why Indigenous women end up in landfills, LGBTTQ+ children don’t want their parents to have control over their identities and Indigenous youth don’t want to “get involved in the democratic process.”

It’s true that the majority of Manitobans did not buy into the divisiveness of the PC election campaign in 2023.

But the rest of us have to deal with its aftermath.