Party ‘absolutely’ made mistake rejecting landfill search, PC leadership candidate Daudrich says

Wally Daudrich would dig a landfill with his bare hands if one of his daughters’ bodies was suspected to be there.

The Churchill businessman, one of two candidates running for the leadership of Manitoba’s Progressive Conservatives, said Wednesday it was “absolutely” a mistake for the then-governing party to reject calls for a search of a city-area dump in 2023 for two Indigenous victims of a serial killer, believed to be buried there.

The Heather Stefanson-led party chose to “stand firm” on that decision during that year’s provincial election campaign and lost in a landslide to the NDP.

Interim PC leader Wayne Ewasko apologized in the legislature last week after the province announced human remains found at Prairie Green Landfill just north of Winnipeg belonged to Morgan Harris, one of four women murdered by Jeremy Skibicki in 2022. The search for a second victim, Marcedes Myran, is continuing.

“Unequivocally, I agree with the apology,” Daudrich said. “We should have never (refused to search) and I have always been against that. I ranted against it even when they were promoting it within the party.”

Daudrich, who has four daughters, said the only thing he would have changed regarding the search was enlisting the private sector to help with funding but, ultimately, would have used government finances if that failed.

“It was a mistake (not to search), absolutely,” he said.

Daudrich is running against Fort Whyte MLA Obby Khan in the leadership race.

Khan, who initially refused to say whether he supported Ewasko’s apology, noted he would have more to say at the end of the leadership contest on April 26. He changed his mind late last week, indicating it was right to apologize for the way the party handled the situation, but he declined to call the previous government’s decision not to search a mistake.

On Wednesday morning, Khan posted on X saying the apology from Ewasko was appropriate and that he fully supports it.

“I feel it is important to set the record straight as we work to rebuild trust with our members and Manitobans,” he wrote.

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Daudrich said Khan “tripped” over the issue, adding nobody’s perfect.

“I don’t think he had any mean intention,” Daudrich said. “But all it ended up doing was politicizing the issue, unfortunately, because one party used it against another party to score some points.”

Skibicki, 35, of Winnipeg was convicted last summer of killing the women: Myran, 26; 39-year-old Harris; Rebecca Contois, who was 24; and another unknown woman in 2022.

He is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

scott.billeck@freepress.mb.ca

Scott Billeck
Reporter

Scott Billeck is a general assignment reporter for the Free Press. A Creative Communications graduate from Red River College, Scott has more than a decade’s worth of experience covering hockey, football and global pandemics. He joined the Free Press in 2024.  Read more about Scott.

Every piece of reporting Scott produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.