Tories suggest finance minister spent tax dollars on own therapy; contract pays for landfill searchers’ counselling By: Carol Sanders Posted: 6:59 PM CDT Tuesday, Apr. 22, 2025

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This article was published 22/04/2025 (223 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba Tories earned howls of protest from the NDP Tuesday after questioning a $10,000 government expense for therapy services — later revealed to be for people searching a landfill for the remains of murder victims.

The Progressive Conservatives’ interim leader defended the party’s decision to raise the issue in the chamber during question period. The PCs tabled a competitively sourced Jan. 27 Finance Department contract with Eugenia Lehmann Counselling Services.

Tory MLA Greg Nesbitt (Riding Mountain) questioned why, when he said half of Manitobans are struggling paycheque to paycheque, Finance Minister Adrien Sala spent $10,205 on therapy, suggesting it was for Sala.

“The NDP taxpayer-paid counselling service promised ‘a safe and private way to learn about yourself and how you relate to the world,’” Nesbitt said, noting that Sala, as finance minister, earns $170,000 a year.

“While being an MLA can be stressful, why is this finance minister billing taxpayers for his personal journey of self reflection awareness and discovery? Why can’t this minister pay for his self?”

The question was met with shouts of “shame!” from the NDP benches.

The contract was to provide counselling for people searching Prairie Green Landfill for the remains of serial-killer victims Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran.

Speaker Tom Lindsey repeatedly called for order.

“If the member was trying to incite people, he succeeded,” the speaker said, referring to Nesbitt’s question.

Sala responded to the question, touting government affordability measures, including cutting the gas tax and providing free provincial park passes this year but didn’t provide an answer concerning the contract.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara called the line of questioning “deplorable” and “one of the most shameful moments I have witnessed in question period.”

Asagwara, who is deputy premier and answered questions on behalf of Premier Wab Kinew, who was away at Peguis First Nation, called on the PCs to apologize to Sala.

Afterward, interim PC leader Wayne Ewasko said the Opposition was asking a legitimate question about a contract and doing its job to hold the government to account.

“We’re asking, ‘What is this? To what is this pertaining?’” the member for Lac du Bonnet told reporters outside the chamber.

“I don’t know for fact that this is not a personal contract. What I do know is that, as MLAs, as employees, as cabinet ministers, we all have access to any type of counselling services that are paid for through our benefits. So that’s exactly the purpose of asking these questions.”

Government house leader and Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine told reporters the contract was for counselling to be available to the people doing the grim work of sifting through landfill debris for human remains.

“I suspect that most Manitobans would agree that the searchers should be able to access mental-health supports, given the gravity of the work that they’re doing,” Fontaine said.

“It’s really quite deplorable that the PCs would get up in the house in the manner and the way in which they did and call into question our colleague — or any member in the chamber — and question whether or not they were seeking mental-health support.”

She noted that during the 2023 provincial election campaign, the Tories, then in government, campaigned on a refusal to search the landfill for murdered Indigenous women believed to be buried there, “then 18 months later they offered an insincere apology” for it.

Sala said the contract was funded by the Finance Department, which is responsible for the Manitoba Indigenous Reconciliation Secretariat and funding the search efforts.

“There are a number of contracts relating to this important work that come from Finance,” he said.

Ewasko later asked why the NDP didn’t explain in the chamber the purpose of the contract.

“It was a simple question. We could have received that answer in the chamber, but it turned toxic,” he said. “But as far as this money being used for that, we support people suffering with mental illness.

“If these workers need the support, then they need the support.”

The Tories will choose a new leader Saturday to replace Heather Stefanson, who resigned after losing the 2023 election.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca