Klein has burned bridges with PM, Gillingham says

One mayoral candidate accused another of writing a column so critical it could compromise his ability to work with the federal government as confusion over the status of that opinion piece triggered heated words.

The campaign for Scott Gillingham, who is seeking re-election, issued a news release Friday, which highlighted a column mayoral candidate Kevin Klein wrote for the Winnipeg Sun in 2025.

The column titled “Carney’s global agenda doesn’t work for Canada” labels Prime Minister Mark Carney a “globalist” who would let “unelected elites” influence him.

“That’s a serious problem for this country,” the column notes.

The Gillingham campaign release noted the opinion piece “is no longer readily available through the original online links and was retrieved through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.”

That line sparked confusion Friday morning, leading multiple reporters to believe the statement accused Klein of deleting the column. Klein rejected that interpretation completely.

“The mayor is lying … That is not true, no columns have been taken down,” he said.

“He told us not to trust our prime minister, that our prime minister has a hidden agenda that we should be afraid of.”

A Gillingham campaign spokesman later said that line in the release was not intended to accuse anyone of deleting the column but to explain how the column was found, since a previous online link on the Winnipeg Sun website now includes the column with a different byline.

Gillingham said his only goal was to highlight Klein’s past words.

“He told us not to trust our prime minister, that our prime minister has a hidden agenda that we should be afraid of… While I have been building bridges with the senior levels of government over the past four years, my opponent, Klein, has been burning the very bridges a mayor needs to get anything done to work with other levels of government,” he said.

Klein said the column was never hidden, though an incorrect byline did appear later due to a technical glitch on the newspaper’s website.

During a campaign announcement earlier Friday, Klein said he stands by the content of his columns, which he feels offered both support and fair criticism of Ottawa.

“I have stood as a supporter of Carney in many things that he’s done, and I have questioned … other things that he has done … (If) you are a member of the media, that is your job. So, if Gillingham wants to insult me for doing my job, (than he’s) he certainly welcome to his own opinion, but he’s certainly not welcome to his own set of facts,” said Klein.

“The mayor is lying … That is not true.”

After being informed about the confusion, Klein urged a reporter to focus on the most serious issues facing Winnipeg and avoid concentrating on any “smear campaign.”

“It has to stop,” he said.

joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

X : @joyanne_pursaga