Tory scare tactics aside, experience not all it’s cracked up to be

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/09/2023 (754 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NDP Leader Wab Kinew and his party have “zero experience running government,” Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative party said in a recent election ad. “If that doesn’t scare you, it should.”

It’s true, Kinew and most of the people running under the NDP banner, have never worked in government as elected officials. The only exception is Ron Kostyshyn, the NDP candidate for Dauphin, who held several cabinet posts between 2012 and 2016 under the former NDP government, including as minister of agriculture. A few NDP candidates have sat as backbenchers in government (Jim Maloway, Matt Wiebe, Amanda Lathlin), but not in cabinet.

Should the public be “scared” when inexperienced politicians enter government for the first time? Not really. Former NDP leader Gary Doer and his caucus had virtually no experience when they won government in 1999. Doer served a short stint in provincial cabinet between 1986 and 1988, but that was the extent of the NDP’s experience in office at the time. The former union executive turned out to be one of Manitoba’s most popular premiers.

Former Tory leader Brian Pallister and his caucus also had virtually no experience in office when they won government in 2016. Pallister held a junior cabinet post under a provincial Tory government for less than two years in the mid-1990s before moving on to federal politics. He served as MP for Portage-Lisgar from 2000 to 2008, including under the Stephen Harper government, but did not make cabinet.

It’s not unusual for politicians to assume the reins of power without previous experience in office. That’s why we have career civil servants, who provide continuity between governments. They supply new politicians with the tools and administrative support they need to govern.

People are elected to office for their ideas and their desire (hopefully) to make the world a better place, not because they have extensive experience running government departments. The smart, capable ones do their homework, take their briefing books home and learn on the job.

No one really knows how an opposition leader, or anyone else coming into politics, will perform as premier. Some rise to the occasion, as Doer and former Tory premier Gary Filmon (who held office from 1988 to 1999) did. Others stumble.

The conventional wisdom in 2009 was that former NDP finance minister Greg Selinger, who excelled in his portfolio for 10 years, would make a good premier. He bombed. Selinger alienated his own cabinet, five of whom resigned and called for his resignation, and the NDP suffered a crushing defeat at the polls in 2016.

Nobody knew how Pallister would govern, either. He had some early success in fixing the fiscal mess left behind by Selinger. But he slashed spending too deep and too fast, rushed health-care reforms, disregarded front-line workers and refused to take advice from anybody.

Worse, Pallister and the Tories borrowed money and racked up debt to cut taxes, including education property taxes. By the time the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, public institutions — crippled by successive years of cuts and freezes — were less able to withstand the challenges of a global public-health emergency.

Nowhere was that more obvious than in health care, after several years of funding cuts and a disastrously implemented hospital reorganization plan. The cuts to health care were so severe, Manitoba could not care for its own people and had to airlift 57 intensive-care unit patients out of province during the third wave of the pandemic. Some died.

No one knew how Heather Stefanson would perform as premier. Many had their doubts about her ability to lead government when she took over from Pallister in November 2021. The doubters were right. Stefanson’s short time in office has been problematic.

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When asked several months after ICU patients were airlifted out of the province if Manitoba could have done better, Stefanson responded with: “Coulda, shoulda, woulda.” People lost their lives owing to poor decision-making by government and Stefanson’s only reflection was to make a snarky remark. When asked about the death of one of those patients, single mother Krystal Mousseau, Stefanson talked about her son’s hockey team. That speaks to judgment and character.

Stefanson embraced almost all of Pallister’s policies when she became premier. When she introduced her first budget as first minister in 2022, she continued to implement her predecessor’s austerity measures. She borrowed even more money to cut taxes while keeping a tight grip on the purse strings.

Stefanson eventually opened the spending taps in 2023, but only on the eve of a provincial election. If past performance is any indication of future behaviour (it usually is in government), Stefanson would likely revert back to spending cuts if re-elected. It would be the only way for her to pay for the near-$1 billion in new tax cuts she’s proposing.

The moral of the story: the voting public has no idea how a newbie would do in the premier’s office until they get there. Sometimes it is “scary,” as it was with Selinger, Pallister and Stefanson, and sometimes not.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca

Tom Brodbeck
Columnist

Tom Brodbeck is an award-winning author and columnist with over 30 years experience in print media. He joined the Free Press in 2019. Born and raised in Montreal, Tom graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1993 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and commerce. Read more about Tom.

Tom provides commentary and analysis on political and related issues at the municipal, provincial and federal level. His columns are built on research and coverage of local events. The Free Press’s editing team reviews Tom’s columns before they are 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.