Support high, expectations low while Kinew on honeymoon with Manitobans

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This article was published 11/12/2023 (677 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Conventional wisdom suggests that when there is a change in provincial government, there will also be great expectations of change.

But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong?

A Free Press-Probe Research poll released Monday showed pretty clearly the public that just voted the NDP into power doesn’t necessarily expect Premier Wab Kinew and his government to do everything promised during the campaign.

Nearly one-quarter of all respondents said they don’t think the NDP can reduce health-care wait times, while 15 per cent don’t believe emergency rooms at Victoria, Concordia and Seven Oaks hospitals will reopen. Both were major planks in the NDP’s platform.

With low expectations like that, you would think that support for the NDP has dropped precipitously since the election. Remarkably, the party’s support is surging.

Just over half of all respondents said they would support the NDP if a new election were held now. More importantly, 51 per cent of self-identified Tory voters and 57 per cent of Liberal voters said they wanted to give the Kinew government a chance to prove itself.

Getting the benefit of the doubt from people who definitely didn’t vote for you is both rare and a huge political advantage that creates a very interesting opportunity: what if the government were to exceed expectations? What kind of support could the NDP galvanize across the province if it delivered on a disproportionate number of pledges?

We won’t have to wait long to find out the answers to those questions, as the NDP has already exceeded the expectations of voters on a pledge to remove the 14-cent-per-litre gasoline tax for six months.

Only one in five respondents in our poll thought the NDP would keep its promise for a gas-tax holiday. The joke is apparently on them: while Probe was in the field and crunching its numbers, the NDP passed legislation to make it a reality.

Of course, that pledge was one of the easy ones to deliver. It didn’t require a long period of deliberation or public hearings. And the opposition Progressive Conservatives were in no position to stop the NDP and its majority mandate.

Other pledges will be more complex, require more time and, as a result, test the patience of an electorate that is already super-cynical about any government keeping its promises.

Case in point: last week, Housing Addictions and Homelessness Minister Bernadette Smith admitted that her government will not be able to move as quickly as many would like in establishing a supervised drug consumption site in downtown Winnipeg, another key NDP election pledge.

Few issues expose the differences between the former PC government and the new administration. Although the NDP has long supported supervised consumption, the Tories flatly refused to establish a site. And during the campaign, the Tories ran ads suggesting the NDP’s support was tantamount to giving away free drugs.

Last Friday, Smith told the Free Press that although establishing a safe consumption site is literally a “life or death situation,” she would not be caught rushing to implement a solution. In fact, she would not identify a timeline of any kind.

Smith said that for supervised consumption to work, it must be accompanied by an array of other services, including mental-health and other social services, housing and long-term treatment.

“We know that a supervised consumption site is needed,” she said. “We’ve heard that resoundingly and that’s a priority for our government.”

Will a commitment to establish a supervised consumption site be enough to satisfy the activists and community agencies that have been waging a fruitless battle to prevent drug overdoses? The early returns suggest that — like voters overall — those on the front lines of this public health crisis are willing to give Smith and her government the benefit of the doubt.

It was perhaps telling that several of the most important agencies involved in the battle against overdoses — Nine Circles Community Health Centre, Main Street Project and the Manitoba Harm Reduction Network — would not or could not comment.

However, representatives of Sunshine House, which operates the mobile overdose prevention site — MOPS — expressed cautious optimism while also suggesting the NDP government could establish a bricks-and-mortar site in six to eight months.

Is that a realistic timeline? It’s hard to know, but Smith likely knows that community groups are setting their own deadlines to get a supervised consumption site up and running.

For many who work in the areas of mental health and addiction, the NDP’s stated commitment to supervised consumption marks a 180-degree change in policy. That will certainly buy the new government some time as it attempts to find the best possible design for a facility in downtown Winnipeg.

However, it does not buy government an indefinite delay in bringing pledges to fruition.

The poll results clearly show Kinew and government have a very good chance to exceed expectations, particularly with Manitobans who did not vote for them.

But if they wait too long, or deliver on too few campaign pledges, that benefit of the doubt will quickly transform into a tidal wave of condemnation. And a quick return to the opposition benches.

dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com