Survey may chart course for new Tory identity, but current one fresh in voters’ minds

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This article was published 30/01/2024 (639 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What does the Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba stand for?

In last fall’s provincial election, the party unveiled several controversial policies in a desperate, and ultimately unsuccessful bid to win re-election. Those policies included support for the anti-LGBTTQ+ “parental rights” movement, and campaign ads celebrating the Tory refusal to search the Prairie Green landfill just north of the city for the remains of slain Indigenous women.

The debate over whether those policies fairly represented the party’s rank and file has raged ever since. Now, to fully define what Progressive Conservative supporters really think about these and other issues, the party is undertaking a “values survey.”

Party president Brent Pooles said that since the election, he has heard from many loyal Tories who did not agree with some of the campaign policies, particularly the decision to advertise the decision to reject a search of the landfill.

Making a decision not to search is one thing, Pooles said. But heralding that decision as evidence of the party’s strong leadership was a huge mistake in campaign messaging, he added.

“From a party perspective, I don’t think that position represented the opinions of the vast majority of PC party members,” Pooles told the Free Press.

“The decision to go with those ads was done in isolation by the campaign. Decisions made in isolation, without consulting the party or executive, ended up making everyone look bad. Quite frankly, some of these things during the campaign came out of left field and really shocked people.”

Two executive members of the party are working on a survey that will be sent out sometime this spring, Pooles said. Right now, it is being viewed as information gathering, as opposed to policy-making, he added.

“All parties should do something like this from time to time,” Pooles said. “You need to know who you are and what you stand for.”

It’s unsafe to assume the party is the same as it was under the leadership of Heather Stefanson and, before her, Brian Pallister. The leadership race to replace Pallister drew in significant numbers of new members that, all things being equal, had more of an affinity for far-right movements such as the People’s Party of Canada.

The PC party membership list is, however, undergoing a renovation right now.

As a result of the leadership race in 2021 and October’s general election, membership had grown to nearly 29,000. However, all memberships expired on Dec. 31.

Pooles said there is a steady flow of membership renewals right now but it’s impossible to tell just how many will return to the fold.

The survey should provide the Tories with some valuable information, but those extremely controversial positions — not searching the landfill and parent rights — will be difficult to shed moving forward. Particularly since the landfill search is unlikely to leave the headlines any time soon.

A new and more precise feasibility study on the landfill search released last week by the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs and ISN Maskwa, an Indigenous-owned emergency response company, pegged the likely total cost at about $90 million, about half of the upper end of the previous estimate of $184 million. The report did agree with the earlier report that the presence of asbestos in the landfill would make any search quite dangerous.

At the same time, the case against Jeremy Skibicki, the man accused of the murder of four women, is winding its way through the court system. Skibicki is charged with four counts of first-degree murder in the 2022 deaths of Marcedes Myran, 26, Morgan Harris, 39, Rebecca Contois, 24, and a fourth woman who has not yet been identified, who was given the name Buffalo Woman or Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, by the First Nations community.

Police believe the remains of Myran and Harris are buried at Prairie Green. Investigators found partial remains of Contois at Winnipeg’s Brady Road landfill. Police have not said publicly whether they have a theory on Buffalo Woman’s whereabouts.

As these stories continue, the Tories will be pressed to either own the position they adopted during the campaign or come up with a new one. When asked this week for an updated position, the PC caucus office declined to comment directly. “As the (feasibility) report is not publicly available, our caucus has yet to read it. Therefore we can’t comment.”

The same squeeze could come from the parental rights issue.

During the campaign, the Tories promised to support “stronger parental rights,” but refused to define what that pledge really meant. Stefanson, at one point, acknowledged it could mean forcing schools to notify parents if a student had adopted an alternative gender identity. But even then, she wouldn’t guarantee that would happen, at least until consultation took place after the election.

Interim Tory leader Wayne Ewasko was asked to explain his party’s position on this controversial issue, but declined. In an emailed statement, Ewasko said that as a party “we believe parents have a strong role to play in their children’s education.”

Statements like that did not serve the Tories well during the campaign. And they won’t help the party stake out a new identity.

They will, however, convince people that this is a party that can and will adopt toxic policies if the people within think it will help them win elections. And that is not a brand with a lot of voter appeal.

dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com