Khan’s silence may well be golden with PC party members, but Manitobans will want answers

Opinion

The sound that you are not hearing right now is the voice of Obby Khan, the man who, in all likelihood, will become leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba, leader of the official opposition and applicant for the job of first minister.

From the moment he declared his candidacy last August, Khan has declined opportunity after opportunity to make his positions clear on the two lingering issues from the 2023 election.

Those issues — staunch opposition to searching the Prairie Green Landfill for the Indigenous victims of a serial killer, and support for the anti-LGBTTQ+ “parent rights” movement — continue to hang around the neck of the party like an anvil. For the foreseeable future, every time the Tories enter an election, they will be bombarded with quotes and images from their toxic, offensive 2023 campaign.

The only hope the party has to shed these issues and project a kinder, gentler face to the electorate is an act of catharsis, a full admission of the mistakes and a convincing apology. To date, however, Khan has not been able to find the intestinal fortitude to resolve these awful issues.

Even when his party has made some attempts.

Interim PC leader Wayne Ewasko acknowledged recently in the Manitoba legislature the Tories “lost our way” in the 2023 campaign. Lamentably, it wasn’t a clear, clean moment of catharsis.

Ewasko’s apology came a week after human remains were discovered at the landfill, and days before the remains were confirmed to be that of Morgan Harris, one of the serial killer’s victims. It’s fair to ask whether Ewasko’s apology would have come at all had remains not been found.

More lamentable has been leadership front-runner Khan’s steadfast delay in endorsing Ewasko’s apology.

In June, when it appeared obvious Khan was going to enter the leadership race, I requested an interview to talk about the landfill search, parental rights and his absence from the legislature during a vote on a private member’s bill establishing a day of recognition for transgender Manitobans.

In an email, Khan said he missed the vote because of a doctor’s appointment. He said while he supported the intent of the private member’s bill, he didn’t want to do an interview until later in the summer.

Needless to say, the interview later in the summer never materialized. Khan’s leadership campaign, however, did.

Did the former Winnipeg Blue Bombers player use this event to start clearing the air on landfill searches and parental rights? Absolutely not.

Khan told The Canadian Press last August he would address both controversial issues “as we go forward.”

The campaign has gone forward, but Khan remains mired in his refusal to discuss inconvenient issues.

On the day Ewasko made his apology on behalf of the PC party, Khan refused to indicate where he stood on the issue, promising he would have a statement “going forward on that.”

Last week, in an interview with the Free Press, leadership rival Wally Daudrich unequivocally said it was a mistake to balk on searching the landfill. That same day, Khan finally indicated support for the apology but also posted on X that it was “important to set the record straight as we work to rebuild trust with our members and Manitobans.”

His social-media post was a triumph of obfuscation.

With due respect, the challenge facing the party is not setting the record straight. The Tory record from the 2023 campaign is very clear: the landfill ads were cynical and racist. Khan’s challenge is to either embrace or disown that strategy.

Similar obfuscation surrounds his position on parental rights.

Khan was the face of television, web and print advertisements promising that a re-elected Tory government would enhance “parental rights.” Although then-leader Heather Stefanson never defined what the party meant by parental rights, it was patently obvious the Tories were borrowing the rallying cry used by socially conservative radicals who oppose LGBTTQ+ rights, critical race theory and sex education.

Does Khan support the noxious parental-rights movement? Your guess is as good as mine.

At a meet-and-greet event for party members in Winnipeg in October, Khan dodged direct questions about parental rights, while suggesting his definition dealt more with the safeguarding of children “that may not come from a safe home, that may be abused at home, that may not have a safe place.”

With respect, that is not what parental rights means in a political context.

Why is it so hard for Khan to come out and make it clear to party members and the general public that he didn’t agree with the tone of the 2023 election campaign?

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One possibility is that he actually agrees with the messaging. That is a long bow to draw, given that Khan has made other statements that, if viewed in a charitable light, seem to contradict the toxic nature of the 2023 campaign.

The other possibility is that “going forward,” as Khan likes to say, he wants to keep his options open.

Either way, it’s important for Khan to start doing longer interviews and explaining who he really is and what he really thinks.

Deafening silence may win leadership campaigns, but it won’t carry the day during an election.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca

Dan Lett
Columnist

Dan Lett is a columnist for the Free Press, providing opinion and commentary on politics in Winnipeg and beyond. Born and raised in Toronto, Dan joined the Free Press in 1986.  Read more about Dan.

Dan’s columns are built on facts and reactions, but offer his personal views through arguments and analysis. The Free Press’ editing team reviews Dan’s columns before they are posted online or published in print — part of the our tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.