Kinew stars in untidy bit of ‘he said, she said’ political theatre

Any time a relationship comes to an end, you can be sure there will be a dispute about who broke up with whom. Such is the case right now with Premier Wab Kinew and his very public, very messy breakup with former teacher misconduct commissioner Bobbi Taillefer.

The Free Press revealed that Taillefer, who began her job as Manitoba’s first Commissioner of Teacher Professional Conduct in January 2025, had been working remotely in Florida for much of the past winter.

In addition, for the first six weeks that Taillefer was heading up the teacher misconduct office in Manitoba, she was also working concurrently for the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation, the union representing educators in that province.

On April 9, two weeks after the Free Press informed the NDP government it had received several credible tips that Taillefer was working out of the country, Education Minister Tracy Schmidt confirmed Taillefer had resigned. The minister would not discuss the details of the resignation, only that she found out Taillefer was working from Florida when the Free Press called her for comment.

If this story more or less ended with that resignation, it would still represent an odd and somewhat concerning image of a government hiring someone for a very important and very public job without making specific demands on where and how the work should be done.

But that’s not where the story ended.

The day after it was reported that Taillefer was leaving her role, Kinew told reporters she did not resign, she was fired.

“If you want to be the person who’s going to decide whether or not an adult teacher can be in a classroom with a child in Manitoba, you need to be in Manitoba, too,” he said.

That statement may have been an overreach by the premier. Taillefer responded with a public statement saying she did, in fact, resign after it was clear that news media attention about her remote working arrangement was going to negatively impact government. This was backed up by an order-in-council, which described her departure as a resignation.

There’s a ton to unpack here, but let’s identify the arguably irrefutable facts.

The decision to hire Taillefer in the first place was politically motivated. Not to suggest she wasn’t qualified; Taillefer had worked for at least two teachers’ unions, including the Manitoba Teachers’ Society. But picking someone with a union background was a deliberate effort by the Kinew government to soften the blow of establishing a misconduct commissioner.

Teachers, understandably, oppose the whole idea of a conduct commissioner. Taillefer’s appointment didn’t eliminate those concerns, but it may have mitigated them among some in the profession.

Second, even though it paid $80,000 per year, this was a part-time gig that did not specify where she should do her work and certainly didn’t preclude her from taking on other work at the same time.

Those facts suggest that while Taillefer may have shown poor judgment in doing what appears to be very little, if any, of her work in Manitoba, the Kinew government didn’t spend enough time considering the terms of the contract. Kinew’s after-the-fact demand the teacher misconduct commissioner needs to work in Manitoba clearly wasn’t communicated to the people who negotiated the contract.

So, what is the truth of this matter?

When an employer and employee are faced with an untenable situation, it’s not unusual for there to be a negotiation to find the best off-ramp: resignation with amicable conditions, or firing without cause, given that her contract was inexact on where the work should be performed.

The former avoids all possibility of a lawsuit while the second option almost guarantees some sort of legal dispute.

In this instance, it would seem the amicable resignation was the path chosen by Taillefer and the government. We can say that because Taillefer was offered a separate contract to help with the transition to a new permanent misconduct commissioner. The work on that transition contract began Monday and finishes in July.

If she was fired, as Kinew alleged, Taillefer would likely not have been offered the chance to oversee the transition.

Kinew is building a genuine reputation as a political leader who speaks before others in his government have had a chance to plan for the fallout. It’s not an uncommon affliction for a first minister; many premiers speak first and then worry about the consequences later.

In this instance, however, Kinew has put himself and his government in a bad situation. Unless he finds a way to escape his earlier comment, he will be forced to repeat something that appears to be false. That ultimately makes the government vulnerable to a defamation lawsuit.

Taillefer is not blameless in all this. She has worked in and around politics and government most of her life and should have been patently aware that phoning it in from Florida was not going to look good on her employer.

The same goes for working concurrently for a teachers’ union while also overseeing misconduct allegations, albeit in another province.

That’s a conflict of interest that undermines the office she was hired to run.

However, in the end this will go down as a mess created by a series of mistakes made by the premier and his government, aggravated by an unfounded claim.

Breaking up is always hard to do, particularly if you don’t want anyone to know the truth.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca