Despite PR push, Pallister a poor unifier

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/11/2019 (2298 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You can say what you want about Premier Brian Pallister, but he has a keen sense of timing.

Last week, while the House of Commons was empty and Ottawa was deeply entrenched in a calm-before-the-minority-government storm, Pallister went on a calculated public relations tour to promote himself as a politician of national significance. The timing could not have been better.

Pallister convinced the Globe and Mail to publish an op-ed article he wrote on how to heal Western alienation and bridging the regional divides remaining in the wake of the recent federal election.

In his commentary, Pallister offers Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “unity agenda” featuring Manitoba as the “bridge between the two halves of our great country.”

Pallister’s PR offensive continued with a milk-run tour of the cable news programs and a very brief, face-to-face meeting with Trudeau, which drew a sizable throng of national media. Again, you really have to admire Pallister’s good sense, or good luck; he killed it on his Ottawa visit.

That having been said, it’s still unclear why Pallister put so much energy into trolling for national attention, particularly when he had very little to say.

The Globe and Mail op-ed is a good case in point.

Pallister certainly did espouse the politics of unity and made it clear Manitoba would not flirt with the growing Western separatist movement. However, after some purple rhetoric about his deep commitment to being the nation’s unity broker, his essay degenerates into a litany of tired complaints about the Trudeau government.

He spends quite a bit of time complaining about environmental reviews that have delayed the construction of the Lake Manitoba – Lake St. Martin flood outlet. He then goes on to lament similar problems threatening to derail the construction of a power line to Minnesota, which is key to the future of Manitoba Hydro’s electricity exports.

There was also a little space left in Pallister’s article to criticize Ottawa for insufficient health-care funding and for an array of federal economic, energy and environmental policies that, he claimed, “have caused today’s discord.”

It’s still unclear why Pallister put so much energy into trolling for national attention, particularly when he had very little to say.

It’s an odd, even audacious, recipe for unity: admit you are wrong, give us everything we want and we promise to get along.

The same presumptuousness occurred after his meeting with Trudeau. Pallister told reporters he had “come in peace” and said he and Trudeau talked at length about climate change, which the two leaders agreed could be a “unifying project” for the nation. However, when you look at Manitoba’s own climate change policies, it’s hard to see how Pallister can be a leader for a national consensus.

In September 2018, after working for two years on a made-in-Manitoba carbon tax, Pallister torpedoed his own plan following a meeting with Trudeau in Winnipeg. Then he threatened to join a legal challenge to the federal carbon tax being launched by other provinces, despite his own legal opinion showing a lawsuit was pointless.

And therein lies the real flaw in Pallister’s national unity tour: he doesn’t work and play well with others.

Over his first three years as first minister, Pallister was a constant annoyance for Ottawa. In 2016, after only two months on the job, he refused to sign a national accord on changes to the Canada Pension Plan. He was also the last premier to sign on to a national health-care funding according after attempting to convince other provinces to hold out along with Manitoba.

Throw in the inexplicable backtracking on his own carbon tax plan and a series of unprovoked attacks on other provinces and premiers, and you have a premier who has a national track record for conflict, not conciliation.

On the whole, this trip appeared to be more about building Pallister’s national identity than promoting national unity. And while he was trying to be the voice of reason, he conveniently left out a lot of the background suggesting Manitoba has been the source and not the victim of disputes with Ottawa.

Less than a week before Pallister met Trudeau, the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada issued a 27-page list of “conformity gaps” in Manitoba’s flood outlet submissions, including a failure to adequately consult with Indigenous communities. Pallister complained Ottawa was changing the rules, but there is a strong case to be made that Manitoba has actually botched the process.

And therein lies the real flaw in Pallister’s national unity tour: he doesn’t work and play well with others.

There’s always a possibility Pallister’s national tour is a bid to join the discussion about the next leader of the federal Conservative party. Following his disappointing federal election performance, current Tory Leader Andrew Scheer’s status is uncertain and Pallister has flirted with federal leadership ambitions.

In 1998, he ran unsuccessfully to be leader of the federal Progressive Conservative party. And then in 2003, he threatened to run for leader of the newly minted, united Conservative party before opting to take a pass.

It seems like a long shot, but no one should ever discount Pallister’s self-confidence. The more you tell him he can’t do something, the more he wants to do it.

Last week, Pallister demonstrated he has the political instincts to exploit a very slow news cycle and win some attention in the national media. That is a viable talent in and of itself.

But even with his impeccable sense of timing, when you strip away all of the op-eds and media scrums, you are left with a premier doing more to promote himself than save the country.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca