Snap election? Not so fast…

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/01/2019 (2472 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was a classic Brian Pallister moment.

In a year-end interview with The Canadian Press, Manitoba’s premier teased voters with the prospect of a snap election call ahead of the scheduled electoral date of October 2020.

“I’ll just say that 2020 is what it’s scheduled for,” Pallister said when asked if he might take Manitobans to the polls early. He noted other governing parties have made such a move in the past.

“So we’ll just wait and see.”

This mischievous tidbit is a keen reminder this is a first minister who likes to keep his enemies, and often his staff, guessing.

This is the premier who gave members of his own government a near heart attack by suggesting in September 2017 he might introduce a health-care premium to help make up for an expected shortfall in federal transfer payments.

Pallister kept everyone guessing about whether he was serious. Then, with just as little warning, he dismissed the idea out of hand about five weeks later.

Why would the premier even float such an unpopular idea? Pallister played university basketball and this was the political equivalent of a head fake — and we bit.

Could the won’t-confirm-nor-deny-a-snap-election statement fall into the same category?

Let’s look at the case for, and against, an early election call.

In the “go early” column, we should note the Progressive Conservative party is flush with cash and the only one of the three major parties that has the resources and organizational capacity to wage an election campaign at a moment’s notice.

NDP Leader Wab Kinew is still trying to help his party recover from the spectacular implosion suffered in the prelude to the 2016 provincial election. The Manitoba Liberal Party is still a work in progress for new leader Dougald Lamont, who must establish functional riding executives in each of the province’s 57 regions before he can even contemplate an electoral battle.

In addition, the PCs also have what appears to be a seemingly insurmountable lead in provincial support.

A Free Press-Probe Research poll released after Christmas shows the PCs holding firm with 44 per cent support among respondents, with the NDP (27 per cent) and Liberals (20 per cent) trailing badly. Perhaps most important for the Tory base, its support in Winnipeg seems to have stabilized.

For much of the last two years, the Tories and NDP have been in a statistical dead-heat in Winnipeg. The most recent poll results show the Tories with the support of 35 per cent of Winnipeggers, with the NDP at 30 per cent, and the Liberals at 27 per cent.

It’s still close in seat-rich Winnipeg, which becomes even more important in electoral terms with the addition of a new riding via electoral boundary redistribution. The city will now have 32 of 57 seats in the next legislature — and a five-point lead over the NDP and eight-point gap on the Liberals is important.

Lots of money, a financially and logistically challenged opposition, and strong support among the electorate, particularly in Winnipeg: When you look at all that, it’s hard to imagine Pallister not at least considering an early election call.

However, there are still some wild cards that could change the political landscape in Manitoba.

Despite showing some modest growth in support in Winnipeg, it’s really impossible to say what will happen to political proclivities in the capital region over the next 19 months.

First and foremost, Pallister will have to achieve some sort of peace with public-sector unions. The government’s refusal to bargain in any meaningful way, and continuing threat to enact a legislated wage freeze, means more and more provincial civil servants are toiling without contracts.

Given the gross majority of these civil servants work and live in Winnipeg, it’s impossible to believe it won’t ultimately become an election issue. Calling an early election would shorten the amount of time Pallister has to come up with some sort of conciliatory gesture to ease the uncertainty infecting province-labour relations.

There is also the issue of the reform of health-care delivery in Winnipeg.

Concern over Pallister’s plans to concentrate emergency medicine in just three Winnipeg hospitals has been one of the reasons why poll results have shown a tight race between the Tories and NDP in the city.

Concordia Hospital is scheduled to lose its ER in June. In preparation, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority has started diverting emergency patients to the Health Sciences Centre, St. Boniface Hospital and Grace Hospital.

It’s quite likely most Winnipeggers won’t even notice the Concordia ER closure. Still, it remains an extremely unpopular move in the north end of the city.

Health-care reorganization has also mobilized the Manitoba Nurses Union as a potentially potent force in the next election. Along with the closure of the Concordia ER, the WRHA has been reshuffling the deck at Winnipeg hospitals, moving services and entire departments to create a more efficient system of delivery. That has drawn the ire of nurses, who are extremely unhappy about being forced to change how and where they work.

The Pallister government is going to need time to demonstrate its health-care reorganization is not as disruptive as some of its critics claim. An early election call could dramatically reduce the opportunity to wage and win the public relations war that is no doubt going to be waged by the MNU, NDP and other concerned groups.

The need to ease concerns about health-care services in Winnipeg seems to easily trump any advantages that may come from a snap election call.

However, with a premier who is so predictably unpredictable, we’ll just have to wait and see.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca