Politics and the landfill

Opinion

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This article was published 15/07/2023 (813 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“PREMIER Heather Stefanson has fired back against a federal cabinet minister by accusing him of ‘recklessness’ after he called her government ‘heartless’ for not backing a search of a Winnipeg landfill for victims of an alleged serial killer.” Free Press, July 14

For anyone who has spent at least 15 minutes in Winnipeg this week, no background is needed from me on this story. For the benefit of those who have not been in the Manitoba capital, the story is about the remains of two young Indigenous women, and a search that is not happening. Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran were killed last year. Police believe their bodies were dumped in Prairie Green Landfill north of Winnipeg.

A study paid for by the federal government says it’s possible the remains could be found. But it could take up to three years and cost up to $184 million.

A week ago, Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson announced in a news release that her government had decided not to commit to a search because it did not want to jeopardize the health of workers who would be exposed to toxic waste. The premier’s firm no has inspired activists to block the road to the province’s largest landfill, the Brady Road Landfill.

It also triggered a response from the federal minister of Indigenous relations, shaming the premier, calling the decision heartless. The premier fired back, telling the feds not to politicize all of this, making an already volatile environment even worse.

While the leader of the Manitoba NDP, Wab Kinew is expressing his dismay with the approach the premier has taken, he has not said that he would authorize the spending of up to $184 million on a search.

As most readers know by now, I was raised by a mum and dad who were intimately related to murder victims. We never got the remains of our family members. They were baked in a Nazi oven. No ashes from an Auschwitz chimney were sent to my parents. I don’t need an activist, journalist, or therapist to sensitize me to the suffering of crime victims’ families.

The Free Press at the bottom of each column, calls me a longtime political commenter. And so I am contractually obligated to fulfil the newspaper’s commitment to you, and offer my sense of where this story goes politically.

With both the federal minister of Indigenous relations and the leader of the NDP criticizing the premier, she may benefit politically.

How many of us, literally or metaphorically, would want to look into the eyes of the families of the two women and all who support them, and say no? Who among us wants to be in shoes of a premier who was being asked to make a commitment for an exhaustive, intensive, and expensive search?

Nobody should doubt that the premier’s decision to say no triggers a long hot political summer, to be followed by a vitriolic election campaign.

Conventional wisdom has been that the fall election would be a referendum on the government’s handling of health care.

Conventional wisdom is frequently an oxymoron. We’ve been hearing forever about the idea that the public was going to vote on the government’s handling of the pandemic and its decision to shut down three emergency wards in Winnipeg.

I am not here to disrespect those who have been offering those predictions for nearly two years. Some of that educated analysis based on real polling data has been published in this newspaper. But everybody in the news business knows that major news events have the fuel to burn evidence-based political calculus.

The cold hard facts of life tell us this. The election, only 12 weeks away, may not be a referendum on the provincial government’s record on health care. It may be about the decision not to search for the remains of the two Indigenous women.

I doubt that Heather Stefanson wants to be viewed by history as the premier who doused hopes and prayers from the families of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran. But as much as my heart does not want to travel to where my instincts live, I owe you the truth. At the Portage and Main of my political brain, I believe the majority of voters quietly agree with the premier.

Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster.

charles@charlesadler.com