Wab Kinew and the long game

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This article was published 24/02/2024 (781 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“Our government was proud to cut the provincial gas tax on the first day of the year. It’s direct help to Manitobans who have been struggling with inflation and struggling with higher costs.” — Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew, Feb. 20.

It’s no secret to Free Press readers that I have never been a reliable vote for the Manitoba NDP.

For most of my adult life, I have been a reliable Manitoba Progressive Conservative voter. I fully expected to vote PC last fall. And it wasn’t Wab Kinew that motivated me to vote against the PCs.

It was the PC campaign from hell that made me break with tradition.

The campaign could and should have been focusing on the many economic achievements Manitobans have realized since the fiscally foolish Selinger NDP was defeated by the PCs in April 2016. But the PCs chose not to defend a solid economic record.

They instead bet the farm on a commitment not to search for the remains of two missing and presumably slain Indigenous women.

Like many PC voters, I buried my traditional custom at the ballot box. But even though I wanted to turn thumbs-down on the disastrously dumb PC campaign strategy, I was still all thumbs when it came to marking an X beside the NDP candidate in my riding.

So I parked my vote in the same lot I always parked in provincially or federally when conservatives ticked me off — the one marked Liberal. I knew nothing about the Liberal candidate. I didn’t care. I knew the NDP incumbent was going to win.

I voted Liberal because my conscience forced me to a cast a ballot. Among the commandments my late dad gave me, voting was close to the top of the list. He regularly reminded me that our family owed our very existence to Canadian Forces and their allies in the Second World War. We also owed our freedom to Canadians for accepting us as refugees from Communist Hungary in 1957.

To not vote was to disrespect the graves in Northern France and other parts of Europe where brave young Canadians made the ultimate sacrifice. Have I ever missed a vote provincially or federally? No. Have I ever voted for the provincial NDP? No. I never even voted for them when they were led by the best retail politician I had ever seen — Gary Doer.

This week, when I watched a video of Premier Kinew touting the fact that Manitoba was now leading the country with the lowest inflation rate in Canada thanks to his pausing of the provincial gas tax, I saw something that I haven’t seen in Manitoba since I last laid my political analyst eyes on Mr. Doer.

When I watched the Kinew video, I thought I was watching Doer. He had the same twinkle in the eye, the same self-confidence, the glow of a political leader who isn’t predictably left or right. This week, Wab Kinew looked like he knew where centre ice was and was comfortable skating there.

I don’t think I’m the only usual reliable PC voter who views Mr. Kinew as having Doer-like charm.

The only person I know of taking a serious look at running for the PC leadership is Kevin Klein. And while this isn’t a knock on Mr. Klein, everybody knows he is highly motivated to go for the job, because he needs one. He lost one of the safest PC seats in Manitoba history, Kirkfield Park in sunny St. James, home to the St. Charles Country Club.

I was having breakfast at that club a few weeks before the election with a former PC minister. Naturally, we talked politics and he told me things were so going so poorly for the PCs that even Kirkfield Park was likely to be lost.

I can’t tell you how difficult it is even for a veteran analyst like myself to be sitting at St Charles, an institution that couldn’t be more Tory, in the heart of Kirkfield Park, and take seriously what my friend was telling me.

But he was as serious as a heart attack.

I’m very aware that everyone who dreams of becoming a PC leader and potentially a premier is reading this column.

My advice is simple. Enter this year’s contest if you’re between 18 and 24. If you win, you won’t be a washed-up has-been by the time Kinew takes a walk in the snow.

Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster. charles@charlesadler.com