Deny, deny, deny, then play the victim

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/07/2020 (1947 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Whenever someone levels a serious allegation at Premier Brian Pallister, you can bet he will respond in two distinct ways.

First, he will flatly and repeatedly deny the allegation regardless of the source or the evidence of his transgression.

Second, he will tell everyone the allegation was personally “hurtful.”

This scenario, repeated many times in the past, was in plain view last week when Pallister was accused of opposing the inclusion of the term “systemic racism” in a declaration against racism by Canada’s first ministers.

At a news conference, Pallister slammed Le Devoir, the first news outlet to accuse him of joining Quebec Premier Francois Legault in blocking the use of the term. Then he lashed out at the Free Press, which followed up on that initial report with our own sources.

Pallister complained the stories had essentially accused him of being racist. He said that accusation was erroneous and “hurtful.”

Did we get it wrong? Absolutely not.

Le Devoir stood by its story, and so did we. And very little of what Pallister said on the matter gave us any reason to doubt our version of events.

When first contacted, Pallister essentially confirmed the story by issuing a statement that said “systemic” did not need to be in the declaration because it condemned “all forms of racism.” At the news conference where he disputed the reports, he refused to say that he supported the use of “systemic.” When pressed by reporters, all he would say is that he “didn’t oppose” it.

This is standard modus operandi for Pallister. In the wake of an unflattering story, he is vague and circumspect in his denials. When that doesn’t work, he plays the victim. The strategy may be shameless, but it has worked for him.

It certainly worked in January 2017, when Pallister was caught in a controversy over comments he made on illegal night-hunting at a meeting in Virden with rural municipal officials.

In a recording made by a rural radio reporter, Pallister referenced “young Indigenous guys going out and shootin’ a bunch of moose ‘cause they can, ‘cause they say it’s their right, doesn’t make any sense to me.” He went on to say that mounting anger over the practice was threatening to spark “a race war and I don’t want that.”

Pallister was not available to comment because he was in Costa Rica on holiday. Two weeks later, a reporter from Maclean’s magazine caught up with Pallister at his vacation villa and wrote another story with similar comments. “Young Indigenous men — a preponderance of them are offenders, with criminal records — are going off shooting guns in the middle of the night,” Pallister was quoted as saying by Maclean’s.

In the wake of that story, Tory sources told me Pallister was desperate to claim he was misquoted. I contacted his chief of staff and — as journalists sometimes do to get an exclusive — offered the Free Press as the forum in which to make his denial.

It worked. The premier called from Costa Rica and I sat back and allowed Pallister to deny the Maclean’s comments without any recrimination.

Pallister returned the day after my story appeared and in a scrum, repeated his assertion he had been misquoted. “I’m obviously disappointed about the comments attributed to me because that’s not me,” he told reporters.

As he said those words, I felt a pang of guilt for two reasons. First, I did not believe the comments were out of character for the premier. Second, I knew how Pallister tries to escape controversy: deny, deny, deny and then play the victim.

That was his approach in 2018 after we ran a story that accused him of not paying all the taxes on his Costa Rica villa. Pallister denied he was in arrears and threatened to sue the Free Press for defamation, claiming our story had “impugned the integrity of the premier.”

Eventually, he was forced to admit he did owe taxes. He did not apologize or withdraw the threat of a lawsuit.

That’s hardly the only example of this phenomenon.

Last year, Pallister played the victim again when he was accused of forcing Manitoba Public Insurance to continue paying private insurance brokers — a business Pallister is still licensed to conduct — for policy renewals. Opposition critics accused him of “cronyism.”

In response, Pallister went back to the victim well. “The last thing you would ever advance about me is that I’m for sale,” Pallister said. “Allegations of cronyism? Come on, man.”

Then there was a meeting I had with Pallister just before the 2016 election where he told me a column I wrote accusing him of hiding in Costa Rica during the 2014 floods was wrong and that it had “deeply hurt” him.

Later in the campaign, incontrovertible evidence arose that showed he had, in fact, been in Costa Rica, contrary to his denials. To this day, the premier has not apologized for looking me in the eye and denying something that he and I both knew was true.

Following his denials last week, I believe now that “hurtful” is Pallister’s bluff. It’s what he says when he’s cornered by a story and needs to create reasonable doubt in the court of public opinion.

But before he plays that card again, the premier should be aware there’s one fatal flaw in every bluff. Once people start to recognize it, it becomes a tell.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca