The end of a (short) era

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/01/2024 (651 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Heather Stefanson has removed the crown of party leadership from atop her head, placed it on its velvet pillow, and walked away. She has, unfortunately for her successor, left that headpiece in less than luxurious condition.

When she rose to the top of the Progressive Conservative party in the fall of 2021, Stefanson secured her place in history as the first woman to serve as Manitoba’s premier (though she wasn’t technically elected to the role). However, the remainder of her brief tenure as both premier and party leader doesn’t make for much of a legacy.

Inheriting a perilous pandemic crisis from her predecessor Brian Pallister, Stefanson seemed sorely lacking in empathy for common Manitobans. Banking repeatedly on the skills of a health minister of, shall we say, subpar talent, Stefanson and her government seemed to founder as cases flooded hospitals and health-care workers hit their breaking point.

Her patience for dealing with the pandemic eventually hit its own limit, resulting in her less-than-inspiring January 2022 message to Manitobans that it would be up to them to “look after themselves” in managing the pandemic’s risks. When the pollsters took Canadians’ temperature on how well they liked their premiers, Stefanson sank to the bottom of the standings.

This callousness continued all the way through her ill-fated election campaign last fall.

Try though some may to lay the mistakes of her party’s campaign on its strategists, Stefanson was the party’s leader when it chose to make a refusal to search the landfill for slain women a central policy plank, and when it championed the “parental rights” issue, a culture-war battle over LGBTTQ+ students, which, while not entirely gone, vanished from the zeitgeist almost as quickly as it appeared.

Even as she sat in Opposition, prior to her resignation, questions swirled regarding how involved she may have been in a last-ditch effort to push through a controversial silica sand-mining operation, in contravention of the long-recognized caretaker convention (Stefanson has denied involvement).

Stefanson has now stepped down as party leader, so why beat this deceased equine any longer? Well, because someone is going to have to take over the party in this condition. How Stefanson chose to shape the PCs during her brief time in the chair will no doubt have far-reaching consequences to whoever sits in it in the coming years.

It is early days yet, and the Progressive Conservative party is mulling some rule changes over its leadership race, so let us not speculate yet who might carry that baton. What we do know is this: that person will take the reins of a party in the throes of an identity crisis, and the new leader will have to settle it one way or the other.

If nothing else, one would expect a party leader to serve as a compass by which the party might guide itself day-to-day, and present a destination which can be pursued after the leader is gone. Now that Stefanson is out of leadership, however, it seems clear the PCs don’t have a true north to follow.

The next leader will have to decide whether the party still has some “progressive” beliefs or whether it will continue to veer harder to the right, a process which has been underway for some time but which became increasingly obvious over the course of the recent provincial campaign.

From the severe financial cutting which has gone on since the Pallister days, to the decidedly American-flavoured social conservatism of the 2023 campaign, it is hard to determine to whom exactly the party is supposed to appeal in its current state.

It’s one heck of a mess. And whoever has to clean it up will have Stefanson to thank.