Last fall, Premier Wab Kinew won the hearts and minds of enough Manitobans to earn the right to govern the province. And if ongoing approval rating polls are any indication, he remains quite popular with the citizenry.
Now, Kinew has to demonstrate he continues to possess the hearts and minds of the membership of the New Democratic Party.
This weekend’s annual general meeting in Winnipeg is the first for the NDP since the 2023 election triumph. It will be a pretty safe event. Still, it’s a moment that reveals the duality of political leadership: premiers not only lead provinces, they also lead a party.
Failing at the latter, even while succeeding somewhat at the former, is a one-way ticket to retirement.
Former Progressive Conservative premier Brian Pallister was essentially drummed out of his own party ahead of a key caucus meeting in Brandon in August 2021.
At the time, there was growing concern about Pallister’s plummeting popularity and his often erratic leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the caucus meeting, he announced he would not be seeking re-election; after more pressure was applied, he formally resigned as premier later in the month.
Pallister is hardly the only premier to be forced from office by his own party.
A year after Pallister fell on his sword, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney resigned following a controversial, mail-in ballot leadership review. Having lost the support of the far-right of his party, Kenney agreed to put his leadership to the test.
He did earn the support of 51 per cent of United Conservative Party members, but it wasn’t enough to convince him to stick around.
One doesn’t need to look far to find a premier who was able to balance party and public expectations. Despite facing rough spots from time to time, former NDP premier Gary Doer did an excellent job of controlling provincial and party priorities.
Throughout the decade he governed, Doer faced a full-court press from unions — many of which get automatic delegates to the AGM — to pass legislation banning replacement workers. So-called anti-scab laws had already been introduced in British Columbia and Quebec and unions in Manitoba wanted to follow suit.
The Doer government had already made significant changes to labour laws, making it easier for unions to certify and introducing access to binding arbitration to end strikes after 30 days. That had significantly decreased the number of lengthy labour disputes, but it wasn’t organized labour’s Holy Grail law banning replacement workers.
Doer was always skeptical that the political value of anti-scab legislation, which would re-trench the NDP’s relationship with labour unions, was worth the blowback from the business community. So, he consistently refused.
This culminated in some tense moments at AGMs, where union delegates on occasion refused to stand or applaud Doer when he gave his keynote.
It would be incorrect to say Doer lost the support of unions. However, to this day you can find hardcore trade unionists who wince when Doer’s name is mentioned.
Kinew has very much adopted Doer’s propensity to put political pragmatism ahead of ideology. In some respects, he may have exceeded Doer’s willingness to embrace more traditional conservative policies to build lasting support.
Very quickly after the NDP won the election, Kinew moved to enact the gas-tax holiday he had promised during the campaign and followed up with a modified plan to retain costly education property tax rebates.
Those two policies have strained Kinew’s relationship with progressive constituencies in his own party, including anti-poverty advocates who would rather see social programs enhanced before taxes are cut, and environmental activists, who think the gas-tax break is the wrong policy for the times.
Realizing the concern these policies have generated, Kinew has offered unions a pretty significant olive branch: shortly after taking over, he said his government would amend laws to allow for card-check union certifications and — wait for it — anti-scab legislation.
Are these concessions enough to maintain the balance between party and public obligations? As this weekend will demonstrate, if you give party members an inch, they will try to grab a yard.
Labour-related resolutions on the floor of this weekend’s AGM include a mandatory 10 days of sick leave for all workers and legislation to enforce pay equity in the private sector.
All these resolutions may pass, but it’s unlikely they will make their way into government policy. No governing party in this country at the federal or provincial level gives its membership the authority to make government policy. As a result, resolutions are almost always positioned as strong but non-binding suggestions from the membership.
The opportunity to speak directly with the premier, along with strategic pledges to date aimed at core NDP constituencies, may be enough to placate most of the delegates to the AGM. But you can bet there will be others who will want more.
And it’s in that moment that Kinew will get to show everyone what kind of leader he is.
dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com
Dan Lett
Columnist
Born and raised in and around Toronto, Dan Lett came to Winnipeg in 1986, less than a year out of journalism school with a lifelong dream to be a newspaper reporter.