The Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba will choose a new leader on April 26 — but not until 2025, the party announced Tuesday.
The leadership committee, led by Winnipeg lawyer Brad Zander, said the long lead time will benefit prospective candidates and ensure the race — the first to be conducted under new rules approved in January — will be run as smoothly as possible.
“It’s just to give potential candidates the chance to really get out there and engage with as many Manitobans as possible,” Zander said Tuesday in an interview. “A longer period of time provides that opportunity.”
Zander also said the Manitoba PCs should benefit in 2025 from the leadup to the federal election the Conservative Party of Canada hopes to win that fall.
The new Manitoba PC leader will be the first to be chosen by party members since Heather Stefanson won a race to succeed former premier Brian Pallister in October 2021.
Stefanson served as premier from November 2021 until October 2023, when the PCs where defeated by Wab Kinew’s New Democratic Party.
Stefanson stepped down as leader in January, when party members selected Lac du Bonnet MLA Wayne Ewasko as interim leader.
Ewasko has not ruled out running in the leadership race.
“All I can say to everybody is I’m definitely not saying yes but I’m definitely not saying no either,” he said on Jan. 20.
Former PC MLA Kevin Klein, who lost his Kirkfield Park seat in October’s election, has also not ruled out a run for PC leader.
The upcoming leadership race will present an opportunity for the party to engage in fundraising. The Manitoba PCs wound up with an $852,000 deficit at the end of the 2023 election campaign, according to campaign finances filed to Elections Manitoba.
The leadership race will also be held under new rules put in place to prevent problems that marred the last leadership selection in 2021.
Stefanson narrowly won that race over former Conservative MP Shelly Glover, who challenged the results in court on the basis of irregularities. While Justice James Edmond agreed irregularities existed, he dismissed Glover’s challenge on the basis the problems did not affect the outcome.
In a 2023 review of the Stefanson-Glover contest, PC members Lawrence Toet and Grant Stefanson concluded the 2021 PC leadership selection suffered from numerous issues, including a time frame that was too short and insufficient resources to keep tabs on new members and ensure they all received ballots.
The PCs also failed to hire a third party to keep track of marked ballots, Toet and Stefanson concluded.
They also warned the former leadership-race rules left the Progressive Conservatives prone to a party takeover by a special-interest candidate who might be outside the mainstream of Manitoba politics.
In January, the party amended its constitution to replace the traditional “one member, one vote” leadership selection system with a weighted system that caps the influence of constituencies with large numbers of party members.
According to the new rules, a constituency with 100 voting members will get 100 points in a leadership vote. One with 400 member votes will garner 200 points, and no constituency will have more than 500 points.
The race can be as short as 90 days and as long as 300, according to the new rules. Leadership candidates must submit 200 nominations from PC members, undergo a criminal record check and make a refundable $15,000 deposit, the rules state.
Leadership candidates must also solicit $20,000 worth of donations to the party within six weeks of receiving access to the party membership list, the rules state.