If Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative party is serious about wanting to “refresh” its values after last year’s disastrous provincial election, it should issue an unqualified apology for the racist and extremist campaign it ran.
Former party leader Heather Stefanson offered a half-hearted, sort-of apology immediately following the Oct. 3, 2023 election. But the party has never taken full responsibility for its ugly and hurtful campaign.
A recent survey sent out to party members asking them to list the five most important traits for a new leader (who will be chosen a year from now, on April 26, 2025) acknowledges the party strayed from its core values during the election. The survey, the contents of which were leaked out this week, says the Tories now want to “find our way back” with the guidance of party members.
Malak Abas/Free Press Files
Former premier Heather Stefanson.
“Many of you have expressed that you did not feel the 2023 provincial election campaign aligned with your values or the values you believed aligned with the PC Party of Manitoba,” the survey says.
Election campaigns are typically run by a small group of people chosen by the party and its leader. They’re headed by a central campaign manager and usually include several others who form a “war room.” They make virtually all the decisions about campaign strategy, including election promises, campaign theme, advertising and which ridings to focus on.
Very little, if any, consultation goes into this decision-making process. Individual candidates usually have no input at all into central campaign operations. They are often the last to know about election promises or the kind of advertisement used in a race.
Party leaders usually have some input into the basic framework of a campaign, including election pledges. But once the race begins, the war room takes over and decisions about advertising, election promises and how to respond to opponents’ pledges are often made on the fly.
To that end, the people chosen for the war room is critical. If they don’t reflect the basic values of most party members and candidates, a disconnect can short-circuit a campaign.
That’s what happened to the Tories during the 2023 race. The party enlisted far-right extremists to run their war room and it backfired. The central campaign used racist and hateful messaging to try to win the election and it failed miserably. The party was nearly wiped off the map in Winnipeg.
That doesn’t absolve the party or its leader of blame. At the end of the day, the leader and party executives are responsible for the people inside the war room.
The problem for the Tories is they have never issued a formal apology for the hateful messaging they used during the campaign. That includes the “stand firm” ads that celebrated the party’s refusal to search the Prairie Green Landfill north of Winnipeg for the remains of First Nations women believed slain by an alleged serial killer.
Stefanson said in an interview following the campaign that the ads made her uncomfortable and that she was sorry they hurt people. But it wasn’t an unqualified apology.
The party has still not taken responsibility for the “parental rights” messaging it used during the campaign, a thinly veiled attack on LGBTTQ+ kids. Nor has it apologized for its sleazy, racist attacks against NDP Leader and now-Premier Wab Kinew. The party used Tory candidate Rejeanne Caron, a Winnipeg cop, as the designated attack dog to help spread the hate messaging. She referred to Kinew on social media as a “wife beater.”
If these themes strayed from the party’s core values, the party should say so by issuing an unqualified apology. It should list in detail which advertising and messaging it believes was inappropriate and explain why.
It should denounce the tactics used by the party’s central campaign manager Marni Larkin (who has also refused to apologize) and explain how the group of people that made up the Tory war room did not reflect the values of the party.
Until the PCs do that, claims about wanting to “find our way back” to core values ring hollow. How can the party return to its core values if it doesn’t specify how it strayed from them in the first place?
Branding is everything in politics. The people who ran the war room established a new brand for the party during the campaign and it was a vicious and ugly one. The party now wants to return to some other brand and is trying to find ways to do so.
That will be very difficult to do until it takes full responsibility for its 2023 election campaign.
tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca
Tom Brodbeck
Columnist
Tom has been covering Manitoba politics since the early 1990s and joined the Winnipeg Free Press news team in 2019.