Manitoba Has A New Premier-Elect And Why This Is A Message To Conservatives
Wab Kinew is the first Indigenous premier in Canadian history.
To many Canadians, October 3 was a boring Tuesday night. The Blue Jays lost their opening game of their Wildcard series, the United States Congress booted their speaker in an apparent infighting among Republicans, and Canada selected the first-ever black Speaker of the House.
Meanwhile, in Canada’s 5th most populated province, Manitobans headed to the polls to select a new provincial government. The incumbent, Conservative Heather Stephenson, has been facing increased criticism around the handling of COVID and the most recent controversy around the searching of landfills by Indigenous communities and their fellow citizens.
Polls were never in Heather's favour. Not only was she always behind in the polls, but she also faced tanking personal popularity numbers. At the end of the day, after the votes were counted, Stephenson lost the election, and her Conservative party only garnered 25 seats. The NDP was elected with a majority of 31 seats. Wab Kinew, the leader of the NDP, became the new Premier-Elect. Kinew also made history by becoming the first-ever Indigenous Premier of Canada.
At the time of writing, the polls are still counting, and the results will be changing as the votes get counted. But an apparent change in tone has hit Manitoba and its voters. The Conservatives ran on a platform of parental rights, lower taxes, and decreased immigration, all seemingly copying the federal Conservatives' playbook, even going as far as potentially denying the election results if it was close.
Manitobans decided that this wasn't going to work for them. They were not going to stand for a Conservative approach going into the post-COVID world. In tough times when bills get tight, people tend to lean toward more left-leaning ideologies. Socialism is all about taking care of people when they can't take care of themselves, and when there are tough times, the party saying "we are going to help people" tends to come out ahead.
Conservatives just do not have a good position as that "fixer" party. When you look at the federal CPC, the ONLY thing they know how to do is complain about Trudeau, and that's why they are gaining popularity. But when it comes to policy and actual change that needs to happen, the Conservatives always come up short, and Manitoba proved that.
As I'm writing this, I'm now watching the Conservatives try to spin this loss, but to be honest, there is no spin that is great. They lost in Winnipeg astonishingly; they barely won their so-called safe seats, and they lost a very conservative province. This should be a shock and a real blow to the CPC.
If, at a federal level, young people can turn out to vote like they did tonight in Manitoba, then the CPC is going to have a real slap in the face. We are two years away from that happening, so much can change, and it will. But we saw history tonight. We also got validation that most Conservative policy and tactics do not resonate with voters when it comes to voting time.
Congratulations to Wab Kinew. Regardless of political ideology and party support, this was a historic day for Manitoba and, in turn, Canada. Canada has its first Indigenous Premier, and an NDP one to boot. Truly historic, and this will be a core moment for the Indigenous community to feel represented in government and maybe, just maybe, one step closer to true reconciliation.
Till next time,
JB