PCs must grab momentum

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/10/2014 (4309 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If ever there was a golden opportunity for Manitoba’s current crop of Progressive Conservatives to finally win a provincial election, it is now.

Citizens of Manitoba’s two largest cities spoke loud and clear during Wednesday night’s municipal election, tossing the NDP-connected mayoral candidates of incumbent Shari Decter Hirst in Brandon and Judy Wasylycia-Leis in Winnipeg abruptly to the curb, in favour of two conservative-minded individuals — Rick Chrest and Brian Bowman.

Throughout his campaign, Chrest stuck to his low-tax, “back-to-basics” approach to city services, rather than brick-and-mortar proposals, while taking aim at the outgoing council’s perceived inability to get projects done.

Unlike Decter Hirst, who tried to promised to build a new industrial park near the airport, raise First Street to protect it from future flooding and spend city cash for the expansion of the provincially owned Daly Overpass on 18th Street — among other big-ticket items — Chrest avoided announcing any “mega projects” saying the city’s debt and tax levels were already too high.

He also promised to bring a little more common sense and respectability to city hall, calling Decter Hirst’s gaffe-prone time in office “embarrassing” and “unfortunate.”

“I wish I didn’t have to raise these things, but it’s put in front of me almost daily as we’re knocking on doors and talking to people,” Chrest said. “It’s a thing that people just kind of want addressed.”

These issues, combined with his low-key approach, obviously resonated with the voting public, who gave Chrest a landslide victory with nearly 65 per cent of the popular vote — an amazing result for a non-incumbent.

And in Winnipeg, Wasylycia-Leis tried to tamp down her campaign promises for new spending on city projects, she could not escape her record as a former NDP MP and MLA and her connection to the current NDP government’s financial record and its broken promise on the PST increase.

Nevertheless, Bowman — a red Tory who was once considered as a possible leader of Manitoba’s PC party — has made substantial and potentially expensive promises of his own. This while still vowing to limit tax increases to the rate of inflation, cut budgets and find efficiencies at city hall.

At least some of what he is proposing sounds naive — spending more on arts and culture in Winnipeg while trying to curb tax hikes. That sounds an awful lot like a progressive politician — but perhaps that’s not so surprising, given the fact that a recent Winnipeg Free Press/CTV poll suggested that two-thirds of Winnipeggers said a property tax increase was inevitable in order to maintain basic municipal services.

Bowman ultimately took the election with 47.54 per cent of the vote, compared to Wasylycia-Leis, who placed distant second with 24.92 per cent.

We cannot underscore this point enough — Bowman and Chrest won the night with landslide victories over their NDP opponents.

So why does any of this matter to the provincial NDP? Simply put, anyone attached to the NDP brand went down in flames this election cycle, and much of the blame can be put squarely on the PST tax hike and other increased fees that our province has enacted since the 2011 election.

Even Premier Greg Selinger himself suggested the province’s PST increase did not help Wasylycia-Leis’ campaign.

“We know it was a very important election — that some people felt jolted by the raising of the PST by one per cent and I take responsibility for that,” Selinger told Winnipeg media.

With Selinger’s personal popularity already at a low ebb in this province, this municipal election should serve as a huge wake-up call for the NDP, for unless something miraculous happens in the next year or so to offset these results, the next provincial election will be PC Leader Brian Pallister’s to lose.