Too many hats for Goertzen?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/05/2023 (1105 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Kelvin Goertzen has had a long and storied career in Manitoba’s provincial politics. His Wikipedia biography is a burnished compendium of accomplishments and accolades in the varied list of roles he has taken on in nearly 30 years of political life.

He has earned bachelor’s degrees in economics, commerce and law from the University of Manitoba, before being hired on as an intern at the Manitoba legislature with Gary Filmon’s Progressive Conservative caucus in 1995.

He has been elected five times as MLA for Steinbach, and is running again this fall to claim the seat he has held since 2003. He has even led the province as interim premier while a new PC leader was chosen.

In his current role as Manitoba’s minister of justice and attorney general, Goertzen also holds the title of government house leader, Keeper of the Great Seal of the Province of Manitoba, and the minister responsible for the Manitoba Public Insurance Corporation. He’s also the co-chair of the Midwest Canada-U.S. Relations Committee.

Simply put, there is good reason that he has been given so many important roles within the PC government over the years. Whether you agree or disagree with his politics, Kelvin Goertzen is a smart and accomplished politician — and invariably a very busy man as a result. Perhaps a little too busy.

The last month has been a difficult one for the justice minister, as he has found himself in some rather embarrassing situations that have proven politically problematic in an election year.

In late April, the Manitoba Association of Crown Attorneys filed a grievance against the province, citing issues related to staffing, workloads and compensation. MACA says Crown prosecutors are overly strained because of large caseloads and increased pressures as a result of senior attorneys leaving Manitoba for better paying positions elsewhere.

And as attorneys leave for better paying jobs in other jurisdictions, that strain only increases.

Of course, this was not news to the government — this has been a growing problem for years, made more difficult by the fact that as of last February the union had already gone a year without a new contract with the province.

Goertzen previously told media the government had hired new people, and that the vacancy rate was closing in on the normal rate of six per cent. But for a government leaning on a “tough on crime” campaign going into October, not having enough experienced Crown attorneys in service is a serious threat to their re-election prospects. You’d think this would have been a higher priority for a government trying to burnish its law-and-order credentials.

More embarrassing still for Goertzen is the mess that is Manitoba Public Insurance. Only a few short weeks after Goertzen ordered an external organizational review of MPI back in April, MPI replaced president and CEO Eric Herbelin with an interim leader, Marnie Kacher, while the board of directors begins recruiting a permanent leader.

The review of the automobile insurance provider followed a sharp jump in the cost of technology upgrades and a steep rise in projected staffing levels, with Goertzen adding at the time that other factors, such as the awarding of millions of dollars in untendered contracts, also prompted the review.

But earlier this month, the minister also faced questions why Herbelin had received a $11,300 raise in 2022 — with another apparently scheduled for 2023 — while also racking up $88,000 in travel costs.

Then there’s Project Nova, MPI’s IT initiative, which was first estimated to cost just slightly over $100 million when it commenced in 2020. It’s now expected to cost as much as $290 million to complete, and take five years now instead of three.

As MPI’s board of directors report directly to the minister, cabinet and the Department of Crown Services, we have to assume the government and Mr. Goertzen in his role as minister were aware of these problems and only took action after these issues came to light through media reports.

The same goes for Goertzen’s recent appointment of former Brandon West MLA and former Brandon city councillor Jim McCrae as a member of a committee that helps select judicial officers, or masters, for the Court of King’s Bench. McCrae, who has been an outspoken critic of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and who doesn’t believe that the Indian Residential School system was a form of genocide, was recommended for a three-year term, according to a cabinet decree dated May 10.

Last week, Goertzen told our sister paper, the Winnipeg Free Press, that he was unaware of McCrae’s online articles on residential schools.

McCrae, himself a former Manitoba justice minister in Gary Filmon’s cabinet, was the Progressive Conservative MLA for Brandon West from 1986 to 1999.

In a column published by the right-wing Western Standard in 2022, McCrae wrote that “No children have been found buried in those places, and certainly none — anywhere — under sinister circumstances.”

Again, that Goertzen was unaware of McCrae’s denialist beliefs on the subject of child graves at residential schools is difficult to fathom — a simple online search finds more than enough evidence of that. Goertzen should have known better.

And for this to happen to the Stefanson government during an election year, after the turmoil Brian Pallister inflicted upon his government’s relationship with Indigenous people, is incredibly damaging.

However, let’s say for a moment that Goertzen is telling the truth, and that he was unaware of MPI’s poor spending decisions, or of McCrae’s cultural genocide denialism.

If so, then he is wearing too many hats for this government to do any of these roles properly, and should step back.

His portfolios are simply too important to the government and to the lives of Manitobans for such desultory attention.

» Matt Goerzen, editor