Khan should’ve taken high road: Goertzen

WINNIPEG — The veteran Progressive Conservative who championed Obby Khan’s leadership bid says the former Blue Bomber dropped the ball by dissing his Tory teammates before he stepped down.

“I wouldn’t recommend it, and I didn’t recommend it,” Kelvin Goertzen (Steinbach) said in an interview Friday.

Khan resigned as PC leader and quit the caucus Monday saying some members were secretly plotting his ouster, even after he won a confidence vote on Sept. 25.

On Tuesday, Khan lashed out in a CJOB interview, naming the alleged plotters, saying constituents deserved to know which of their elected representatives “lacked moral integrity.” Khan told the Winnipeg Free Press he was “deeply emotionally hurt,” and felt stabbed in the back.

“I recognize the emotional difficulty for a leader when they’re letting go of their leadership,” said Goertzen, who was first elected in 2003 and served as interim leader, in cabinet, and briefly as the 23rd premier of Manitoba after Brian Pallister stepped down.

“I’m not dismissing the emotion that people feel, but the advice I would give is to hold your head high, wish people well and walk out the front door. That would be my advice,” said the MLA who is not running for re-election.

Pallister’s top bureaucrat and the former chief of staff to late prime minister Brian Mulroney said Khan was right to resign but did so the wrong way.

“His behaviour demonstrates why he was struggling as leader, even with his own caucus colleagues,” David McLaughlin said. “He has turned his back on the party that chose him and the MLAs that supported him. No going back, nor should there be.”

McLaughlin said Khan’s resignation was a gift to the PCs after a messy leadership contest in 2025. Right-wing populist Wally Daudrich won the popular vote but lost to Khan thanks to a weighted ballot system. Daudrich quit the PCs to run for the Keystone Party in July’s The Pas-Kameesak byelection.

McLaughlin said the fresh start will benefit the Tories. He said they have had trouble climbing out of a big hole since premier Heather Stefanson’s election loss in 2023 when she campaigned against searching a landfill for Indigenous murder victims.

“Khan’s departure removes an obstacle to renewal but doesn’t fix it. The party is suffering from the Stefanson debacle just as much as the Khan misfire. They need to understand that,” he said.

He said the party needs to go back to basics.

“Go back into the community and start listening again. Figure out what it truly stands for and start persuading Manitobans,” said McLaughlin.

Goertzen said he’s seen both governing parties hit peaks and valleys. In 2006, PC leader Stuart Murray won a confidence vote but not by enough to convince him to stay at the helm. In 2014, the “Gang of Five” NDP cabinet ministers unsuccessfully called for premier Greg Selinger to resign as leader. Selinger then lost to Pallister in 2016.

“There were challenges for the NDP after that election. That seems like a long time ago, but it really wasn’t that long ago,” Goertzen said, comparing the fortunes of political parties to the stock market.

“When stocks are high, you never think they’re going to go down and when they’re low, you never think they’re going to go up … People tend to overreact. They tend to think they’re stronger than they really are when things are going high and they tend to think they’re weaker than they really are when things are going bad,” Goertzen said.

“I’m not concerned about the long term, but obviously there are short-term challenges to get through.”

The PC party has yet to announce a timeline for its selection of a permanent leader.

Interim leader Konrad Narth (LaVerendrye) has taken the reins of the PC party and a $61,468 pay bump as leader of the official opposition on top of his $112,273 MLA salary. Khan now sits as an independent MLA for Fort Whyte.

The MLAs who received the wrath of Khan have declined repeated interview requests.

A spokesperson for Richard Perchotte (Selkirk) deferred interview requests to the PC caucus. Lauren Stone (Midland) and Jodie Byram (Agassiz) did not respond to interview requests Friday. Kathleen Cook (Roblin) said in a text Friday that she had no comment.

Goertzen suggested that his fellow caucus members won’t speak up publicly to defend themselves because they want to maintain caucus confidentiality — even if their former leader has blabbed about it.

“When that confidentiality is breached, people clam up and they suddenly don’t feel like they want to speak … They don’t know if that’s going to all of a sudden end up in a fine newspaper like yours or on the radio or something. When they do that, the decisions are worse because their input isn’t there.”

» Winnipeg Free Press