Disappearing act: Former premier seemed to vanish

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This article was published 18/08/2023 (871 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two years ago, the tallest premier in Canada — and one of its most outspoken — vanished from public life.

Most Manitobans last saw or heard from Brian Pallister on Aug. 10, 2021, in Brandon, after he fell victim to a silent leadership coup.

Fast-forward two years to the eve of the upcoming provincial election campaign. The opposition New Democrats argue Progressive Conservative Premier Heather Stefanson and her predecessor’s policies are inextricably linked and equally to blame for the province’s current health-care staffing crisis, record number of overdose deaths and high rate of violent crime.

However one-half of that equation remains AWOL.

At a PC campaign event Thursday in St. Vital Park, Stefanson was asked when she last spoke to Pallister, and if it sometimes feels like she’s running against him now.

“It’s been a while, and no,” she said.

The Tories have also tried to link their NDP opponents’ leader to his predecessor, saying Wab Kinew would hike taxes the same way Greg Selinger did before his government was thrashed by Pallister’s PCs, who secured one of Manitoba’s largest majorities in the legislature in 2016. Selinger later resigned.

The Free Press tried to reach Pallister through friends, family and his business, but received no responses.

Those close to the man who, up until two years ago, basked in the public spotlight and was eager to engage in debate, offered few details on his whereabouts and what he’s been up to.

He’s been spotted at the golf course and Chicken Chef in Portage la Prairie where he still owns an insurance business and a ranch not far from the city.

“He has not become a ghost,” said a laughing Ian Wishart, the Tory MLA for the area who is not seeking re-election this fall.

The diminished visibility of the 6-foot-8, 69-year-old is no surprise to his most trusted lieutenant.

David McLaughlin, who last spoke with Pallister earlier this year, said it’s extremely unlikely he’ll resurface anytime soon.

“He won twice — big — and he then exited in order to allow his party to prosper, renew and win again,” said McLaughlin, who was Pallister’s campaign manager and executive council clerk until he was let go once Stefanson became leader in late 2021.

His former boss is invested in Manitoba Tories’ continued success, having rebuilt the party that languished in opposition for 17 years and leading it to win back-to-back majorities, McLaughlin said. (However invested he is in its success, Pallister didn’t make a donation to the PC party in 2022 after having done so annually in previous years, Elections Manitoba records show.)

“When he became leader, no one else wanted the job. They had just come off a devastating defeat. They were deflated, demoralized, demoted,” McLaughlin said.

“His party leadership chops and his commitment and his discipline, his convictions — all the things that perhaps some people thought might be too much in government — they were exactly what was needed to get the party into government.”

Stefanson, who’d served as an opposition MLA since 2000, has Pallister to thank for the PCs taking power in 2016, he said. Then, after witnessing his party’s steady decline in the polls that began in 2020, Pallister didn’t fight to remain leader as some others have, noted McLaughlin, who now heads the Ottawa-based Institute on Governance.

“He did not want to be a lightning rod in a bad way for the party and his successor,” said Manitoba’s former top bureaucrat, who was with Pallister during his thought process as he decided to step down.

“I think there may be some folks who will ultimately give him some credit for it,” McLaughlin said. “He stepped aside, he did it gracefully.” Maintaining a low profile now “is a continuation.”

“To see him come out now in any way, leading into an election, would be out of character. He’s been very principled on it.”

Still, the disappearance of a premier who so embraced the public spotlight seems unusual, said Brandon University political science professor Kelly Saunders.

“It is odd how he has so distinctly faded into the background,” said the veteran observer of Manitoba politics.

“Some former premiers — after some time away from politics, spending time with family and maybe just recuperating from a very busy time in office — went on to some kind of high-profile public appointment or position afterwards,” she said, listing some examples.

Former Tory premier Gary Filmon, for example, was appointed chairman of the Federal Security Intelligence Review Committee, and the late Howard Pawley took a teaching position at the University of Windsor.

“They went on to serve, to continue a life of public service in some other kind of capacity,” Saunders said, adding Pallister is an “anomaly.”

“No one really kind of knows where he is or what he’s doing,” she said. “He really has not had any kind of public presence whatsoever, and it’s been two years already. That does strike me as being a little bit odd.”

Neither Pallister nor Selinger (who was not available for an interview) have returned to public life or made a peep during the current campaign, although both loom large with the opposing parties reminding voters of their respective track records.

Both “left under a cloud — in the sense that you actually had the party turning against their incumbent leaders,” Saunders said. “That maybe explains a lot about why those two seem to have really faded into the distance.”

It’s no surprise to McLaughlin that Pallister sightings have been rare.

Although his nickname was Pally, and McLaughlin said he was a “natural campaigner” who’d have long conversations with folks, Pallister was not a socializer or on any sort of cocktail-party circuit.

“But he was the best briefed person at cabinet — bar none. He would read the Treasury Board books in detail.” He’d show up with questions and grill ministers and officials.

Pallister often reminded Manitobans that he didn’t enter politics to be popular but to get results — which included cutting the civil service, taxes and balancing the budget — which he did, McLaughlin said.

“I think Brian Pallister was the biggest change agent the government of Manitoba has seen in perhaps decades, maybe ever, and I think change agents are naturally disruptive to the status quo,” he said.

Pallister saw government and governance “as mechanisms, as machinery — and perhaps less so than the province as a whole,” McLaughlin said. “He believed that the province would prosper and gain if government was fixed.”

Rather than fixing it, some Manitobans — particularly the New Democrats — have argued that Pallister broke it.

“Brian came in with a particular view on government and you can agree or disagree, but his view on government was consistently held throughout the piece,” McLaughlin said.

Manitobans have not seen the last of the former premier at the legislature.

He is expected to make an appearance down the road, once his portrait is painted and then placed outside the premier’s office, but that can’t happen until after Selinger’s portrait goes up, house Speaker Myrna Driedger said, adding she doesn’t know when that will happen.

For now, portraits of only Filmon and Doer are on the wall outside Stefanson’s office on the second floor of the Legislative Building, with a hook already installed awaiting Selinger’s painting. Portraits of premiers who served before Filmon are on display in two of the building’s committee rooms.

» Winnipeg Free Press