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WINNIPEG — The sight of a former Manitoba Liberal leader hitting the campaign trail in support of a Progressive Conservative candidate may have raised some eyebrows Saturday.

But Rana Bokhari and Obby Khan insisted Manitobans shouldn’t read too much into the fact she canvassed with him in the provincial riding of Fort Whyte.

“Obby is a close family friend. I’ve known him for years,” Bokhari told the Free Press Sunday.

“Rana and I have been friends for over a decade,” Khan said in a separate interview.

Bokhari, the Liberal leader from 2013 to 2016, posted an Instgram photo which showed her and Khan posing on a sidewalk, while going door-to-door ahead of the Oct. 3 election.

Bokhari said her support for Khan was not an endorsement of the Tories nor any of their policies, but about representation.

“I support (Obby) as an individual,” she said. “This is not about partisan politics.”

Bokhari and Khan are Muslim and of Pakistani descent. Both have made history in their political careers.

Khan was the first Muslim elected to the Manitoba legislature. Bokhari was the first woman of colour and Muslim woman to lead a political party in Canada.

She resigned as Liberal leader after failing to win a seat in the 2016 election.

Khan said Bokhari had earlier told him that she would like to canvas with him in this year’s campaign. He said the pair’s appearance together was a sign of Manitoba’s diversity, and it sent a “powerful” message of the direction the province is headed.

“Representation really matters,” he said. “Working together really matters.”

Khan, then a sitting MLA, didn’t publicly support a candidate when Bokhari unsuccessfully ran for Winnipeg mayor in 2022.

In this campaign, he has been the public face of the Tory party’s pledge to expand parental rights in public schools. Bokhari declined to give her opinion on the proposal.

She said she has been an advocate for human rights, and nothing has changed about what she has said in the past.

“People know where my policies lie,” the lawyer said.

In response to the parental rights promise, the NDP previously accused the PCs of blowing a “dog whistle” over LGBTTQ+ issues, while the Liberals claimed the Tories were and tapping into “moral panic” whipped up by the spread of false information.

Bokhari set her Instagram account to private after receiving some negative comments about the photo of her and Khan. She found the reaction to be offensive.

“Is he not allowed to have his own community support him?” said Bokhari. “I’m just not going to waste my energy on a Sunday afternoon engaging with people because I took a picture.”

She noted she attended a celebration for Khan when he won the Fort Whyte seat in a 2022 byelection.

Willard Reaves, the Liberal candidate in Fort Whyte, branded Bokhari’s canvassing with Khan as a “photo op” designed to stir a reaction.

“To me, it’s not a big deal,” said Reaves. “I have other things to concentrate on.”

Trudy Schroeder is the NDP candidate in the south Winnipeg constituency.

The race is essentially a rematch of the byelection narrowly won by Khan. Reaves finished second in that vote. Schroeder was third.

Khan and Reaves both once played football for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Bokhari described herself as non-partisan in this election. She said she plans to donate money to support the campaigns of individual Liberal and NDP candidates in other constituencies.

» Winnipeg Free Press