Stefanson’s vanishing act a slap in the face

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/11/2023 (876 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After the two Garys escorted newly elected speaker of the House George Hickes down the aisle of the Manitoba legislative assembly on Nov. 18, 1999, one of the Garys made a wrong turn when he returned to his seat.

Gary Filmon, who served as premier from 1988 to 1999, was so used to sitting front-and-centre on the government side of the house, it was sheer habit for him to climb back into the premier’s chair on the first day of the 37th legislature.

Except that seat now belonged to the other Gary, former NDP opposition leader Gary Doer, whose party had just won a majority government on Sept. 21, 1999.

Filmon did an about-face and returned to the opposition benches.

“I’ve been there before,” Filmon said at the time, when asked what it was like sitting on the opposite side of the house after more than 11 years as premier. Filmon was leader of the opposition from 1983 to 1988.

The former premier took part in the election of the speaker, even after losing a bitterly-fought election two months earlier, because it was his job as official leader of the opposition (a role he served in for seven months after the election).

In Canada’s parliamentary system, it is the responsibility of the opposition leader to be present on Day 1 of the legislative session to perform the required duties.

Part of those duties is to escort the new speaker down the aisle — the premier on one side, the opposition leader on the other.

It’s a time-honoured tradition: the speaker is invested with the robes of office and takes the chair for the first time, as the duly elected arbiter of the house. It marks the beginning of a new legislature. In November 1999, it signalled the peaceful transition of power, an important hallmark of democracy.

Participating in that ceremony shows respect for the chamber and for the democratic process. That seems especially important these days, given the fragile state of democracy around the world and the unsettling events that threaten it.

Sadly, Progressive Conservative Leader Heather Stefanson, who will also be switching seats from the government side of the house to the opposition benches, will not be in the legislature when the new speaker is elected Thursday. According to her staff, Stefanson is out of town and has no plans to return for this important event. Apparently, it’s not a priority for her. Presumably, deputy leader Kelvin Goertzen will assume the role.

Stefanson has agreed to stay on as party leader for 12 to 18 months until the Tories choose a new leader. It’s not a responsibility she is taking seriously. If it were, she would be in her office preparing for the first session, speaking to the public and holding the new NDP government accountable.

She would be doing her job, which she’s paid by taxpayers to do (opposition leaders receive an extra $56,390 in salary on top of their $102,998 MLA pay, the same remuneration as cabinet ministers). Instead, she’s out of town on an extended vacation and has been largely missing in action since her government lost the Oct. 3 provincial election.

If Stefanson doesn’t want the job, she should say so. She could hand it off to an interim leader, as former NDP premier Greg Selinger did after his party lost the 2016 election.

Selinger did not return as opposition leader; he sat in the back benches following the election. Given the internal conflict of his party at the time, it was not realistic for him to continue as leader. Flor Marcelino, the NDP MLA for Wellington, was chosen by caucus to act as interim leader.

It’s unclear why Stefanson agreed to stay on as party leader. It doesn’t appear she wants the job, not any more than she wanted to become premier, which she acknowledged early on in her premiership that it was not something she was looking for. Stefanson never seemed comfortable in the role.

Some moderate Progressive Conservatives are concerned Stefanson has agreed to retain the title to influence the next leadership race. There is a hard-right faction within the party, the one that ran the Tories’ disastrous 2023 election campaign (which, despite her moderate election-night concession speech, was fully sanctioned by Stefanson), that would like to see one of its ilk become the next leader.

With the Tories’ one-member, one-vote system, that is entirely possible. Having Stefanson in place to help engineer that could be helpful for the far-right arm of the party.

Whatever reason Stefanson has for staying on as leader, it’s not to act as an effective opposition leader. Her absence from the house this week confirms that.

» Tom Brodbeck is a Winnipeg Free Press columnist who has covered politics since the early 1990s. This column previously appeared in the Free Press.