Opportunism driving premier’s musings about an early election

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew says he came close to calling an election a couple of weeks ago — and that an early election call could still happen — despite the fact that the province has a fixed-date election law and the reality that the government is only halfway through its four-year mandate.

The pretext for Kinew’s temptation is as laughable as it is transparent. He says he came close to dropping the writ because the opposition Progressive Conservatives were “playing games” and delaying passage of Bill 48, which allowed for highly intoxicated people to be detained for up to 72 hours, instead of the 24-hour limit that was previously in place.

The bill was introduced in the first week of October and was passed before the end of the legislative session last week, after Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham persuaded the Tories to allow it to pass.

I wrote about Bill 48 earlier this week. It is flawed legislation that was rushed through the legislative assembly at warp-speed, obliterating the usual review processes that would have identified and corrected the errors in the bill.

That’s not just my opinion. Senior health officials have told me that they also have concerns about Bill 48. One mental health expert told me: “I don’t know who drew up this bill, but they clearly weren’t familiar with the Mental Health Act,” and he pointed out that references in the bill to specific sections of the Mental Health Act are simply wrong.

He finished by saying that he has “real concerns” about the bill being rushed through, and said that he’d “like to do anything possible to slow it down and have them take a sober second look before royal assent is given and it is proclaimed.”

Was the premier seriously willing to call a snap election over a bill that should never have been rushed in the way that it was? Would that be his big reason for triggering an election that would cost Manitoba taxpayers millions of dollars?

The reality is that Kinew is itching to call an election because his government is high in the polls and he thinks the Tories are too disorganized, and too short on cash, to run a credible campaign at this time. He sees an opportunity to win another four years of paycheques for his team and, given that politics is all about opportunism, he’s ready to push the button.

It’s a startling change in perspective for our premier. Back in the spring of 2019, when Tory premier Brian Pallister was musing about calling an early election, because of alleged delay tactics by the (then) opposition NDP, Kinew said this: “The premier is somehow suggesting that the timing of an election is up to me. I just want to clarify that if it’s up to me, we will respect the fixed election date law, unequivocally.”

In 2019, Pallister called an early election because his government had completed all of the campaign promises it had made during the 2016 provincial election. It sought a fresh mandate from Manitobans for a new agenda and received that mandate via a second-straight majority.

The Kinew government is not in that position, as many of its key commitments made during the 2023 election campaign have still not been met. For example, Kinew promised his government would deliver a balanced budget by the end of its first (four-year) term. Instead, it appears all but impossible for the government to balance the budget by 2027.

Kinew also promised in 2023 that an NDP government would “fix” health care in Manitoba. We all know how that’s going. The shortage of doctors, nurses and other health professionals continues, and has arguably worsened in areas of rural Manitoba.

Wait times throughout the province continue to be among the highest in the nation. Emergency departments are regularly closed for extended periods of time in rural communities, and even the Brandon Regional Health Centre has faced the possibility of service disruptions due to staffing shortages.

Despite the fact the province faces a growing shortage of electricity and has been forced to import electricity to meet demand in each of the past two years, the government still hasn’t come up with a plausible strategy to solve the problem.

On education, the government claimed last spring that it was increasing funding to school divisions by “nearly five per cent,” but Manitobans learned that the funding for several school divisions in the province was actually much lower. Even with nutrition funding included, the funding for many divisions actually grew by less than the inflation rate.

On the environment, the government’s recently released climate plan has been condemned by experts for the absence of criteria to quantify how each “action item” will help to achieve the overall emissions-reduction target. In particular, Prof. Scott Forbes panned the plan as having “the pretense of doing something without actually doing anything substantial.”

On crime, the premier has been talking tough lately but few Manitobans believe the streets are safer since the NDP formed government. On this government’s watch, Brandon now has a Hell’s Angels chapter.

I could go on, but you get the point. If the premier wants an election, it isn’t because the opposition slowed passage of a bad bill for a few days. It’s because the NDP are leading in the polls and he thinks it will be easier to win an election now — when his 2023 election promises might be graded as “incomplete” — than in 2027, when some of his promises would likely be given a failing grade.

Manitobans should see Kinew’s “snap election” musings for what they are: opportunism.