REGIONAL VIEWPOINT: Tory attacks push the limit

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This article was published 01/05/2023 (980 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s obvious Premier Heather Stefanson’s Conservatives have taken a page from former premier Brian Pallister’s playbook by the way they attack NDP Leader Wab Kinew.

Pallister’s game plan was simple: attack Kinew on his past, personal issues while painting him as a lying, privileged and angry man. When anyone pointed out the strategy draws directly and distinctly on stereotypes of Indigenous men, they threw up their arms and claimed innocence.

In the 2019 election, Manitobans saw this best in the Conservatives’ “Wab Risk” ad campaign, which was complete with a website and videos that questioned Kinew’s integrity and pointed out his past run-ins with the law.

At the time, Kinew said he did not consider the attacks racial in nature, but rather, a political diversion.

“Mr. Pallister knows he can’t win an election about health care or about jobs or even about the climate because he’s made a mess of those things,” Kinew said when asked about the campaign. “He has no choice but to attack me.”

The political climate of four years ago may have debated the racism of these attacks, but in the past two weeks, Tory leadership has certainly shown similarities to Pallister’s game plan.

They have gone further when it comes to racial undertones.

At a party meeting April 15, Stefanson started using the term the “Wab way,” when she described Kinew as someone who will defund police, raise taxes and legalize illicit drugs — all things the NDP leader has never promised.

When asked why she was making false statements about Kinew, Stefanson said former NDP premier Greg Selinger did such things and that was proof.

“His way, just like Greg Selinger’s way, the NDP way, is to raise your taxes and stifle economic growth. Well, let’s call that the ‘Wab way.’ We think that’s the wrong way.”

This could be just simple politics, but consider on April 13, Sport Minister Obby Khan accused Kinew of “intimidation attempts, insulting language,” swearing and “a shove in the stomach” at an event at the Manitoba legislature to celebrate Sikh and Punjabi culture.

Security video released later showed no evidence of a shove as the two men spoke in close proximity. At one point, Kinew pulled Khan close.

He admitted there was a “tense verbal exchange,” but “no swearing.”

This week, during a legislature debate on school administration, Education Minister Wayne Ewasko made a comment that could only be seen as racial.

“I actually thought [NDP MLA Nello Altomare] was going to turn a leaf and maybe take, um, self-serving comments away from his leader of the Opposition who seems to stand in this house on a day-to-day basis pretending to be some kind of actor. He’s no Adam Beach, Madam Speaker,” Ewasko said.

NDP critic Uzoma Asagwara demanded he explain his “disrespectful and demeaning remark” that “would not have been made about a non-Indigenous member.”

Ewasko said his comment simply points out he likes Adam Beach.

“I was pointing out the fact that [Kinew’s] not a great actor like Adam Beach. I could have used multiple other actors,” Ewasko said, saying he “could have said Denzel Washington” or “Jim Carrey.”

The fact is, Ewasko didn’t. He used a widely known Indigenous actor who appears in Hollywood movies to make the comparison — as if to point out to the world Kinew is well-known, successful and Indigenous.

As pointed out by commentators on social media, this hearkened back to the time Pallister accused Kinew of being “handed more benefits than any premier in the last 60 years in this province” — a comment criticized for framing Kinew as more privileged than other Indigenous people and out of touch. (Pallister himself even said he grew up poorer.)

Ewasko refused to apologize, causing an uproar in the chamber. Liberal MLA Jon Gerard called for an end to “personal attacks” in the legislature. Kinew called Ewasko’s comment “offside.”

At a news conference Thursday, Ewasko was asked about the reference to the Manitoba-born Beach.

“I meant absolutely no major ill intent; I was more so talking about what Manitobans really need to see in who is vying for the position of premier.”

If it were one or two backbenchers framing Kinew as a lying, violent, privileged Indigenous man, that would be one thing, but this is the premier and two cabinet ministers.

Unless something changes fairly soon, it’s becoming clear the Conservative strategy going into the fall election is to remind Manitobans that Kinew is Indigenous, prey upon stereotypes about Indigenous people (and men in particular), and allude to these being reasons why he is not to be trusted.

It’s like Pallister’s 2019 “Wab Risk” with a new, and frankly more racializing, approach becoming known as the “Wab way.”

» Niigaan Sinclair is Anishinaabe and is a columnist at the Winnipeg Free Press.