The progressive conservatives of Manitoba are scheduled to announce a new party leader after a six -month campaign that was eclipsed during their federal election.
On Saturday afternoon at the Radisson Hotel in the Winnipeg center, the official opposition party is scheduled to reveal if it will be directed by Fort Whyte MLA Obby Khan or Wally Daudrich, owner of a hotel and an ecotourism company in Churchill.
This race will determine the full -time successor of former Manitoba Prime Minister Heather Stefanson, who resigned as the party leader months after his PCs lost the provincial elections of 2023 against Wab Kinew’s NDP.
After his departure, the game appointed Lac Du Bonnet Mla Wayne Ewasko as an interim leader and decided a long contest to select a permanent new one.
The party gave the possible contestants six months to register in the race and another six months to campaign, partly to avoid a repetition of the 2021 leadership contest of the party between Stefanson and former conservative deputies Shelly Glover.
Played with voting irregularities, that race led to a judicial challenge of Glover, who has since promised to form an alternative party for the PCs of Manitoba.
Christopher Adams, an attached professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba, says that the duration of the PC leadership campaign may not have benefited the party, despite the good intentions behind it.
The federal election probably absorbed most of the political oxygen in this province, he said.
“I think people forgot that there is an ongoing race,” Adams said in an interview this week. “I think people were lulled by the long leadership campaign.”
Adams said Ewasko “did a pretty decent job” as an interim leader, but it was difficult to ask him to turn 15 months in that role.
“The opposition is supposed to challenge the government, and it is a bit more difficult to do it with an interim leader,” he said.
Challenges for the new leader
The selection of a new leader will not immediately resolve each misfortune for the PCs, which currently occupy 20 seats in the 57 -seat Manitoba Legislature.
As leader, Khan or Daudrich will deal with an NDP government led by Kinew, who is still one of Canada’s most popular prime ministers, according to recent surveys.
The new opposition leader will have approximately two years to prepare for the next provincial elections, assuming that Kinew chooses to activate it after the standard, but not mandatory, four years in office.
Khan said that he is better prepared to lead the PCs in the next elections by virtue of the fact that he already has a seat in the legislature and that it is one of the only two MLA of PC in Winnipeg (along with Roblin’s Kathleen Cook).
“So that we return to the government, we have to win seats in the city of Winnipeg. I think that gives me a great advantage,” Khan said in March during an interview at Caboto Center in Winnipeg.
Daudrich, who plans to run in the next choice of Spruce Woods, argues that he is better positioned to improve the fortune of the PC, saying that he defends more conservative views than Khan. Daudrich said that newcomers to Canada, who are promoting population growth, tend to be more conservative than other Canadians.
“I would say that being more conservative will attract more voters to our party,” Daudrich said in an interview in March at his home in the rural municipality of Stanley, out of Morden.
At the beginning of the campaign, Daudrich advocated eliminating the word “progressive” of the name of the game, but now says that this is something that will happen on its own.
“I think it is really a movement within the party that is tired of using the term ‘progressive’ as if it were an apology for being conservative,” he said.
“If you look back in history, how the progressive term was inserted, it is not a big problem. We can eliminate that word. We are still the same part. We are still a central, not extremist party, but a central party of the right.”
Khan has been supported by 10 of 20 PC MLA, including Kelvin Goertzen, the MLA for Steinbach, who served as an interim leader and prime minister before Stefanson.
Daudrich did not receive any support, but insists that he has support among the PC caucus.
“I think I will have significant support once this wins,” Daudrich said.
Khan would not commit to support Daudrich if the hotelier is appointed leader.
“It really depends on the address of the policy that my opponent wants to take to the party, and from there, we will make a decision and see how we move forward,” Khan said.
Controversy during the campaign
Despite the long leadership campaign, the two candidates have not invested party members with many policy positions.
Khan has promised to look for more public-private associations within the medical care system and provide municipalities for an unleashed part of taxes to provincial sales taxes.
Daudrich has promised to accelerate the development of Manitoba mines and the construction of a second port in the Bay of Hudson, claiming that European clients would pay the bill for the proposed megaproject.
Both candidates have also courted the controversy during the campaign. Daudrich described unidentified members of PC Caucus as lazy, said that Manitoba schools are promoting incest and bestiality and joked in a campaign event on the use of polar bears to reduce the ranks of homeless people in Winnipeg.
Meanwhile, Khan refused to support a apology from Ewasko on behalf of the party for the refusal of the Stefanson government to search the bump of the meadow of the remains of missing indigenous women.
Although Khan said that the former PC government showed a lack of empathy and compassion in the way he communicated that decision, he refused to call it an error, saying that it was based on the information that the old government possessed at that time.
PC is expected to announce the winner of the contest at 5 pm
Approximately 11,200 party members were eligible to vote and most of them did it: the party received somewhere near 7,000 completed tickets, said Brad Zander, president of the Party Leadership Selection Committee.
In the 2021 leadership career, 16,807 party members completed the ballots.
“It is more common for ruling parties to draw largest membership numbers,” said Adams, a professor of political studies. “The holidays that have been defeated and are abroad have more problems to obtain support.”
