Manitoba’s lieutenant-governor is set to swear in the province’s first female premier Nov. 2 but the rival she beat out to win the leadership of the Progressive Conservative party asked for the ceremony to be held off pending a legal challenge.
Heather Stefanson, MLA for Tuxedo since 2000 and a five-year veteran of Brian Pallister’s cabinet, who has been health, families and justice minister, as well as deputy premier, defeated former federal cabinet minister Shelly Glover in an evenly split leadership vote Oct. 30, receiving 8,405 votes to 8,042 for the runner-up.
Glover’s campaign team says the party’s failure to deliver mail-in ballots to about 1,200 party members in time tainted the legitimacy of the process but a party official said efforts were made to allow party members to vote and no one was deliberately denied a ballot.
Stefanson’s opponent isn’t the only one raining on the premier-designate’s parade.
NDP leader Wab Kinew said Stefanson was one of former premier Pallister’s biggest cheerleaders, the architect of unpopular policies such as reducing the number of intensive care beds and closing emergency rooms and a supporter of the ill-fated education reform legislation known as Bill 64 that was abandoned when Pallister resigned.
“There’s nothing new about Premier Heather Stefanson,” Kinew said, characterizing her as a “bad repeat” of Pallister.
Liberal leader Dougald Lamont expressed similar doubts about what sort of change Stefanson represents.
“While having a woman premier is historic for Manitoba, we have seen no indication of any meaningful change in direction from a party that voted in total lockstep with the former premier.”
Indigenous leaders expressed some optimism about the PCs new leader.
“First Nations … were encouraged by the words of the premier-designate in her victory speech where she immediately acknowledged First Nations leadership, reconciliation and rebuilding the broken relationship with First Nations,” said Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Arlen Dumas.
Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief Garrison Settee said the past year saw anti-Indigenous racism from the premier’s office but that the situation had improved somewhat during the brief tenure of interim premier Kelvin Goertzen, who announced Nov. 1 that he had submitted his resignation to the lieutenant-governor effective the following day.
“I’m hopeful his actions will inspire the incoming premier to continue to listen and to engage with First Nations leaders on a regular basis,” Settee said. “We have much work to do when it comes to building a better Manitoba.”
Goertzen said being premier, even if only for a couple fo months, was an honour.
“It has been my hope to renew and rebuild relationships that have undoubtedly been strained through the pandemic and to bring those conversations forward as momentum for the next premier,” Goertzen said in an emailed statement Monday.
- with files from the Canadian Press and Winnipeg Sun
