A tale of two personable premiers

Opinion

“Stranded due to a blown tire with her four-year-old daughter and mother, an elder, help soon arrived in the form of Premier Wab Kinew and his wife, Lisa Monkman.” — Free Press, April 22, 2024

No premier in this country has a higher favourability rating than Wab Kinew. Sixty-three per cent of Manitobans view him favourably. He has “just like us” factor. The premier says and does things that most of us identify with. It makes him just like us.

Changing a blown tire for a mother on a gravel road near Highway 6 is one of those situations that make Mr. Kinew look like a down-to-earth, compassionate Manitoba neighbour.

He doesn’t come across as a cold, calculating political leader, always looking for an opportunity to fire up his base of support by trashing his political opponents. We have a lot of that going on around the world.

No longer do we have the luxury of saying Canada is a permanent spectator to divisive, fear-inducing politics in the United States. That smugness toward our American neighbour is as eviscerated as Tasha Spillett’s tire near Highway 6 between St. Laurent and Woodlands. Ms Spillett was driving back from a celebration of life and fortunately for her the premier, who happened to attend the same event, was driving back on the same gravel road when he stopped his vehicle and changed Ms Spillett’s tire.

Three days after the premier helped a woman with a blown tire, the former premier, a woman whose recent election campaign went flat, stood up in the legislature and announced that she was resigning her seat, ending a career that began nearly a quarter of a century earlier.

Heather Stefanson called her 23 years of elected public service the “honour of a lifetime.” Carol Sanders of the Free Press reported on the former premier’s announcement: “Stefanson said she was proud of her government’s accomplishments, including record economic growth, job creation, tax ‘relief’ and running one of the country’s most successful vaccine programs. She said her government balanced the budget while making historic investments in health care, education and social services.”

As I read Sanders’ story, I couldn’t help but wonder how much differently the “honour of a lifetime” would have felt for Stefanson and her supporters, had her campaign emphasized the same strengths as her final statement in the Manitoba legislature.

Several people in Conservative and NDP circles told me they were stunned by the negative campaign run by the former premier. They didn’t see her as a naturally negative person and there were many positive achievements, mainly in the economic area that the Progressive Conservative campaign could have bragged about.

As someone who has voted PC for most of my life, and someone who has known Heather Stefanson for more than a quarter of a century, I agreed with that consensus. The Heather Stefanson I got to know in the ‘90s was anything but negative. Her smile would light up a room like a Winnipeg Jets whiteout.

From the first time I met her at a party with friends, I felt that I was looking at a future premier, possibly Manitoba’s first woman premier. If someone had told me back then that she would someday preside over a campaign of fear and division, I would have replaced the beer they were drinking with ginger ale.

If life was predictable, newspaper columns would not exist. Predictability would have meant Ms. Spillett’s tire surviving the road back to Winnipeg. It would have meant a roadside service changing her tire, not the premier of Manitoba.

Predictability would have meant a genuinely warm and compassionate woman named Heather Stefanson scoring a 63 per cent favourability number with Manitoba voters, not a much lower number.

Predictability would have meant a government running on the most positive aspects of their record, not one dedicated to the proposition that their opponent was a scary man.

Most voters didn’t buy it. Manitobans are good people. They want an energetic contest. But they don’t want to see their neighbors demonized.

It wasn’t a scary man who helped his fellow Manitoban who was stuck and stranded on a gravel road. Wab Kinew is a good man who made mistakes in the past and corrected them.

Bravo! Manitobans love comebacks.

Heather Stefanson is a good woman who allowed strategists to design a campaign that hit the gravel.

Thank you Heather Stefanson for your 23 years of service our province. This Manitoban is among many, rooting for your comeback in your post-political career.

Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster. charles@charlesadler.com