For Pallister, a year of tough lessons

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/12/2017 (2839 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Looking back over Premier Brian Pallister’s past year in office, one overwhelming question comes to mind: has a leader of this province’s government ever had to learn so many tough lessons in such a short period of time?

These last 12 months have seen the premier take important steps forward in addressing fiscal and economic challenges in Manitoba. Mr. Pallister’s government has delivered the early stages of frameworks for a new carbon tax, and for the legal sale of marijuana. The most recent quarterly financial report shows the province slightly ahead of its own deficit-reduction target.

However, on other files, there have been stumbles that opened his government to considerable criticism.

There have been bold, but poorly executed, plans to reorganize Winnipeg hospitals and rationalize the number of rural EMS stations.

Mr. Pallister has frozen infrastructure spending, and squeezed both health care and public education with funding increases that fall below inflation. A law that would freeze all provincial civil service wages lurks in the tall grass, now the subject of a legal challenge by public-sector unions.

Every point of contact with the federal government seems to be a point of conflict, with Manitoba having refused to participate in national accords on pension reform, health-care funding, climate change and marijuana taxation. The result could be the forfeiture of tens of millions of dollars in additional federal funding.

Mr. Pallister has also lived up to his well-earned reputation for not always choosing his words carefully. He sparked minor controversies with his comments about a “race war” being behind a dispute over night hunting, and the inexplicable need to opine about the shoes and clothing worn by the female chair of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce at the state of the province luncheon.

Along with all that professional conflict and controversy, there have been personal travails. The premier’s Costa Rica vacations came under more intense scrutiny in 2017, when it was revealed he was using his wife Esther’s personal mobile phone to conduct government business.

There was sadness in the Pallister family, as well. In his state of the province speech, Mr. Pallister acknowledged that his mother-in-law had died earlier this fall after a long illness, having spent her final days in the care of family at the premier’s Winnipeg home.

Finally, there was a near-death experience when an under-equipped Mr. Pallister undertook a poorly planned hike in the New Mexico desert, which ended in a mishap that left him with a broken arm and a deeply bruised ego.

If there is optimism for the Tory government, it lies largely in the inescapable fact that Manitoba’s two main opposition parties are led by men with big question marks hanging over their heads.

NDP Leader Wab Kinew still has not shown he will be able to escape the shadow of scandal that was cast when a former partner publicly accused him of domestic assault. Newly elected Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont, meanwhile, has neither the party machinery nor the money to mount a serious challenge to the well-organized, well-funded Progressive Conservatives.

The NDP and Liberal shortcomings appear to be, at this stage anyway, signposts for a fairly easy path to PC re-election in 2020.

However, if Mr. Pallister cannot eliminate the gaffes that characterized the past year, that path to a second term might become narrower and more treacherous until, just like the nightfall-darkened trail on his ill-fated desert trek, it disappears altogether.