Kirkfield Park a squandered opportunity

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This article was published 13/12/2022 (1339 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IF what we have just witnessed is a preview of the provincial general election that is only months away, Manitobans could soon be forced to endure a campaign that is both meaner and dumber than we have seen in many years.

Sometime Tuesday night, we will learn the result of the Kirkfield Park byelection. The riding has been vacant since former Progressive Conservative MLA Scott Fielding resigned last spring.

Former Winnipeg city councillor and mayoral candidate Kevin Klein is fighting to win the seat for the Tories. He is opposed by NDP candidate Logan Oxenham (a correctional officer), Liberal candidate Rhonda Nichol (a research nurse with 30 years’ experience) and Green Party candidate Dennis Bayomi (a data management analyst).

Although the byelection’s outcome will not threaten the Stefanson government’s majority in the legislative assembly, and the winner will only serve a few months as MLA before the provincewide election, the Kirkfield Park contest has featured more nastiness than many anticipated.

For the first two weeks of the campaign, Klein was the target of caustic attacks during daily question period sessions, with opposition MLAs accusing him of lying about his connections with a former employer, disgraced businessman Peter Nygard.

Klein says he worked for Nygard for four months in 2012, and for two weeks in 2014. The Tory candidate has not been charged with any offence, and there are no reports of any improper-conduct allegations ever being made against him by any of Nygard’s alleged victims.

Despite this, the NDP and Liberals sought to create the perception Klein is somehow connected to Nygard’s alleged misconduct. Unsurprisingly, they only had the courage to make those allegations in the legislature, where they are protected by immunity from defamation lawsuits.

When they realized their “guilt by association” strategy was actually creating sympathy for Klein, however, the focus of the campaign suddenly shifted to the Stefanson government’s handling of the province’s health-care system. This is where the campaign shifted from innuendo to ineptitude.

Oxenham claimed on Twitter that “only the NDP can form government to stop PC cuts and fix health care.” In a campaign ad, he says that “We need to fix health care. But only the NDP can get it done.”

It takes a lot of chutzpah for an NDP candidate to claim the party that broke our health-care system is the only party that can fix it. Does the NDP campaign team seriously believe Manitobans have forgotten the harm 16 years of NDP mismanagement did to the quality of care in this province?

Perhaps the phrases “highway medicine” and “longest wait times in Canada” ring a bell.

It is surprising that Klein has not hammered that point every day of the campaign. Instead of arguing it’s unfair to blame the Tory government for failing to quickly fix the massive health-care mess they inherited from the NDP (during a pandemic, no less), he responded with promises for an advanced-care paramedic program that isn’t currently government policy.

Instead of talking about the millions of dollars invested by the current government on improvements to the Grace Hospital — with millions in additional upgrades coming — he says he will stand up to his own government. On Facebook, he posted, “I will fight for you if it is with (NDP Leader) Wab Kinew or even Heather Stefanson.”

Even more surprisingly, Liberal candidate Nichol has not loudly argued that our health-care system has been bungled by both NDP and Tory governments, and that her three decades as a nurse is the kind of knowledge needed to fix the problem.

She and her Liberal colleagues should be insisting they are the viable third option Manitobans want, and that the Kirkfield Park byelection represents a zero-risk opportunity for voters to see whether a Liberal MLA, as part of a caucus with official party status, would do a better job.

It’s unfair to characterize the Kirkfield Park byelection campaign as “political malpractice,” but it’s close. This was an ideal opportunity for the Tories, NDP and Liberals to test-drive campaign strategy and messaging in advance of next year’s general election.

That opportunity was squandered by all three parties. Kirkfield Park voters deserved better and, 10 months from now, Manitobans deserve better.

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