When the Progressive Conservatives made the decision to weaponize anti-reconciliation sentiment, did they realize the Winnipeg Blue Bombers would be celebrating National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Friday, less than a week before Manitobans go to the polls?
It is hard to believe the Tories missed this unfortunate coincidence. As part of nationwide celebrations this weekend to mark Orange Shirt Day (Sept. 30), the Blue Bombers and Toronto Argonauts wore special orange warm-up jerseys that will be auctioned off to support the Winnipeg Aboriginal Sport Achievement Centre.
The Bombers — the first CFL team to organize reconciliation events that have now spread across the league — also wore an Indigenous-themed star blanket logo on their helmets. The Winnipeg Jets honour WASAC each year at an NHL game featuring a special Indigenized team logo throughout Canada Life Centre and on team merchandise.
FRED GREENSLADE / THE CANADIAN PRESS
As an election in which the Progressive Conservatives pinned their hopes on alienating Manitoba’s Indigenous population nears, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers focused on Orange Shirt Day.
Blue Bombers players were led onto the field by powwow and hoop dancers and drummers. Cree musician Desiree Dorion performed a pre-game tailgate concert and Rhonda Head, award-winning mezzo-soprano from Opaskwayak Cree Nation, sang the national anthem in Cree.
While all of that was taking place at filled-to-capacity IG Field, digital billboards up and down Pembina Highway — which runs past the stadium — blasted campaign ads telling voters the PC party will “Stand firm” against any attempt to search the Prairie Green Landfill north of the city for the remains of Indigenous women police believe were victims of an alleged serial killer.
The victims’ families, Indigenous leaders and political opponents have labelled the PC party as racist for celebrating its decision not to search the landfill. How did the Tories find themselves facing allegations like that, in the heat of a re-election campaign?
PC Leader Heather Stefanson, who, in July, announced her refusal to contribute any funds to search the landfill, initially said it was a “hard decision.” However, as the election campaign came into focus, the premier’s hard decision was transformed into a calculated effort to rebrand the party with a new and edgy narrative.
A narrative that is, quite frankly, a symphony of misinformation.
The PCs “Stand firm” ads label this the “$184-million” dig. In fact, the feasibility report indicated that total costs would fall somewhere between $84 million and $184 million.
Stefanson has also continued to say the risks to those people performing the search — from toxic materials in the landfill — are too great to proceed, even though both the company that owns the landfill and experts in forensic excavation have said it can be done safely with the proper precautions.
Even the decision to call the issue at hand a “dig” instead of a search for human remains comes across as an incredibly — and deliberately — insensitive way to divert attention away from the solemn reason for an excavation.
Even though opinion polls show the NDP way out in front of the Tories, no one is quite sure how the “Stand firm” ads will land. When combined with the equally cynical and risky “parental rights” plank in the Tory campaign — a call-out to anti-LGBTTQ+ voters — there is a lot of volatility at play.
Make no mistake, these are not campaign themes the Tories stumbled on by accident. This is part of a deliberate plan to reconstitute the core of Tory support to somehow snatch victory from the jaws of apparent defeat.
Poll results to date confirm the PCs have lost significant support among centre-of-the-political-spectrum voters in Manitoba, people who can easily migrate between Tories and the NDP at the ballot box. The PCs have alienated public servants of all stripes and have triggered crises of confidence among moderate conservatives who identify with the “progressive” part of the traditional PC brand.
What segment of the electorate is left to respond to “stand firm” and “parental rights”?
Hardcore right-wingers who possibly don’t vote at all, social conservatives in immigrant communities who might traditionally lean Liberal or NDP, and anyone else the Tories can scare into swallowing these intellectually tenuous narratives.
The only question now is whether there is any chance this strategy will be successful.
In general, when a party goes mega-negative, it is a sign it is losing.
Although there are instances of parties leaning heavily on attack ads and winning elections, there are very few, if any, examples of parties that were way out in front of their rivals and made the decision to go negative.
The reason why is pretty simple: for every new vote you might attract or core vote you might retain, you run the risk of alienating other swing or moderate core voters. Parties that are leading elections rarely want or need to take that kind of risk.
Friday night at IG Field, football fans got their chance to celebrate the spirit of reconciliation and Indigenous culture in a way that allowed Manitobans to show the rest of Canada the best of who we are.
Not far away from those celebrations, there were clearly visible signs confirming some Manitobans have fallen prey to their baser inclinations.
For the future of the province, we should all hope the advocates of reconciliation prevailed when the clock runs out on this election.
Dan Lett
Columnist
Born and raised in and around Toronto, Dan Lett came to Winnipeg in 1986, less than a year out of journalism school with a lifelong dream to be a newspaper reporter.
