Provincial Liberals hunt for relevance — and a leader
In recent months, there has been much discussion regarding the current predicament and near-future prospects of Manitoba's Progressive Conservative Party.
Hard questions have been asked. Hands have been wrung. Eyes have rolled. Heads have been scratched.
Having been emphatically defeated and deservedly humbled after seven years of austere policy-making under the leadership of Brian Pallister and, briefly, Heather Stefanson, the PCs have elected a new leader, offered apologies of a sort for the most noxious positions adopted during the last provincial election campaign, and pledged to bring a more palatable brand of conservatism to Manitoba politics.
MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS
Acting Manitoba Liberal Leader Cindy Lamoureux.
As the ruling NDP continues to ride high in public-opinion polls, it's the PCs' turn to reflect and rebuild. In time, inevitably, they will rise again; such is the cyclical nature of the process in a province in which politics is essentially a two-party affair.
But there is another entity seeking to undergo a period of reflection and, hopefully, eventual rebirth. And for the Liberal Party of Manitoba, the issues at hand are of a more urgently existential nature.
Rather than 'What's next?' the future-focused question for Manitoba Liberals is more along the lines of 'Is there one?'
As the party readies for the search for its next leader, it must grapple with the fact its lone elected member — Tyndall Park MLA Cindy Lamoureux — does not want the job.
'After much consideration,' she said in a statement released last week, 'I have made the decision to not pursue the leadership. I will continue to focus my attention on serving the constituents of Tyndall Park and will remain on as the interim leader until a new leader has been elected by the party membership.'
That leaves the Liberals in the unenviable position of heading toward the next provincial election — which is expected in October 2027 — with a leader who does not hold a seat in the house and, based on recent electoral history, has at best a middling chance of winning one.
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'We've had some rough times (but) we still are a viable party,' party president Terry Hayward said last week. 'A bit reduced, I would admit that.'
In fact, it has been decades since the Liberals' role in Manitoba politics has been anything but reduced. The modern-history high point came in 1988 when, under the leadership of Sharon Carstairs (and thanks largely to the unpopularity of then-premier Howard Pawley's NDP), the Liberals secured 20 seats and served as official Opposition to Gary Filmon's minority PC government.
The brush with relevance was short-lived, however; the next two votes (1990 and 1995) resulted in Tory majorities, and as then-NDP leader Gary Doer strategically pushed his party from the political left to the centre, the Liberal seat count dwindled from 20 to seven to three and, by 1999, to a single seat. Since the turn of the century, Manitoba Liberals have not held more than three seats in the legislature.
The nature of modern Manitoba politics is that whichever party, PC or NDP, wins power does so by presenting a moderate version of its ideology to voters in the city of Winnipeg, where elections here are won or lost. And with centre-left and centre-right positions effectively staked out, there's simply no ideological real estate remaining for what's supposed to be this province's middle-ground alternative.
That's the existential challenge facing whomever seeks and wins the leadership of the Liberal Party. And despite Hayward's assurance that 'there is a needed third voice here in Manitoba,' it's currently difficult to discern which route a return to relevance might follow, and what that voice would sound like.
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'But, I mean, we've certainly been living through really strange and uncertain times in the last six months, and people's attitudes have shifted a lot. 'The existential moment seems to have passed in people's minds, the hardcore elbows-up sentiments, (there's) not the fervour of it,' he adds. 'And as people celebrate Canada Day, and they think about what Canada is all about, and where they want to see it go — something's changed.' ● ● ● It's easier to see things taking root once you get into the countryside. Kelly Saunders, professor and chair of Brandon University's political science department, isn't surprised by Probe's findings that one in four Manitobans back western separatism, a feeling strongest in rural areas. 'Every time I go to national conferences, I go there as some little shlump from Brandon,' she says with a laugh. 'The disdain! No wonder we get frustrated.' A certain populist branch of western sovereigntism — quick to dismiss scientific authority as political elitism and prone to flare-ups about vaccines and climate science — troubles Saunders. But the wild rose grows from more fertile soil than that. 'Western alienation is in our DNA as a country,' she says. 'We're not looking at the issue seriously enough when we just write off the very real grievances and fears and frustrations a lot of people in Western Canada have legitimately.' Grievances rooted deeper than just post-election bitterness — a federal election which may nonetheless prove a watershed moment for the West's unrest. 'A lot of this probably extends back a long way, right to 1870, the Riel rebellion — how Manitoba was integrated into this new Dominion of Canada, without really much representation from the people living in Manitoba,' says Fletcher Baragar, an associate professor of economics at the University of Manitoba. 'And (then) you had this system designed to use the (West's) resources to build up the wealth and continuity of the country as a whole — designed not by people in the West, but in the East.' Baragar is referring to prime minister John A. Macdonald's National Policy of 1879. After the Canadian Pacific Railway's westward completion in the 1880s, Ottawa promoted settlement and farming in the Prairies to supply wheat eastward. But the National Policy used freight rates and tariffs to push Manitoba farmers to buy costly farming equipment, machinery and goods from Ontario and Quebec manufacturers. Although federal programs aimed to ease these burdens, some saw the National Policy as reducing the Prairies to a resource hinterland for Upper Canada's taking. 'There's those roots, and to some extent they're still there,' Baragar says. ● ● ● Just as resentment sowed by Alexander Hamilton's industrial policies in the United States later fuelled the 19th-century Populist Party, Canada's National Policy sparked grievances that gave momentum to early Prairie populist movements. Movements like the right-wing Social Credit Party and left-wing Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. However, we're a long way off from the romanticized farmers and co-ops of the country's early years. Manitoba and Saskatchewan's small family farms have largely given way to big corporate entities for whom the scrappy populist image feels like dress-up. But some Manitoba farmers bitterly remember what they see as more recent federal overreach, such as Western Economic Diversification (now PrairiesCan in the Prairie provinces), the federal funding program seen as favouring urban tech over traditional agriculture, and Justin Trudeau's carbon tax, which pounded energy-heavy sectors like farming and oil. Smaller annoyances like Statistics Canada's farmer surveys, many of which are mandatory, and tax-related filings due every month or two don't smooth ruffled feathers. Jeff McIntosh / The Canadian Press A pumpjack draws out oil and gas from a well head near Calgary, Alta., Tuesday, May 6, 2025. Canada has the third largest oil reserves in the world and is the world's fourth largest oil producer. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ 'It's not freight rates. 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For months, the polls showed Pierre Poilievre, a Calgary boy with a pedigree in the Conservative Party's western/Canadian Alliance wing, winning by a landslide — against a Trudeau, which would be the cherry on top. That is, until Justin Trudeau stepped aside as Liberal Party leader and an Oxford-trained central banker swooped in amid a simmering trade war, suddenly looking like the wisest owl in the room. The recently weak and 'woke' Liberal Party was restored to its former Laurentian glory, as Canada's so-called 'natural ruling party.' Despite provincial separatism's constitutionally weak potential, the temptation for some conservatives to flip the checkerboard might feel overwhelming. 'Liberals have dominated federal politics in this country, and the Liberals' base has always been in Central Canada and the Maritimes. The distribution of seats in the House of Commons has always favoured the two biggest provinces, Ontario and Quebec,' Saunders reminds us. 'Western Canada has long felt that they were never fully equal partners in Confederation.' ● ● ● History is being sharpened into a weapon with an ideological whetstone. Albertans, in particular, wield a familiar list of historical grievances — Pierre Trudeau's 1980 National Energy Program, repeated pipeline cancellations, their opposition to the 1982 Constitution Act, their province's greater tax contributions to federal coffers than it gets back in transfers. They have long been the leaders in Western Canada's sovereigntist movement — with outright separatists like Western Canada Concept and the Maverick Party, and more nuanced, effective leaders of provincial autonomy like the Reform and United Conservative parties. According to a May Angus Reid poll, 36 per cent of Albertans support their province leaving Confederation — though that number shrinks to 19 per cent when it comes to those who say they would 'definitely' vote to leave if a referendum were held. The discrepancy is notable. It could be that for all of Alberta's resentment against Quebec receiving the country's highest equalization payments, many have learned a thing or two from the francophone province: threatening divorce scares Ottawa into paying attention. It's a game often well played by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, whose Alberta Sovereignty Act technically allows the province to ignore federal rules it doesn't like while still living under the same roof. The threat of defiance, from the richest province per capita, is also a bargaining chip. Second to Alberta in the sovereigntist movement is another rich province, Saskatchewan. There, Saskatchewan Party Leader and Premier Scott Moe promotes the idea of 'a nation within a nation,' without endorsing separatism. If Alberta was to have its rule-breaking rule book, so would Saskatchewan — passing the less far-reaching Saskatchewan First Act. Thirty-four per cent of Saskatchewan voters support provincial separation according to the same Angus Reid poll, with that number dropping to 15 per cent when it comes to 'definitely' voting to leave in a referendum. Both Smith and Moe have said they wouldn't stand in the way of citizen-led referendums on separation in their provinces. ● ● ● In Manitoba, no premiers are talking like sovereigntists or hardline regionalists. Even Brian Pallister — who long represented Portage-Lisgar, one of Canada's most conservative ridings, in the House of Commons before he became premier — was strongly dismissive of Wexit, saying, 'You don't build a good relationship by threatening to leave every week.' But today, articulate regionalist voices are stirring on the political sidelines — people like Ken Drysdale, founder of Manitoba Stronger Together, and David Leis, vice-president of development and engagement at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. 'If you look at what's happened in Winnipeg over the last 60 years, it's one thing being taken away after another. And we're almost just a service centre now. This isn't partisan,' says Drysdale, who's also a professional engineer. 'I think a co-operative alliance between Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba within the Confederation of Canada, would be a plus for the whole country,' he continues. 'If (we) could get together tomorrow and remove all trade barriers between them — holy smokes, that'll make a big difference.' Drysdale — who chaired the National Citizens Inquiry, known for its scathing report on perceived government overreach during the pandemic — sees lifting interprovincial tariffs between Prairie provinces as a first step to building a trade corridor. One he sees stretching from at least Alberta to the ghost town of Port Nelson on Hudson Bay, creating a gateway to untapped and under-accessed foreign markets. His vision isn't secessionism, but more along the lines of a bloc of self-reliant Prairie provinces bound by shared interests — with Manitoba's access to the open sea being one of its alluring charms. ● ● ● Similar outlines are taking shape in Leis's mind. 'The beauty is this could involve, really everybody, including First Nations, playing an important role, making the vision — the original vision of Canada — become realized,' Leis says. 'In many ways, the theme here is, how are we as a country going to finally grow up and realize the founding vision?' Both men envision Manitoba as more than a glorified transit point in a greater alliance with its richer western neighbours. They think Manitoba is lagging in tapping its resource potential and bringing its natural bounties to wider markets. 'Manitoba has extraordinary opportunity. Opportunities in terms of energy, but also in terms of mining, agriculture and manufacturing,' says Leis. Unsurprisingly — especially given Frontier's free-market philosophy and climate-change denialism — Leis sees federal regulations and tax policies as choking off these opportunities. But Leis also opposes Canada's system of equalization payments — whereby so-called 'have-not' provinces like Manitoba are propped up by federal transfer payments — for creating a culture of subservience that saps Manitoba's gumption and initiative. 'There's a long history of proud entrepreneurialism and a pioneering spirit (in Manitoba), and that has been integral to the founding and establishment of Western Canada as we know it,' he says. 'Let's leave the equalization payments behind and pursue a vision of prosperity second to none.' ● ● ● As western alienation rises, it's too easy to caricature the opposing fronts. On one side, a clique of snobby liberal academics, career bureaucrats and old Laurentian political families stuffing their uncalloused hands into the Prairies' pockets, while policing their manners and environmental codes. A clique full of hot air about diversity, inclusion and pluralism — bilking Prairie taxpayers to bankroll woke cultural organizations and public media regurgitating this ideology — while sidelining half the country's opinions and voices. On the other, a gang of new-money, science-hating rednecks who forget about the feds' largesse and decisive role in Alberta's early oil and gas development. A gang stoking culture wars that have less to do with free speech than shielding racists and chauvinists and with the intent to hoard profits while the rest of the country smoulders from economic decline and a man-made climate disaster it refuses to recognize. Even if certain bad actors and behaviour encourage these stereotypes, western alienation is about more than this. It can be about more than just oil, money and the environment. At its loftiest, it's about two visions of Canada. As Leis's rhetoric reflects, western realigners often position themselves as patriotic confederalists. Many espouse loyalty to what they see as Canada's foundational vision as a union of distinct provinces with strong control over their own affairs, wed by an enlightened interest in trade and prosperity. Liam Richards / The Canadian Press A piece of machinery sits underground at the Mosaic potash mine in Esterhazy, Sask. on Wednesday, May 3, 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Some may don the confederalist cloak strategically, to lend an august image to their cause. But the struggle against the federalist tradition is real. A vision entrenched by Pierre Trudeau's Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982), National Energy Program (1980), Official Languages Act (1969) and centralization of judiciary power with the Supreme Court. Monolithic acts, as they see them, whose 'gains' for constitutional liberties and Canadian pluralism were above all a win for federal power and Central Canada at the expense of others. That Canada's federalist system makes it very hard for provinces to either secede or overturn the equalization system — because any constitutional change requires consent from at least seven provinces representing 50 per cent of the population — seems like a case in point. Throw in the fact the Prairie provinces have fewer people, and therefore less clout in the House of Commons, and that frustration seems bound to continue seeking political outlet, not always within traditional parliamentary channels. ● ● ● In Manitoba, for most sympathizers, separatism is less a fully formed thought than a gut instinct. And regional dynamics likely still stand in the way of that instinct kick-starting an effective movement. For all its imagery of plucky pioneers standing up to powerful mandarins, western-sovereignty messaging has rather little to say about the Prairies' internal power differences: between the captains of industry and manual labourers, between the have-not and have-lots provinces. Its solutions can feel quaintly 19th century — bootstraps, laissez-faire, growthmania, rugged individualism — in a country gripped by 21st-century problems. Problems like the climate crisis and economic inequalities of a new Guilded Age. Nostalgia for the country's founding vision is also probably not a selling point for Indigenous peoples — the very nations excluded from the original Confederation table and whose legal rights still flow from treaties with the federal government. Treaties often signed before the Prairie provinces joined Confederation. 'We have a very large, important and an increasingly confident First Nations community, and of course, the homeland of the Métis,' says Baragar. '(However) fraught, those ties with the federal government are very, very important.' Manitoba is also, in many ways, a conflicted child of Western and Central Canada: The well-to-do cottage at Lake of the Woods in Ontario, while the province on the whole is poorer than its neighbours on either side. Despite our wealthy enclaves, we're considered a 'have-not' province — one that receives substantial equalization payments and that consistently votes NDP, unlike Saskatchewan or Alberta. ● ● ● Even at the political level, subtle cross-partisan signs of western alignment are showing. NDP Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew has promoted the province's role in a new Prairie trade-and-energy corridor. Then, last month, he joined Alberta's Danielle Smith and Saskatchewan's Scott Moe at the Western Premiers' Conference in Yellowknife. Together, they issued a joint statement calling for new economic corridors — encompassing highways, rail, pipelines, energy transmission and critical-mineral infrastructure. They also called for ports on the West Coast and the coast of Hudson Bay to link Western Canada directly to overseas markets on the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, skipping Central Canada. All with federal support, incidentally. The continued push for a Prairie trade-and-energy corridor is likely to trigger criticism from Manitoba progressives concerned about its environmental impact, as such talk has in the past. This and more reminds us that if western-alignment movements remain mostly about trade and extraction, they're unlikely to inspire a united front among Manitobans — however much the province sorely needs greater economic development. Wednesdays A weekly dispatch from the head of the Free Press newsroom. But this doesn't mean progressive Manitobans are against prosperity, even if they sometimes face tough trade-offs. Progressives likewise draw energy from a long tradition of Prairie populism: a spirit that goes back to the Red River Rebellion and the Winnipeg General Strike, events still colouring Manitoba's identity. While western separatism may not be on the immediate horizon, Manitobans' visions of the Prairies, Canada and their future seem diverse to the point of bursting at the seams. Without more common threads, can the centre hold? As Canada Day and 'elbows-up' energies mellow, maybe we should be talking more about what we share in common not just as Canadians, but as Prairie peoples. Conrad SweatmanReporter Conrad Sweatman is an arts reporter and feature writer. Before joining the Free Press full-time in 2024, he worked in the U.K. and Canadian cultural sectors, freelanced for outlets including The Walrus, VICE and Prairie Fire. Read more about Conrad. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
National Observer
9 hours ago
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The Conservative war on EVs is bound to fail
You might think the 2025 federal election would have taught the Conservative Party of Canada a few lessons. Chief among them would be the need to break with Trumpism and avoid investing their political capital in an issue — like the carbon tax — that can be eliminated with the stroke of the prime minister's pen. Instead, Pierre Poilievre's party seems destined — and determined — to learn these lessons again. Its renewed attack on the federal government's electric vehicle mandate is a case in point here. In an email sent to supporters last month, CPC co-deputy leader Melissa Lantsman said that 'the radical Liberals are planning to make your gas-powered vehicles ILLEGAL. They will FORCE you to buy an expensive electric vehicle.' This is obvious nonsense, since existing gas-powered vehicles sold up to 2035 would be allowed to operate for as long as a mechanic could keep them on the road. And while it's true that the up-front cost of electric vehicles is still higher than gasoline-fueled ones, that won't be the case for long. The ongoing developments in battery technology mean that so-called 'up-front price parity' — that is, an equivalent cost, without subsidies, for electric and gasoline versions of the same vehicle type — is a question of when, not if. That may arrive far sooner than Canada's Conservatives want to believe. Chinese automaker BYD and its ultra-low-cost EVs absolutely dominate the ever-expanding Chinese market, and it's rapidly winning hearts and market share in places like Europe and South America. Its new generation of solid-state batteries could lead to both a major increase in range and a major decrease in price. It's not alone in developing these new batteries, either: Nissan Canada has said that solid-state batteries can be produced 'at a lower cost than conventional lithium-ion batteries,' while Toyota and Volkswagen are also betting heavily on them. In time, then, and not that much of it, electric vehicles could enjoy an up-front cost advantage over gasoline-powered vehicles. That's without factoring in the far lower costs of operating an EV, which can amount to thousands of dollars per vehicle per year, according to the Canadian Automobile Association. If Canada follows through with its electric vehicle mandate, it's expected to save Canadians approximately $36.7 billion in costs by 2050. So why are Canada's Conservatives picking this particular hill to fight on? In part, it's because it allows them to play their greatest hits and try to recapture some of the political energy they generated with their campaign against the consumer carbon tax. Andrew Scheer, for example, got to break out his ample supply of political tinfoil in claiming that the EV mandate — one designed and implemented by the previous prime minister — is really a sop to Brookfield, the company Carney chaired before entering politics. 'Brookfield is heavily invested in the EV supply chain. If this prime minister refuses to reveal his financial interests or self-admitted conflicts — isn't it true that this isn't about the environment, this is about the bottom line for Brookfield?' More importantly, they're also doing this because Canada's Conservative movement remains incapable of tacking against the political winds of Trumpism. As Trump has turned ever-more aggressively against electric vehicles, and particularly the ones sold by his former best friend Elon Musk, so too have leading Canadian Conservatives like party leader Pierre Poilievre and Melissa Lantsman. It seems almost inevitable now that electric vehicles will become part of the ongoing culture war there, and that any rational attempt to help the automotive industry adapt to the changing global landscape will be subsumed into Trump's fight with Musk. It seems almost inevitable now that electric vehicles will become part of the Conservative Party of Canada's ongoing culture war, writes Max Fawcett. It's reasonable, and maybe even rational, to re-assess some of the near-term targets in Canada's EV regulation, given the threats posed by Trump to the very existence of Canada's auto sector. But the longer-term objectives here should remain in place, and the Carney government should be willing to fight hard for them. The transition away from fossil fuels and gasoline-powered vehicles is a question of when, not if. As the New York Times reported recently, 'auto executives are nearly unanimous that, even in the United States, electric and hybrid vehicles will eventually displace gasoline-powered vehicles.' Just ask Musk, who shared a post about Norway's June car sales figures — 97 per cent of which involved EVs — and added his own commentary. 'Combustion engine cars will be like the steam engine — quaint, but primitive.' On this, at least, he's correct. Not even Donald Trump can stop the global transition to electrification, and Canada needs to remain focused on the longer-term trajectory here, both for its domestic auto sector and the consumers who buy their products. The Conservative attack here is the very definition of a rearguard battle, one that confirms its enduring loyalty to the oil and gas industry and its economic interests. It's also another reminder that the leadership team that blundered away a 20-point lead heading into the last election might not be fit to win the next one.
