Provincial Liberals hunt for relevance — and a leader
Opinion
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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