Manitoba vote a case of ‘throw the bums out’

Sometimes events have broad significance. Sometimes they are just what they are.

This week’s Manitoba election falls mainly (but not completely) into the second category.

On Tuesday, Greg Selinger’s New Democratic Party government was soundly thrashed. The NDP went into the election with a solid majority of seats in the 57-person provincial legislature. It emerged with 14.

The winners were Brian Pallister’s Progressive Conservatives, who captured 40 seats and 53 per cent of the popular vote.

It would be tempting to see the Manitoba results as part of a nationwide repudiation of the NDP. The party has already lost the government in Nova Scotia. It blew its chances to become the government of British Columbia. It is stuck in third place in Ontario. It was trounced by Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in last fall’s federal election.

The only NDP government left in the land is Alberta’s.

It would also be tempting to see Tuesday’s results as the beginning of a conservative resurgence.

Brad Wall’s right-of-centre party won the Saskatchewan election handily this month.

Now Pallister’s PCs have captured the province next door. Does this signify a trend?

In fact, it may only signify the fact that Manitobans wanted to turf a party that, after 16 years in power, had worn out its welcome.

Issues, such as they were, appeared to play a minor role. The Manitoba NDP is hardly communist. Under former premier Gary Doer, the party succeeded by being cautiously centrist — balancing its budgets and working with business.

When Doer left provincial politics in 2009, then prime minister Ste- phen Harper named him ambassador to Washington.

Selinger, who had acted as Doer’s finance minister, was supposed to follow in the mould of Doer. And, as St. Paul’s College political scientist Christopher Adams writes in the Winnipeg Free Press, he tried.

But the economic recession that hit the world in 2009 made it harder to balance budgets.

And then in 2013, Selinger’s NDP government broke an election promise and raised the provincial sales tax by one percentage point. The voters were furious. It did not matter that Selinger wanted to use the extra money to build needed infrastructure. Nor did it matter that other premiers, such as Ontario’s Dalton McGuinty, had managed to break similar promises without suffering any political consequences.

This was Manitoba. The premier had broken his word. The voters were unforgiving.

It didn’t help Selinger that he faced a cabinet revolt in 2014 that forced him to step down as party leader and run again for his old job.

He did win the subsequent leadership vote — but by only 33 votes.

As for the Progressive Conservatives, it seems that the main reason for their success Tuesday was that they happened to be the official opposition.

For voters faced with a choice between the NDP and the other guys, Pallister’s party were the other guys.

Certainly, the PCs were not always dynamic.

Pallister, a former Conservative MP who in 1998 ran unsuccessfully to be leader of the old federal Progressive Conservatives, captured the provincial party’s top job four years ago in large part because no one else wanted the job.

Indeed, since winning a seat in the Manitoba legislature in 2012, Pallister has spent roughly 20 per cent of his time — 240 days in all — at his vacation property in Costa Rica.

Until his travel records became public courtesy of the Costa Rican government, he was also conveniently forgetful when asked by reporters about where he went when out-of-province.

At any other time, all of this might have caused some consternation. This time, however, Manitobans appear not to have been bothered. They wanted the New Democrats out and they didn’t much care who took their place.

Are there lessons for others in all of this?

I’m not sure there is much to be learned beyond the obvious. If a leader is disowned by almost his entire party, as Selinger was last year, then maybe it’s time to go. Federal NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair, who is staying on in his job for up to two years even though he was repudiated by delegates at the party’s Edmonton convention, might want to mull that one over. Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday.