Before the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives lost the election, they lost the plot. And their soul.
When you are campaigning on not searching a landfill site where police believe the remains of murdered women were buried – and what’s more, when you turn that message into an actual billboard – what does that say about your party? How debased can you be, to seek votes on the backs of dead Indigenous women?
I imagine I’m not the only one who, when first seeing the image of that sign, thought it was a photoshopped hoax. But no, it was real: “Stand firm against the unsafe $184-million landfill dig,” it screamed in all-caps, urging Manitobans to vote Progressive Conservative.
Progressive? Hardly. This message was grotesque.
The remains of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran are believed to be buried among tonnes of waste in the Prairie Green Landfill north of Winnipeg. Police made the shocking disclosure last year when they said the women were among the four Indigenous victims of an alleged serial killer, who was also charged in the deaths of Rebecca Contois and an unidentified woman who has become known as Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, or Buffalo Woman.
Their families, Indigenous groups and many others have been calling for the search since those first-degree-murder charges were laid. “My family and all the other families deserve closure,” Ms. Harris’s daughter, Cambria, told The Globe and Mail last December.
The governing Manitoba PCs said the search would be dangerous, and the cost prohibitive. But they didn’t leave it at that. They campaigned on that decision with those billboards, as well as newspaper ads bearing the same message: Re-elect us, and we won’t search for the remains of these murdered women.
Politics gets dirty, frequently. But dirty like this? By a party led by a woman – who, as premier, was leading the province? And also, running against a party led by an Indigenous man?
“I don’t get into the weeds in terms of deciding what goes in our advertising,” Heather Stefanson said on Monday, the day before the election. “We have a very competent and capable campaign team.”
But these were not weeds. This was an old-growth forest, shouting shame from the treetops.
You know things must be bad when you run a different ad, in the campaign’s final weekend, with a message that basically amounted to assuring people they didn’t have to feel embarrassed for voting for the PCs. “Stand firm and vote how you feel, not how others say you should,” it said. “Vote like no one is watching.” The digital ads were quickly pulled.
This was not simply a campaign strategy fail. This was an utter failure of conscience.
There were still PC candidates with integrity. Long-time Manitoba PC Rochelle Squires called the ads “deeply regrettable.” She said that after seeing them, she took a step back from the party’s campaign and focused on her own riding (which she lost).
Ms. Myran was 26. Ms. Harris was 39. Both were from Long Plain First Nation. Their families began searching for them after they went missing in the spring of 2022. In December, police said they believed the women had been killed in the spring.
Ms. Harris was a mother of five. “She was someone who was very, very loved,” her daughter told The Globe.
Ms. Myran was remembered by her grandmother as a happy, smiley and trusting person, the CBC reported.
They were people. And the Manitoba PCs were using them – in the most degrading of ways – to try to win an election.
Thank goodness the campaign was not only offensive; it was ineffective. Ms. Stefanson stepped down as PC leader on election night, as the NDP won a majority government.
Wab Kinew will make history as Canada’s first provincial First Nations premier. Through the campaign, Mr. Kinew promised to search the landfill site for the remains of these women, and the morning after his election victory, he made it clear the search will be a priority: “This will be one of those items that we want to tackle in the very early days of our administration,” he told reporters.
Mr. Kinew, 41, was born in Kenora, Ont., to an Anishinaabe father and non-Indigenous mother. He has been open about his troubled past and how he turned his life around.
“It’s my intention to move the ball forward so that the future generation can do even more powerful things than we can imagine today,” Mr. Kinew said on Wednesday.
What a fine role model for youth – and the rest of us. His main opponent should be ashamed.