Viewed from afar, one of the most interesting things about Wab Kinew’s ascendency to premier of Manitoba has been his conspicuous competence in retail politics. This is a rarer commodity in Canadian politics than most pundits acknowledge, I think. Justin Trudeau is absolutely terrible at it, and getting worse. The very sight of him empurples an incredible percentage of the Canadian public. The very deliberately made-over Pierre Poilievre benefits much from Trudeau’s terribleness. Jagmeet Singh took the best news story he’s had in ages — confronting and humiliating a heckler on Parliament Hill — and ruined it with a stupid social-media post blaming Poilievre for the unfortunate encounter. One of Singh’s recent tweets featured a photo of himself seemingly walking off a pier into the ocean.
Kinew seemed so much more comfortable in his own skin than all that — much less likely to veer off into the ditch — at least until this week, when he raised serious questions about his basic judgment.
Earlier this month he released a frothy, upbeat back-to-school video that (again, watching from afar) landed just on the right side of cheesy and fun. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. This guy’s got game,” veteran conservative strategist Ken Boessenkool remarked on X. Kinew is by far the country’s most popular premier, according to an Angus Reid Institute poll released Thursday: 66 per cent approval, 20 points clear of his nearest counterpart.
Singh’s seemingly hopeless leadership federally, and the general state of the federal NDP, offers the party a chance — as always — to decide whether it actually wants to govern. There’s much circumstantial evidence to suggest it would really rather not. It might never, even if it got its act together. Some are writing off the federal Liberals as Canada’s “natural governing party” — not for the first time — but there’s always going to have to be an alternative to the Conservatives, and the NDP sure don’t look like they’re going to be it any time soon.
To those of us non-NDP voters, who would nevertheless like to see a competent, coherent voice from the left in Ottawa, New Democrats from west of Ontario offer by far the most hope. You needn’t like how they govern, but they do, at least, win elections now and again. Kinew is, therefore, an interesting character.
And then Kinew goes and does something absolutely bananas — something worthy of his compatriots in Ottawa, frankly. On Monday he turfed backbench MLA Mark Wasyliw from caucus on grounds that another lawyer at Wasyliw’s firm, Gindin Wiebe Segal, had defended now-disgraced Winnipeg businessman Peter Nygard in his sexual-assault trial.
“You can be affiliated with the NDP or you can be affiliated with Peter Nygard. But you can’t do both,” Kinew said Tuesday.
He might as well send up a giant balloon reading “unfit to govern” — and also, “oblivious.” Kinew of all people should understand, respect and appreciate the sacred right to legal representation: Rather implausibly, he is Canada’s most popular premier despite considerable interaction with police earlier in life, including an impaired-driving conviction and arrests for alleged domestic assault and attacking a taxi driver. Jason Miller, who was Kinew’s counsel in the taxi-driver affair, is now a judge in Ontario. The press release announcing his appointment noted Miller’s considerable experience with homicide cases.
The consensus among Manitoba’s political class seems to be that there must be more to the story than this. Nygard isn’t really why Wasyliw got the boot. And indeed, the NDP subsequently tried to shift the narrative: It wasn’t about Wasyliw’s colleague, but rather about Wasyliw continuing to represent clients — including a Winnipeg police officer — while sitting as an MLA.
The propriety of that is open to question. But instead they said he had to go because a colleague at his law firm was representing a client, and they actually thought that would go over well. To govern is to make compromises if not sell out completely, perhaps especially when you’re a New Democrat: David Eby, formerly head of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, now finds himself at the forefront of the movement to force opioid addicts into treatment — something he would have deplored in his previous life.
But it can’t be too much to ask that politicians stand up, reliably, for rights as basic as the right to counsel. It’s table stakes to be taken seriously in the national conversation.
National Post
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