How Manitoba PCs are taking pains to prevent repeat of chaotic 2021 leadership contest

The Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba is trying to ensure its next leadership race won't suffer from the problems that forced a Court of King's Bench justice to rule on the legitimacy of its last contest.

A 24-page review into the 2021 PC leadership race makes a series of recommendations aimed at improving the integrity of the selection process employed by one of this province's two major political parties.

This proposed reform is not just of interest to nerds who closely follow provincial politics.

How the PCs choose a leader has implications for all Manitobans, given the strong possibility the next fully fledged Opposition leader in this province could become the next premier of this province.

While it may be a long time before PC members are forced to effectively choose Manitoba's premier the way they did in 2021, when Heather Stefanson succeeded Brian Pallister without a provincial election, the flaws on display during the last selection process required the party to get its self-regulatory act together in a major way.

"These matters might seem like mundane, 'inside baseball' issues, but they have implications for internal democracy within a party," said Paul Thomas, professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Manitoba.

"The chaotic, rushed contest in 2021 led to challenges against the integrity and fairness of the process and may have further undermined public confidence in a process that was in effect choosing a new premier."

For those who don't recall the spectacle, the last PC leadership race took place over two months during the fall of 2021. 

Pallister had just resigned and most existing PC MLAs quickly threw their support around Stefanson. Only Shelly Glover, a former Conservative MP, wound up running against Stefanson in a party leadership race that ensured Manitoba would soon see a woman in the premier's office for the first time.

Unfortunately for the PCs, the party was ill-prepared for a leadership race held over such a short time frame. Too few people were employed at the party's Kennedy Street headquarters to handle the crush of new memberships and renewals, former Conservative MP Lawrence Toet and lawyer Grant Stefanson concluded in a leadership-race review published in April.

That resulted in delays in entering membership information into the party database, which in turn led to some members failing to receive ballots in time to vote for either Stefanson or Glover the day before Halloween in 2021.

That led to Glover's allegations the election was stacked against her. Justice James Edmond ultimately disagreed but concluded she did correctly identify many problems with the process.

Toet and Stefanson ultimately trace those problems back to very narrow time frame for the 2021 race. They recommended longer leadership races in the future, primarily to ensure there is no "domino effect" created by rushing to choose a new party leader.

"The main point is that the time frames must be aligned with logistical and procedural requirements," they wrote.

"If a significant number of new memberships are sold and there are not sufficient resources to handle the volume of memberships, then problems will be created and there will be an increased risk of errors being made with data entry and delays will occur causing time pressure and challenges to the balloting processes."

On Jan. 13, 2024, PC members will vote on new leadership rules that include a minimum contest period of 90 days and a maximum of 150.

This three-to-five-month range provides the PCs with some flexibility to tailor a coming campaign to a specific time frame.

It also offers varying benefits to potential leadership contestants, Thomas said.

"A short contest favours established figures in the party. Longer campaign periods allows greater opportunities to sign up new members and this can help a challenger," he said.

The new rules continue one-member, one-ballot voting, albeit with a twist: electoral districts with more votes will be weighted accordingly.

The PCs will also charge prospective candidates a $15,000 non-refundable fee, plus a $15,000 deposit they'll get back if they don't commit any violations.

Thomas said the fee may impact who can enter the race.

"Presumably this is meant to discourage 'nuisance' single-issue candidates and to avoid a circus of multiple candidates like we have witnessed in the U.S.A.," he said.

This is not a hypothetical concern. A party takeover by a decidedly unprogressive fringe remains a concern for the PCs, whose leadership is aware the party would not be electable in this very moderate, mild-mannered province if its ideology strays too far from the centre of the political spectrum.

"Although we have a big tent, the reality of the day is most Manitobans are in the middle. Those are the type of people I believe will be attracted to be the leaders of our party," PC president Brent Pooles said in an interview in October.

Toet and Stefanson addressed this in their review.

It's "important to protect the PC Party from potentially being hijacked by outside interests, including single or special interest groups," they wrote. "The goal of the PC Party is to be as representative as possible of all Manitobans."

Critics such as Rochelle Squires, the former PC cabinet minister who lost her Riel seat last month, have argued the party got hijacked during this year's election — despite being under the leadership of the more moderate of the contestants in the last party leadership race.