Pallister Wins Second Term; How PC Numbers Have Changed Since 2011

With the return of Premier Brian Pallister to the helm of the province, the progressive left in its various forms fell far short of their hopes on election night in Manitoba, and a realignment is inevitable. 

Since 2011, the Progressive Conservatives have only increased its share of the popular vote by 3.36% to 47.07%, but has distributed votes to almost double the seats held, from 19 to 36. 
The NDP, which ruled the roost that year with 46.16% and 37 seats, have fallen to 31.38 percent of voter support, their seats cut by more than half to 18. Trying to halve that 15 point gap is the next step up the ladder. 

Former Premier Gary Filmon tells about the one that got away

As long as Wab Kinew can only attract 23% or so of voters outside Winnipeg, the NDP will never regain the seat of power. And by 2024, the term "FILMON" will be long put to rest, once and for all, as a dogwhistle to attack conservatives. 

While the Winnipeg Free Press framed the Kinew speech as "Despite election defeat, NDP does victory lap", the victory was over the other left wing opposition parties. The Tories were barely dented by Kinew, with none of the Winnipeg seats grabbed from the PC's qualifying as a total surprise. 

It was no secret backbencher Blair Yakimoski was in a tough fight in Transcona to retain, and in swing seat St. Vital, Jamie Moses was a persisent presence in the riding and decisively avenged his 2016 loss to Colleen Mayer. 

In my view, redistribution made St. James a tough but expected lost seat for the PC's.  If anything, the NDP failure to win the newly created McPhillips constituency in the north end of the city, where the Seven Oaks Hospital is located, was more surprising, as PC MLA Shannon Martin parachuted in and eeked out a return to the Legislature.

The prospects for the other two opposition parties dimmed greatly despite earlier polling which demonstrated the very definition of "parking their vote". After dislodging the volatile Rana Bokhari as Liberal leader, Dougald Lamont didn't move the dial beyond a .08% increase in electoral support in a disappointing result. He, Dr. Jon Gerrard in River Heights, and Cindy Lamoureaux (relocated to Tyndal Park), return to Broadway but the Libs fell short of official Party status.

Premier Pallister assured Audrey Gordon her
slim margin of victory in Southdale didn't bother him

Lamont waffled to the left with scads of climate change pronouncements trying to stem leakage to the Green Party, and made spending promises that even made socialists blush. In the process attracted only 5005 more votes and failed to hold a 4th seat and retain party status. 
The scant economic policy didn't chip into Tory support, and the ground game simply didn't materialize. I suspect the Trudeau government's scandals made even considering a checkmark beside a candidate labeled Liberal a no-go for more than a few voters. 

As for the Manitoba Green Party, support for leader James Beddome in Fort Rouge was tripled by Kinew, and the Party failed to close a 392 vote gap in Wolseley and saw it grow to 917, and out of reach, for David Nickarz. The Green wave is D-O-A here, and in his speech Kinew already promoted that progressive left is spelled N-D-P in this province. It's too bad because voters need more candidates with more new ideas, not less.

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Premier Pallister was working the room sharing the thrill of victory around 11 PM and when he noticed me, laughingly remarking how after all these years (we first met in 1993) "we're getting better with age!" 

"Mazel Tov! Hey, I want to get a 30 minute interview with you sometime." Immediately I got the infamous Pallister steely glare. "No." I figured he was joking so I said, "OK, 20 minutes then!"

"No. You, and Bartley Kives," he said. 

Instantly he burst out laughing at the look on my face, reached down, grabbed and shook my hand some more and said "AWWWW I'm just joshing with you, of course we can!"

He conceded after the win that the biggest take-away is that his government needs to do a better job of listening, and I will hold them to that. There are a number of issues that I covered during the election that may not matter to MSM, but do to my audience.

I would ask Premier Pallister about construction contract corruption strangling Manitoba-based trades, and why accountability for the engineering profession has deteriorated under the revised Act to the point they act like a protection racket. And more:

* Will he curtail the WRHA continuing to pump out 2 million "harm reduction" needles for meth addicts with no responsibility to deal with the impact of discarded used rigs in the community? What about the meth detox unit proposal of Morberg House that has so much support from politicians of all stripes, including two members of his own caucus?

* Will loopholes in the candidate disclosure law (ie Garnishment Orders, and by the way the list is up to 4 NDP'ers now) be closed? 

* And not that it was an election issue, but the antique City of Winnipeg Act is a problem every week at City Hall - if there's changes to come, your voice needs to be heard.

Those are on the kitchen table, so to speak, of my audience.
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If "Crime And Fear" Emerges In The Manitoba Election - It Won't Just Be Campaign Rhetoric

Last summer during the Winnipeg civic election, public safety - particularly downtown and in the adjacent neighborhoods - was an early focus of the Mayoral contest.

"On one issue, however, incumbents and challengers alike seem to strike the same mournful tone: public safety." intoned Winnipeg Free Press political scribe Dan Lett, dismissively noting "The debate on public safety is on the verge of veering into hysteria as we inch toward the Oct. 24 civic election". 

Hysteria. Keep that word in mind.

In an August 18, 2018 column entitled "Campaign rhetoric returns to crime and fear" he noted one candidate, Garth Steek, "claims he’s had his car broken into 10 times in the last two years and that some of his River Heights neighbours have witnessed violent drug deals and assaults in front of their normally placid, well-manicured front yards." 

Considering the area was the first to organize a "Smashed Windows Club" of victims of car break-ins and thefts, that claim of 10 break-ins was hard to doubt, although Lett seemed to.

Citing "A Probe Research poll in late August 2014 showed that only 23 per cent of respondents ranked crime as the most important issue, " Lett believed that in 2018, the public mood had not shifted on the matter enough to elect a law-and-order upstart, the front-runner being Jenny Motkaluk. He was right. 

But if the public had the police data at the time, one wonders if the phrase "hysterical" would have been fair to use or if the Mayoral vote would have tightened. 

A recent Lance story - a Free Press Neighborhood tabloid - about crime rates in St. Boniface contained the bombshell statistics that should have been on the front page of the parent broadsheet.

2018                                 One year increase     Increase since 2014

Property crimes  2,893          55.7%                     92.9%

Violent crimes       385           28.3%                     27.4%

Total crimes         3639          49.6%                     78.2%

I repeat -- "a rise of 92.9 per cent over the five-year average." 

What if voters in 2018 were aware of the true scope of the failure of the police braintrust since 2014 and reacted to that information? Would only 23% have rated it as their most important issue as they did last year ? 

If Jenny Motkaluk and other candidates had assailed a 92.9% increase of St. B. property crimes in 5 years, would she have been 'verging into hysteria'?

Would anyone have dismissed that as "hysterical' that St. Boniface (a tourist/French residential district adjacent to downtown Winnipeg eastbound) was outpacing the city-wide 5 year average (44%) by an extra 48.9% and that it was a crisis? 

Not coincidentally, St. Boniface was under siege by meth heads, random violence and aggressive panhandling - and plenty o' dirty needles in parks and alleys, to go with the crime. 

In his analysis, Lett slid through an observation about the meth invasion and straight into a miscalculation about policing. 

"Steek and Motkaluk are motivated, to some extent, by a couple of evolving stories that hit the city just before the unofficial start of civic campaign season. At the top of this list is a pressing concern about what the Winnipeg Police Service has dubbed a methamphetamine crisis."

"The issue (Steek) has obsessed over— property crime — is not affected by the number of police officers you put on the street. You could triple Winnipeg’s complement of officers, and you wouldn’t put a dent in the number of garage, car and house break-ins, particularly if that crime is being driven by an issue as serious and complex as drug addiction."

His miscalculation was in not contemplating the way the police service was supposed to be putting a dent into the property crime rate - without more officers. 

James Jewell explains Solve Rates 

But a former cop recently did the calculation, showing how the consequence of reorganizing criminal investigations in 2017 was a horrific misstep that resulted in a unsolved-crime explosion last year. 

(The decaying clearance rates that resulted further complicated the previous failure by Chief Smyth and others to analyze CrimeStats pro-actively as I explained here, compounded by the flop of "Smart Policing" the successor to CrimeStat under Smyth, as The Black Rod explains here. )  

"In the spring of 2017, the WPS consolidated all criminal investigative services under one umbrella, the Major Crimes Unit." wrote former cop James Jewell on his highly regarded Police Insider blog in a brilliant analysis called  WPS Stock Tumbles – No Time for Blamegame

"... pointing the finger at the Provincial Government is far too easy, so is attributing all of our crime problems to the methamphetamine crisis. No-one can deny the fact crime and addiction are inextricably linked. It’s been that way for decades. The only thing that changes is the drug of choice. What Chief Smyth & Mayor Bowman didn’t talk about were some of the not so complex issues that got us here…"

"... Right or wrong, the courts evolved to a place where much less emphasis is placed on incarcerating property offenders. 

"... In 2018, “lack of consequences” became a major theme at Manitoba Liquor Marts.... Why is the Major Crime Unit investigating theft under offences in the first place?”

[And here Jewell makes the policing point Lett missed last year: a flawed operational structure amplified the drug factors behind the 92.9% hike in property crime in St. B.]

"So how does the WPS Major Crimes Unit become paralyzed investigating hundreds of Liquor Mart thefts? We can’t blame methamphetamine for that, can we?

... Theft under $5,000 is not a “major” crime, in fact, it is very much a minor crime, one that, as I’ve explained, has been very much marginalized...

... What crimes would be a priority for the new “centralized” unit? The answer was obvious, violent crime of course."

Et Voila, as they might say in St. Boniface and other neighborhoods in Winnipeg. Needles needles everywhere thanks to an incompetent and data-challenged harm reduction regime of the WRHA, the needle-using meth addicts running amok thanks to lax court conditions, and a police investigation structure that made the types of crime addicts were committing impossible to assign and clear, letting violent junkies lurking on the streets.  

As a reader said to Jewell in concurrance: 

"I strongly believe his reorganization is a large factor in this. The crime units and CSU units took care of the small guys and prevented them from getting bigger per se. This stifled a lot of crime that we see happening today from ever getting to that point. 

They fed Major Crimes with information and assisted, leaving major crimes to do what they do best. 

This reorganization had made the service lose control."

If candidates in the provincial election this year, armed with the 5 year stats (like "92.9%") that were unavailable for civic hopefuls last year, raise the alarm, no one in the press or political arena could call them hysterical. 

Those crime statistics for St. Boniface are a disgrace. And the fear was legit, given how the area Biz asked City Hall for help to deal with the disorder near the hospital. The fear of being robbed or attacked is noticeable in almost every neighborhood now. 

Last year's civic "hysteria" about meth and crime can turn into this year's legitimate provincial election concerns that voters might direct at the governing Tories (primarily). 

Especially when it comes to spending the $20 million budget they proposed wisely:

1) The CBC Manitoba report on the Safer Streets, Safer Lives platform says that out of the $20M, either $8M total or $15M total (it's hard to decipher) is being alloted to drug policing across the province. 

As Jewell proved, a police organizational failure helped get us in this mess but not a dime seems designated to solving it in the Pallister plan. 

Whatever the additional amount for policing pledged to Winnipeg, voters have a right to ask the PC (and all party) candidates, if they share the public's priority to restoring property crime investigations and achieving respectable clearance rates (thereby boosting morale within the rank and file). 

2)   The 3 page document does not mention or allot a dime to enhance data collection about used needles or raise needle return rates. Big fail. 

My investigative series about the WRHA's flawed free needle program has caused some eyes to open in political cirlces and with good reason.

3) "A re-elected Progressive Conservative government would build a short-term detox facility for methamphetamine users ... A key tenet of the proposal is building a detox facility ... It would treat 20 to 30 patients at a time, for a duration of one to four days." 

Such a facility with that capacity already exists, with detox units. The province is paying the rent to keep it empty until March. It's at 800 Adele Ave. near Notre Dame off Arlington. 

Before spending millions and taking years to build and open a detox and treatment centre, the PC plan - and every parties plan - should include evaluating the Marion Willis proposal for the vacated 800 Adele building to try to get it operational and saving lives now, not in 2 years. 

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North End Councilor Echoes Liberal Leaders' Scepticism About WRHA "Harm Reduction" Free Needle Program

Mynarski Councilor Ross Eadie, whose north end ward has been noticably afflicted with discarded used needles, reacted to our story exposing that health officials lowballed the estimate of discarded needles in Winnipeg by 400% last year.

Last October the WRHA claimed in an email that "Needle distribution programs have also been shown to reduce the number of discarded needles in the community overall."

When challenged, they cited a study published in the year 2000.

In the same email, officials argued "Needle return rates have very little to do with the number of needles found discarded unsafely in the community."

 With discards estimated to be up 1200% since last year, Eadie cautioned:

 "I definitely believe Street Connections has not handled their program very well over the years on the collection side."

Eadie posted his observations on Facebook in a response to our follow up story with Dougald Lamont. The Manitoba Liberal leader was critical of both needle and data collection by the WRHA in an exclusive interview last week. 

Lamont, MLA for St. Boniface, told us it was "not surprising that the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority's estimate of discarded needles was so far from actual numbers," and insisted  that "Manitobans deserve to know the extent of issues within their communities."

His statement that "Good data is very important for governments to make the right policy choices" also caught Eadie's attention.

The three term council member shares Lamont's concerns about the city and provincial governments relying on the WRHA "harm reduction" program to hand out 2 Million free needles, when it is based on US studies over 18 years old that predate the prevelance of addicts cranking meth.

Another claim in the email last fall that the WRHA clings to is "Unlimited needle and syringe distribution is supported by Harm Reduction best practice recommendations."

Eadie questions how the evidence on the streets of his ward can be seen as consistent with a so-called "best practice".

"If you're going to run a harm reduction program, you must consider any harm to those who do not participate in the drug epidemic." 

Eadie later explaining in a follow-up conversation his frustration that some areas of his ward like North Point Douglas and Main Street neighborhoods are especially hard-hit by addicts tossing dirty needles wherever they wish without consequence.

Other readers, looking towards the pending Manitoba election, had strong reaction to the comments of Lamont about fighting the meth crisis, a key plank in his election platform.

They also noticed his willingness to explore whether a mothballed secure facility at 800 Adele Ave. could house a meth detox unit.

That proposal flowed from a tour of the facility as part of a meeting between building owners and Marion Willis of Morberg House, a successful St. Boniface residential meth treatment program.

*  "People going through a drug induced psychosis will still need to be cared for and removed from the general population" one women posted about the possibility of getting the building out of a court dispute with Premier Pallister and the PC government.

"Whatever your misgivings about drug use and addictions are, medical professionals can not refuse care to these people and this is a better alternative that will free up some space in the few Emergency Departments that we have left."

*  Another longtime source for our blog has been following our recent stories and did his own research: 

"Maybe this will help in numbers. After consulting two acquaintances who are needle users of Meth, I asked them about how many points that they used weekly. 

Using those numbers and also using the 1 million annual needle distribution number, this is my calculation.

AT ANY ONE TIME, we have 5000 meth users high and active. We also have another 5000 crashed and sleeping. You can add to that the number of smokers, snorters, and swallowers. That's just for Winnipeg."

Since the actual distribution number is double that - 2 million - it appears his estimate could be doubled, resulting in 10,000 meth users high in Winnipeg at a time while another 10,000 are crashed out.

*  A key factor that hasn't truly hit the public radar is the fact that the price for a point of meth, which dropped from $10 to $5 in the last 2 years, has now dropped in some circles to a mere $3.00. According to a Winnipeg Sun story last Boxing Day:

"Statistics from the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba said that between 2014 and 2017, the number of meth users rose 48% among youths and 104% among adults. The average age of a youth using meth is 16 and 81% of their reported cases are girls. AFM cited plummeting prices for meth as a chief factor in the increased usage across the board. "

*  "It's here in every neighbourhood. Crime to feed the meth habit." wrote a longtime property manager.

"River Park South, Island Lakes, South St Vital, Old St Vital, Southdale are right along with Windsor Park in the devastating effect theft and vandalism is having in our neighborhoods. Video after home video. Cars being broken into. Property stolen. It's an entire city under siege." she concluded.

*  Yesterday former Major Crimes Unit investigator James Jewell posted a deep-dive analysis what has resulted - a disorganized police response that has left both cops and citizens overwhelmed:

"Winnipeg residents are becoming frustrated, angry and feel abandoned. 

Communities are taking matters into their own hands, patrolling the streets and using social media platforms to organize in their efforts to fight crime. It shouldn’t have to come to this. The lack of consequences for property crime is definitely a major factor. In 2018, “lack of consequences” became a major theme at Manitoba Liquor Marts."

*  Just two weeks ago, after the liquor outlet in Tyndal Park was heisted, people in the know proved Jewell's point:

"At the Fort Richmond LC every week.

 Last week my dad was there and a group of 10-15 kids made a big commotion and stole all kinds of bottles and ran out.

The LC people say it happens every week and theres absolutely nothing they can do to stop it because of the risks.

Crazy tho, my dad said they walked out with like 3 or 4 bottles EACH."

and this -

"My brother works at an LC as well and they have thefts everyday. Some larger than others. Last weekend they walked up to the cashier and showed a weapon.  They walked out with 9 bottles of $90+ bottles."

Like the lady said, it's an entire city under siege.

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