Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - November 15, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba THINK TANK COMMENT EDITOR: RUSSELL WANGERSKY 204-697-7269 ● RUSSELL.WANGERSKY@WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM A9 SATURDAY NOVEMBER 15, 2025 Ideas, Issues, Insights The ‘Poilievre gamble’ facing Conservatives I T can be cold in Calgary in January. Cold like a knife. The perfect setting for a Conservative Party leadership review taking place in the last weekend of the month. It was cold in Winnipeg that last weekend of January 1983. That’s when then-Progressive Con- servative party leader Joe Clark lost his leader- ship review vote. Despite leading in the polls over the Pierre Trudeau Liberals, he received a tepid 66.9 per cent support from party members. Clark, who had lost an election and, worse, gov- ernment, two years before, called for an immedi- ate leadership convention to “clear the air.” Five months later, the air cleared with Brian Mulroney as the new PC leader and soon-to-be prime minis- ter for almost a decade. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and his team know how the dominoes can fall in politics. That’s why they are pulling out all the stops to make sure the number in Calgary far exceeds the number in Winnipeg. They chose Calgary to give the Conservative leader, and newly minted Alberta MP, a home field enthusiasm advantage. Then they chose the last weekend in January, dates that conflict with Ontario PC Party’s own annual general meeting, guaranteeing fewer discordant voices showing up from Premier Doug Ford’s backyard. Their strategy can be summed up in a phrase: fast and furious. Here’s the fast part: scheduling the review vote as soon as possible, nine months after the last, lost election, before any negative dissension against him over the April election loss can build; organizing a fast byelection in August in a safe Alberta seat to get back into the House of Com- mons and the media without delay; and dismiss- ing quickly any post-election change of tone that voters might want — but which the party base decidedly does not. Here’s the furious part: a no-holds barred public and evidently private lashing out against two Con- servative MPs who broke ranks, one who crossed the floor to the Liberals while the other, having crossed the leader, resigned from Parliament alto- gether — along with very public tongue-lashings of the media for their coverage of these caucus eruptions. In his three years as leader, Poilievre has built up a formidable and loyal following within the party, within the caucus and with many Conserva- tive voters. A recent Abacus Data poll gave him a net-positive rating of plus-71 among Conservative voters. But that same poll gave him a net-nega- tive rating of minus-61 among non-Conservative voters. Welcome to the “Poilievre gamble” facing Conservatives in January. It’s a simple gamble, simply stated: Do we keep the leader we want but Canadians don’t? It’s a gamble because of an old political saying, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” Poilievre’s first impression remains decidedly negative with most voters. An im- pression based principally on his style, tone and message. They will vote for him only if, and when, one of two things happen. First, Poilievre needs Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberals to wear out their wel- come with Canadians by failing to deliver. At some point in time, the Liberals will be voted out and Conservatives will be voted in. A vigorous Opposition, relentless prosecuted by Poilievre, as he has shown he can do, can help bring this about. Mostly, though, it will be events and circumstances outside of the Conservative leader’s control that will cause this to happen or not, much as Donald Trump upended the last U.S. election calculus. Second, Poilievre needs to adjust his presenta- tion to become less abrasive and more acceptable to Canadians in what he says and how he says it. Some of that occurred in the campaign, but it was too little, too late. Since then, it has all but disappeared. After 20 years in politics honing his trade, the Poilievre on display today is authentic but uncompromising. The first is outside of his control but easier to execute. It’s what he’s been successfully doing as leader of the Opposition. The second is within his control but harder to execute because it stems from the leader’s own personality and natural impulses. Therein lies the gamble. Ironically, it is the mir- ror opposite of Poilievre’s own campaign message of Conservatives as “change” and Liberals as “more of the same.” The party’s dilemma is that neither it, nor its leadership, genuinely wishes to change. They rode to prominence as outsiders of unapologetically assertive conservatism centred around contem- porary culture wars of identity politics fueled by populism, grievance and “owning the Libs.” To them, any change is compromise and any compro- mise is surrender. They wish to not just win but win in their own way, to prove themselves right and the others wrong. They seek not only a mandate to govern, but a mandate for a vision of conservative change on their own terms. A choice not an echo, in the famous phrase of American movement conserva- tive activist Phyllis Schlafly. Back in Opposition, Pierre Poilievre and his party now have a choice to make. Make the wrong choice and Conservatives will hear the echo of a another Liberal government. David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government. Winnipeg’s synagogue and Edmonton’s mosque IN 1889, on the northwest corner of Common and King streets, Winnipeggers of many creeds gathered to lay the cornerstone of a new house of worship. It was the first synagogue in Manitoba, Shaarey Zedek, the Gates of Righteousness. The Manitoba Free Press called the crowd “rep- resentative of all classes of citizens.” Members of the legislature and city council stood beside clergy from several churches. The Grand Lodge of Freemasons led the procession. The Infantry School Band played. Philip Brown, chair of the building committee, rose to speak. To the wider city he appealed for “all lovers of religious liberty, regardless of class, creed or nationality.” To his own congregation he offered steadiness: be strong; your trials will be many, but patience and success will crown your efforts. Then his words turned outward again, toward the Masons and other neighbours who had come in friendship. Quoting Psalm 133, he said, “Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell togeth- er in unity.” He praised the “worthy brotherhood whose motto is ‘Light, truth and charity,’” saying its principles were in harmony with Judaism’s own. When Shaarey Zedek was dedicated in March 1890, more than 250 non-Jewish guests attended, and Mayor Alfred Pearson assisted in opening the doors. Up to $1,700 was contributed by Christian residents toward the synagogue’s construction. Nearly 50 years later, that same spirit appeared again in Edmonton, where Muslims organized to build Canada’s first mosque. The Al-Rashid Mosque rose on a parcel of city land purchased for $550, the same discount offered to churches. Its leaders included Darwish Mohammed Teha, a former farmer from Damascus, and Najjib Ailley, a merchant who told the Edmonton Journal that Christ “also preached Islam.” At the opening ceremony, Mayor John Wesley Fry welcomed a crowd of about 100. The Mayor of Hanna, J. F. Shaker, a Christian, chaired the service and reminded those present that “there is little difference between those who worship the God of Moses, the God of Jesus or the God of the prophet (Muhammad).” The visiting Indian-Brit- ish scholar Abdullah Yusuf Ali, translator of the Qur’an, added, “There is nothing mysterious, nothing everyone cannot understand about a reli- gion such as ours.” Both occasions — the cornerstone in Winnipeg and the dedication in Edmonton — were civic as well as religious. Each lived faith through public fellowship. People showed up for one another and, in doing so, shaped the moral landscape of the Prairies. This inheritance spans generations. In Win- nipeg, Freemasons and clergy joined to build a congregation dedicated to justice. In Edmonton, Muslim women petitioned the mayor for land on which to build a mosque. Each moment revealed pluralism not as tolerance alone but as a verb, a belief made visible through action. The congregations were small. Winnipeg’s Jewish community was largely made up of recent Russian immigrants; Edmonton’s Muslims had mostly come from Syria. Both asked neighbours for help. The Free Press chronicled the synagogue’s faith in the future, and the Journal later recorded Muslims who believed their city might one day be “the spiritual headquarters of Islam in Canada.” Both communities have now been sustained for generations. By 1982, Edmonton’s Muslim population had grown to 12,000, and again non-Muslims con- tributed to expanding Al-Rashid. Shaarey Zedek became the largest synagogue in western Canada. Such scenes remind us that pluralism in Canada was never only a matter of ideas. It was practiced in public life — in shared ceremonies, prayers and generosity. To read those accounts today, including parallels from the Upper Midwest in the United States, is to remember that the heartlands of both nations have long offered examples worth keeping. Our headlines now tell harder stories: threats at schools, vandalized sanctuaries, neighbours attacked for how they worship — evidence of renewed antisemitism and xenophobia. The past does not present perfection, but it reminds us that pluralism is an inheritance to be chosen again and again. When Winnipeggers and Edmontonians gathered in fellowship nearly a century apart, they offered a model of community that still speaks to the present. The choice remains. As one participant in the 1889 cornerstone service, Bessie Finklestein, wrote on behalf of the “Hebrews of Manitoba,” she hoped that “the mor- tar with which you cement this stone be typical of goodwill and universal charity which should be spread over our actions with one another.” Her words still hold. The work of pluralism is never finished; it must be renewed with every genera- tion. Pluralism, like justice, survives only when tended. Austin Albanese is a writer and historian based in Rochester, N.Y. His work on interfaith history has appeared in the Washington Post, Des Moines Register, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Fix the law for care, not control WHEN Nick Kasper, president of the United Fire Fighters of Winnipeg, says the system is broken, we should listen. In his recent Free Press opinion piece, It’s time to modernize Manitoba’s addiction laws (Think Tank, Oct. 23) and other public remarks, he has urged Manitoba to update its outdated Intoxicated Persons Detention Act — a law written for the beer-and-bour- bon era, not for fentanyl or meth. The provincial government passed Bill 48: The Protective Detention and Care of Intoxi- cated Persons Act, this fall. It aims to allow people in severe drug-in- duced crises to be held in “protective-care centres” for up to 72 hours (rather than 24), with a mandatory medical assessment after the first day. It was humane in intent — to keep people safe long enough to stabilize them in a clinical environment instead of a jail cell. Both the NDP government and the Opposition agree: it needs to be done right. As I’ve written previously, Manitoba’s problem isn’t that it lacks compassion — it’s that it keeps designing laws, systems and budgets around containment rather than recovery. Every day, first responders like Kasper’s members find themselves reviving the same people from the same crises in the same locations. It’s not a lack of effort; it’s a lack of struc- ture. Bill 48 does not offer much help on that front. From emergency rooms to encampments, from shelters to holding cells, we’ve built a loop instead of a ladder. Bill 48 could have been a bridge, but with- out a clear pathway to treatment and hous- ing, it risks becoming a longer version of the same 24-hour cycle. The question remains: what happens after 72 hours? Manitoba once understood what sustained care looked like. Long-term mental-health hospitals gave people time to recover. In the 1980s and 1990s, we closed them and promised community-based care that never came. Emergency rooms, police cars and tent cities filled the gap. Today, those forgotten promises haunt our streets. An improved version of this law must make protective detention the beginning of recovery, not the end. It must require that medical assessments lead to clear treatment plans and that every transition — from stabilization to recovery to housing — is supported by a shared framework between health, addictions and housing. These are not optional linkages; they are the spine of an effective recovery system. We already have models to follow. Programs in Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan have begun integrating short-term stabilization units with long-term treatment beds and supportive-housing path- ways. When health-care and housing sys- tems talk to each other, outcomes improve and emergency calls drop. Manitoba can build on those lessons in- stead of repeating past mistakes. Critics will say we can’t afford it. The truth is, we already pay far more by doing nothing. Ambulances, emergency rooms, shelters and jails are the most expensive “housing program” we’ve ever built. According to national data, supportive housing and treat- ment reduce justice, policing and health- care costs by as much as 70 per cent. Investing in recovery saves both lives and money. Protective detention must lead to protec- tive care. Protective care must lead to treat- ment. Treatment must lead to housing — and a life worth protecting. This isn’t just semantics. It’s a shift in how Manitoba sees addiction — from something to contain to something to heal. If Bill 48 is to become more than a new la- bel on an old problem, it has to close the gaps between care, housing and accountability. That requires not just legislative change, but public measurement: clear metrics showing how many people are stabilized, how many enter treatment, how many complete it and how many remain housed six months later. Kasper’s right to sound the alarm, and the Opposition is right to insist on doing this properly. The next version of this law must clear- ly link protective care to treatment and, ultimately, to stable housing — with real accountability shared across ministries. Only then can we move from managing crises to healing communities. Manitoba’s first responders are exhaust- ed from standing in the breach of a broken system. They don’t need another bill that manages symptoms — they need a law that creates solutions. Let’s make this one about care, not control. Hersh Seth is a Winnipeg resident and community organizer advocating for humane, health-care-based approaches to mental health, addiction and encampments. AUSTIN ALBANESE HERSH SETH DAVID MCLAUGHLIN SPENCER COLBY / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has to win a leadership vote in Calgary and then an election in Canada. But it might take two different strategies. ;