NDP blocks MLA Rick Wowchuk from speaking at school event it didn't organize: Tories
CBC
A Progressive Conservative MLA says his invitation to speak at a grand opening event for a school addition was rescinded because the NDP government — which didn't organize the event — said so.
Swan River MLA Rick Wowchuk said he was informed the night before that his invitation to speak at the Jan. 24 event celebrating the new cultural arts centre at Swan Valley Regional Secondary School had been rescinded.
The grand opening was arranged by Swan Valley School Division.
"The chief of staff in the premier’s office decided that he was going to phone and dictate to the organizing community party who can speak and who can’t speak," Wowchuk said, adding the call went to his brother, Gary Wowchuk, the school board chair. Gary Wowchuk declined to comment on the incident.
The MLA said the $16.6 million school expansion in Swan River, complete with a cultural arts centre with large auditorium, multi-purpose room and outdoor teaching area, are meant to be inclusive places for the community — approved by the former Progressive Conservative government — and yet here the government is being exclusionary.
So much for the "One Manitoba" mantra the premier frequently cites, said Wowchuk, an alumnus of the school's first graduating class in 1973.
"What occurred here is the premier decided that he wanted to be centre stage, so he did not want anybody else to take that away from him," he added.
"That's who Wab Kinew is."
When questioned at an unrelated news conference Monday, Kinew told a reporter to show him any moments of his party being invited to government announcements when the Progressive Conservatives were in power.
However, the event at Swan River's school wasn't organized by the government, but the school division, which receives provincial funding.
And while it wasn't an announcement, former PC premier Heather Stefanson invited Kinew, then the Official Opposition leader, to tour flood-ravaged areas of Manitoba by helicopter in 2022.
In any case, the current premier gives little weight to Wowchuk's complaints.
"This MLA is not a good guy, and if he wants to debate that, I would just say to everybody out there, 'Do not Google this guy's name; you're not going to like what you see.'"
Kinew was referring to Wowchuk breaching the legislature's respectful workplace policy five times, including the instance of showing his assistant a picture of naked women on his cellphone, according to a 2019 letter from the legislative assembly.
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