ANALYSIS | When the Manitoba PCs lost their leader, the NDP lost its greatest asset | CBC News

Resignation of Obby Khan is the worst thing that could happen to Wab Kinew and the NDP

For the third time in just over five years, Manitoba's Progressive Conservatives are looking for a new leader.

Ten years ago, the PCs were immensely popular. Under Brian Pallister, the Tories soared to unprecedented heights, winning 40 out of 57 seats in the 2016 general election.

Pallister resigned as Manitoba's premier and PC leader in September 2021 after only five years as premier.

Heather Stefanson was selected PC leader and premier in 2021 under a cloud of controversy, failed to connect with voters and then demoralized her own party by going along with a ghoulish 2023 election campaign pledge to refuse to search for the remains of murdered Indigenous women.

PCs make opposition to landfill search a central facet of campaign as Manitoba election day nears

While experience is no guarantee of success — Stefanson crashed and burned as leader despite spending decades at the Manitoba Legislature — the task of rebuilding a party from the ground up was too tall even for a mountain of an offensive lineman.

During the 2025 PC leadership campaign, he refused to describe the Stefanson government's refusal to search the Prairie Green landfill for the remains of murder victims as a mistake.

Centrist voters who consider themselves fiscal but not social conservatives may have sniffed out a whiff of intolerance, despite Khan's undeniable lived experience as a Muslim person of colour in a predominantly Christian, white society.

Head to head against Wab Kinew, a social media personality as well as a premier, Khan was just as uncompetitive on TikTok as he was talking policy.

Khan was to Kinew what Justin Trudeau was to Pierre Poilievre: The gift that kept on giving, as long as he remained in his position.

Manitoba PCs 'not fractured,' new interim leader Konrad Narth says after Obby Khan’s resignation