Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party leadership candidate Wally Daudrich joked to a group of party members this week he could reduce homelessness in Winnipeg by letting polar bears loose downtown.
One party member who volunteers at a downtown mission that serves homeless people said he is not amused.
Daudrich, who operates ecotours to view polar bears east of Churchill, on the coast on Hudson Bay, made the comment as a joke during an appearance at a Winnipeg hotel on Wednesday night.
He made the comment about homelessness and the dangerous land carnivore minutes into a speech at the Park West Inn in Winnipeg’s Charleswood area.
“We have a homeless crisis here in Winnipeg. I always say where I come from in Churchill, we don’t have any homeless people. Anybody take a guess why?” he asked, eliciting laughs.
“When there are serious repercussions for a bad lifestyle, people smarten up very quickly. So my plan is to import 10 polar bears and let them go in front of the Ledge,” Daudrich said, referring to the Manitoba Legislature.
Churchill, which bills itself as the polar bear capital of the world, sits alongside a stretch of Hudson Bay coast where the large, seal-eating mammals congregate every fall before the bay freezes over.
Daudrich, who operates the ecotourism company Lazy Bear Expeditions and the hotel Lazy Bear Lodge, said he made it very clear he was joking.
“I don’t feel like I try to style my speech or my exact words to be 100 per cent locked solid tight, that I can never be criticized,” the candidate said Thursday in an interview from his home near Morden, in southern Manitoba.
“If people want to criticize me on that, they have to understand obviously nobody’s going to be moving polar bears around.”
‘Disgraceful and unacceptable’
Thomas Rempel-Ong, a four-year PC member who attended Daudrich’s speech, said it’s not funny to joke about homeless people becoming polar bear food.
“Maybe there was a time when we thought through before we actually spoke,” said Rempel-Ong, who volunteers in the kitchen at Siloam Mission, a downtown Winnipeg non-profit organization that provides food and shelter for the unhoused.
Rempel-Ong also took issue with Daudrich’s characterization of homelessness as a lifestyle.
“From my own standpoint, volunteering at an organization that works with people who are struggling with that, it’s not as simple as saying they chose to be like this. You know, sometimes it’s someone lost their job or they’re struggling with an addiction.”
Daudrich cited addictions when asked to clarify what he meant when he described homelessness as a lifestyle.
“Homelessness largely is a result of drug addiction and we need to deal with the drug addiction issue in Manitoba, especially in Winnipeg,” he said.
“As a Christian, I love people. I love everybody, and as that pro-life type of person, that attitude dictates the value that I put on people everywhere, including the homeless people.”
Rempel-Ong said he did not accept that explanation.
“If you’re speaking to people directly, that’s what you honestly think,” he said. “When a reporter talks to you the day afterwards, of course you’re going to be saying something a little different.”
End Homelessness Winnipeg, an Indigenous-led non-profit organization, said Friday in a statement Daudrich’s comments “trivializing homelessness and suggesting life-threatening consequences as a deterrent” are hurtful and perpetuate stereotypes.
Such statements “ignore the complex, systemic issues that lead people into housing insecurity,” CEO Jason Whitford said.
“Homelessness is not the result of a ‘bad lifestyle,'” he said, but of issues like a lack of affordable housing, mental health challenges, trauma and systemic inequities.
“These issues require solutions, not ridicule,” his statement said.
In a statement of its own, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs said Daudrich displayed “a disturbing lack of empathy for vulnerable people.”
“To make light of the suffering experienced by those struggling with homelessness, many of whom are First Nations people displaced due to systemic failures, is disgraceful and unacceptable,” Grand Chief Kyra Wilson said in the statement, adding the comments “are not a joke.”
“They reflect an ignorance of the colonial and structural inequities that have led to the housing crisis faced by so many First Nations and non-First Nations people alike.”
Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, which represents 26 northern Manitoba First Nations, said Daudrich’s remarks trivialize the dire circumstances people experiencing homelessness face, while also showing a “blatant disregard for the underlying issues that perpetuate this crisis.”
“It is a stark warning about the kind of leadership being offered … a leadership that may perpetuate harm to already marginalized groups rather than seeking to uplift and support them,” MKO said in a statement.
WATCH | See part of Daudrich’s Wednesday speech:
Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party leadership candidate Wally Daudrich joked to a group of party members this week he could reduce homelessness in Winnipeg by letting polar bears loose downtown.
Lauren Stone, the Progressive Conservative MLA for Midland and a spokesperson for the party’s leadership selection committee, declined to comment on Daudrich’s joke.
Daudrich is competing against Fort Whyte PC MLA Obby Khan to become the next leader of Manitoba’s Progressive Conservatives, who are seeking a new permanent leader to succeed former premier Heather Stefanson following her resignation in 2024.
Khan took to social media Friday to condemn what he called Daudrich’s “sick joke” and “callous attack” on homeless people.
Besides Khan, Portage la Prairie MLA Jeff Bereza is the first PC caucus member to publicly condemn Daudrich’s remarks. In a social media post, he said they were “insensitive, ignorant and downright harmful,” adding that they are only the latest in a number of disparaging comments he has made over the years.
As for Rempel-Ong, he said he is not working for Khan and has not yet made up his mind about his vote. The Siloam volunteer also said he signed up as a PC member in order to cast a vote in the 2021 PC leadership race and had previously supported the Manitoba Liberals.
He said he switched parties when it became clear to him the Liberals will not hold office in Manitoba.
The PCs serve as the Official Opposition to Manitoba’s NDP government and are led by interim leader Wayne Ewasko. The party plans to announce its new permanent leader on April 26.
