When the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives suspended Patrick Allard this week for a tongue‑in‑cheek Facebook comment about US immigration enforcement, they didn’t show conviction. They showed cowardice.Allard, the party’s northwest Winnipeg regional director, posted over the weekend, “Do we have ICE in Manitoba? If so, are they hiring? Asking for a friend.” It was an obvious joke about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the American agency now under fire after an ICE agent fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis. That incident has sparked days of protests in the US and, apparently, panic inside Manitoba’s PC headquarters..BERNARDO: Cape Breton’s confiscation disaster and Quebec’s big payday.By Monday, PC Leader Obby Khan had convened an emergency board meeting to suspend Allard’s membership, remove him from the board, and ban him from seeking a nomination in the next election. Khan told reporters that there was “no room for hate” in the party and accused Allard of making light of a tragedy.That’s an astonishing overreaction to a brief Facebook quip that didn’t promote violence, target anyone personally, or even comment on Canadian policy. The punishment says less about Allard’s conduct and far more about a Manitoba PC Party terrified of social media outrage.Compare that knee‑jerk expulsion with how the Manitoba NDP handled Nahanni Fontaine’s post last year. Fontaine, now a cabinet minister under Premier Wab Kinew, shared a message calling assassinated Charlie Kirk a “white nationalist mouthpiece” and saying she felt no sympathy for his death. .Kinew dismissed criticism, refused to discipline her, and claimed he doesn’t believe in “cancel culture.” No suspension. No emergency meetings. Just a shoulder shrug.Now, the same premier is lecturing PCs about compassion because one board member made a sarcastic joke about ICE. The hypocrisy would be comical if it weren’t so predictable. Kinew can make political mileage from moral outrage because conservatives keep helping him by folding under pressure.Political fear is not leadership. Obby Khan might think he’s protecting the PC brand from association with controversy, but he’s actually alienating the very people who built the party’s grassroots. Allard is far from a mainstream establishment Tory — he’s outspoken, anti‑COVID mandate, and doesn’t always toe the line — but those qualities are what energize the conservative base..HAUBRICH: Time for feds to give up on gun confiscation.Whether you agreed with his pandemic‑era protests or not, Allard represents voters who believe government power should stop at personal freedom. When Khan throws that segment under the bus to impress liberal legacy media outlets, he signals that the party no longer speaks for them.As Allard told CBC, “They’ve shot themselves in the foot... They’ve told their conservative base, ‘We don’t want you.’” There’s no question the Minneapolis shooting was tragic. But Manitoba isn’t Minnesota, and a sarcastic post about a US agency isn’t an incitement to hate. Khan’s “zero‑tolerance” sound bite makes him look like he’s campaigning for NDP voters instead of offering any genuine alternative to the NDP’s moral posturing..In fact, his quick condemnation mirrors the same “cancel first, ask questions later” instinct conservatives have criticized for years. That reflex has infected universities, corporate boardrooms, and now the Manitoba PC Party, where due process was replaced by optics management.The bigger irony? Kinew himself said after Fontaine’s post that he opposed cancel culture. Manitoba’s PCs apparently didn’t get the memo. They’re behaving like the very activists who demand apologies every time someone offends X (formerly known as Twitter).Manitoba’s opposition once prided itself on common sense and backbone. This week, both went missing. The party had every opportunity to handle the issue quietly, such as asking for context, demanding professionalism, and moving on. Instead, Khan turned a minor post into a media circus and gifted the NDP a week’s worth of moral virtue headlines..OLDCORN: Trump’s immigration crackdown is warranted — Biden and Obama created the mess.Free societies depend on thick skin. Offence is subjective, jokes are imperfect, and context still matters. Allard’s humour might not be everyone’s taste, but adults should be able to tell the difference between a sarcastic comment and a hateful one.If the Manitoba PCs hope to recover, they’ll need to stop apologizing for their own members and start defending the basic conservative principle of free expression. Otherwise, they’ll keep chasing approval from critics who would never vote for them anyway.Manitoba doesn’t need another toned‑down copy of the NDP. It needs a real conservative alternative. One that can take a joke, stand up to outrage mobs, and remember that freedom of speech isn’t just for people the media likes.
