Heather Stefanson to Become Manitoba’s 24th Premier: Wins PC Vote – Winnipeg | The Canadian News

Heather Stefanson has been elected as the next leader of Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative Party (PC), and will become the province’s 24th Prime Minister.

It comes after a leadership vote that pitted her against former St. Boniface MP Shelly Glover.

8,405 votes were cast for Stefanson and 8,042 for Glover.

The final week of the two-month campaign was marked by problems with the ballot.

An undisclosed number of ballots did not reach some of the PC’s 25,000 members by Friday’s deadline, according to the party.

PCs were quick to make up for lost time with last-minute delivery locations across the province, but Glover disagreed with that, saying he thought the results should be delayed.

Leadership Chairman George Orle spoke extensively before the announcement about steps the party took to address those concerns.

Orle says that roughly 17,000 of those ballots were returned to the party before the deadline, a return rate of 68 percent.

“That’s not being disorganized … it’s something to be proud of.”

Glover has been out of public life since 2015, when he chose to give up his St. Boniface seat in that year’s federal election.

He had served seven years in office for two terms, after serving in the Winnipeg Police Service (WPS).

Glover returned to the WPS for three years before leaving again in 2018.

Stefanson has served as Tuxedo for more than two decades after replacing former Prime Minister Gary Filmon in the 2000 by-elections.

Since then she has been reelected five times, most of them by a significant margin.

becomes Manitoba’s first female Premier in the province’s 151-year history, and will formally replace Kelvin Goertzen as the 24th Premier at an induction ceremony in the coming days.

With files from Canadian Press, Shane Gibson and Brittany Greenslade