January 28, 2024 | 28 janiver 2024 — Ottawa, Ontario

À la famille et aux amis de M. Broadbent, nous sommes de tout cœur avec vous. Je me joins aux autres à travers notre beau pays pour pleurer ce grand Canadien.

After I lost the 2019 Manitoba election, Ed Broadbent was the first person to call and tell me to stay on as leader.

And when we won in 2023, guess who phoned first?

In this, as in all things, Mr. Broadbent was a relentless force for good in our beloved Canada.

He embodied this in the political victories he helped to secure—for Indigenous rights and environmental justice, for gender equity and a commitment to the blue collar.

For Ed, it was always about fairness, honesty and bringing Canadians together.

Importantly, Mr. Broadbent also embodied this in the way he pursued his vision.

His contemporaries said he would always make his case passionately but never personally. That’s no easy feat in Question Period.

His colleagues have shared that Ed had endless patience to hear out dissenting opinions.

As someone who came after him, I can tell you what I remember most from that 2019 phone call. There I was feeling the way you do when you lose a campaign — feeling like I’d been dumped.

Ed called to offer words of encouragement. But what I remember most is that I could hear the smile in Mr. Broadbent’s voice as clear as day.

Ed wasn’t just about achieving good things, he was about pursuing them with a good nature.

This was his politics of joy.

In our recent election in Manitoba we followed his example.

It was a dark and bruising campaign.

The way our team beat back the politics of division was not by sharpening more effective wedges than our opponents.

We did it by putting our faith in the people of our province.

We believed Manitobans would choose unity.

After how exhaustingly divisive the last few years have been in Canada, people in our part of the prairies have chosen to declare a simple message— we are one province, one people, who have one shared destiny.

In this, I hear echoes of Mr. Broadbent.

At a time of angry populists around the globe, of social media ecosystems that are worlds apart, of identity politics that obscure the simple truth that we are all related…

Ed stood for the opposite.

He stood for compassion in public, for thoughtful leadership, and for, perhaps most importantly, the vision that we are one country—nous sommes un pays.

Mr. Broadbent’s smiling, joyful legacy is an example we ought to learn from today.

That we can use good means to pursue good ends.

That we don’t need to play to our darkest impulses.

That we can have faith in our fellow Canadians.

I hope for the sake of our country — that more of our leaders will speak to us the way Mr. Broadbent did—by appealing to our better angels.

Ed Broadbent, apegish gigawaabamigoo miinawa—I hope we will see you again.