Former Manitoba Progressive Conservative leader Obby Khan says he doesn’t see how the PC caucus can unite after MLAs were willing to meet in secret to decide the party’s direction without him. Khan, who resigned as leader effective Tuesday and is now sitting as an independent, said the caucus voted 13 to six in his favour in a confidence vote Friday, with one absence. He said he believed the caucus could come together afterward. In the conversation that followed, he said MLA Kelvin Goertzen told him a vote like this fractures a team and is hard to come back from because it is now on paper. Khan said he agreed, but responded that fractures can heal stronger. That changed over the weekend, he said, when MLAs who had been supporting him began phoning to tell him a “secret meeting” was planned for Monday night at Konrad Narth’s home. Khan said he was told that neither he nor the senior members of caucus who spoke in his favour had been invited, and that the group would discuss “what direction they want to take this.” “People are willing to meet in secret and violate the integrity of caucus to make a decision on behalf of caucus,” Khan said in an interview Tuesday. Narth selected as interim PC leader Narth, the MLA for La Vérendrye, was selected interim leader Tuesday morning in a closed-door caucus meeting, just hours before the legislature’s fall sitting was set to open. He described the caucus as a “unified team.” Narth said the caucus is focused on returning to the legislature and representing Manitobans, and that there is “newfound hope” in the group. He said he has no aspirations to become the party’s permanent leader. “Timing’s not great. I’ll be honest about it,” Narth said of taking over on the first day of the sitting. He said the goal is to show Manitobans “a viable alternative” to the current NDP government. Narth pointed to recent polling, which he said shows the PCs, as the official opposition, “have slipped further behind.” Narth did not say whether he voted against Khan. Asked about suggestions that MLAs had worked to remove him, he said he stood alongside Khan from the leadership race and respects him. “I don’t think anybody was working to remove him,” Narth said. “We were all coming together to find our path forward.” Narth called Khan’s decision to sit as an independent “somewhat disappointing,” but said he acknowledged there is emotion at play and wished him well. Narth declined to say why the confidence vote was necessary, citing caucus confidentiality. Khan said he would not rule out running as an independent in the next election, saying the details are still to be determined. ‘Abdication of leadership,’ ex-campaign director says Stephen Carter, who was hired as the party’s campaign director in December 2025 and resigned Friday, said the caucus was not divided but was at odds with Khan. “There was not the division in caucus. There was a division between the leader and the party, and the leader and the caucus, and the leader and the staff,” Carter said in an interview Tuesday. “That caucus is very united. They just weren’t united behind the leader.” Carter, a political strategist and president of Decide Campaigns, said he left because he did not have confidence in the direction the party was going under Khan. He called Khan’s resignation “an abdication of leadership, an abdication of responsibility to the Progressive Conservative Party,” claiming that Khan chose to “throw everybody under the bus” on his way out. Carter said an interim leader under Narth would be stronger than a permanent leader under Khan. “The PC Party needs to find direction. It needs to find its place in the Manitoba population, but I think that it is better positioned to do so today than it was last week,” he said. Khan, a former Winnipeg Blue Bombers player and businessman, won the Fort Whyte seat in a 2022 byelection. He became leader of the PC Party in April 2025, narrowly winning with 50.4 per cent of the points under the party’s point-based system. He was the first person of colour, the first South Asian and the first Muslim to lead the party. With Khan gone from caucus, the PCs hold 19 of the 57 seats in the legislature, compared with 34 for the governing NDP. The next provincial election is scheduled for October 2027. With files from CTV’s Jeff Keele and The Canadian Press
