Brian Pallister - Conservative MP

Conservative MP

The Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties merged on December 22, 2003, and Pallister became a member of the resulting Conservative Party of Canada. He initially considered launching a bid for the new party's leadership, but instead endorsed outgoing Alliance leader Stephen Harper for the position. He was easily re-elected in the 2004 election, in which the Liberals were reduced to a minority government. In July 2004, he was appointed to the Official Opposition Shadow Cabinet as critic for the Minister of National Revenue.

Pallister gained increased national prominence in September 2005 after drawing attention to $750,000 worth of apparent spending irregularities in the office of David Dingwall, the Chief Executive Officer of the Royal Canadian Mint. Dingwall resigned after the accusations were made public, but later claimed that his expenditures were inaccurately reported and fell within official guidelines. An independent review completed in late October 2005 found only minor discrepancies in Dingwall's expenses, amounting to less than $7,000 in total. Pallister criticized this review as "little more than a whitewash", and argued that the auditors failed to include numerous ambiguous expenses in their findings.

Prior to the 2006 federal election, the Winnipeg Free Press reported that some Manitoba Progressive Conservatives were trying to persuade Pallister to challenge Stuart Murray for the provincial leadership. Murray subsequently resigned, after 45% of delegates at the party's November 2005 convention voted for a leadership review. A subsequent Free Press poll showed Pallister as the second-most popular choice to succeed Murray, after fellow MP Vic Toews. Pallister campaigned for re-election at the federal level, and was noncommittal about his provincial ambitions. When a reporter asked him why he would not elaborate his plans, he was quoted as saying that he was "copping what's known as a woman's answer It's a sort of fickle kind of thing." Some considered this remark to be sexist, and he later apologized.

Pallister was easily re-elected in the 2006 campaign. The Conservative Party won a minority government, and Pallister requested that Prime Minister-designate Stephen Harper not consider him for a cabinet portfolio while he was making his decision about entering provincial politics. On February 17, 2006, he announced that he would not seek the provincial party leadership and would remain a federal MP. He was appointed as chair of the House of Commons standing committee on Finance, and in 2007 indicated that he wanted to remove financial access to offshore tax havens such as Barbados. Later in the year, he was appointed parliamentary secretary to the Minister of International Trade and to the Minister of International Cooperation.

Pallister surprised political observers in January 2008 by announcing that he would not run in the next federal election.