[1] The letter led to a heated debate between Pankiw and Saskatchewan Liberal cabinet minister Jack Hillson on the university campus.
Owing to strong support from the rural areas of the constituency, Pankiw won re-election with a plurality of 6,360 votes.
[3] Pankiw joined with a small group of Alliance MPs informally led by Chuck Strahl that called for the resignation of party leader Stockwell Day.
However, by this time he was involved in another controversy, after an Aboriginal lawyer alleged that an inebriated Pankiw had made lewd gestures to him in a Saskatoon bar, and challenged him to a fight.
[citation needed] Pankiw finished ahead of Maddin in third place, behind runner-up Peter Zakreski.
[7] Pankiw sought re-election in the 2004 federal election, against Conservative candidate Brad Trost, Liberal Patrick Wolfe, and New Democrat Nettie Wiebe.
Ritz had represented Battlefords—Lloydminster since the 1997 election, which he won after defeating Pankiw's father George in a heated contest for the Reform Party nomination.
In the 2015 federal election, Pankiw ran as a candidate in the recreated Saskatoon West riding for the Canada Party which he had created.
[11] On May 3, 2016, a unanimous Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan reversed the impaired driving conviction of Pankiw and entered a judicial stay of proceedings.
After returning to Canada on a flight from the Dominican Republic, he deboarded the plane during a layover and ran onto the tarmac, jumped a razor-wire fence, and was found at a nearby museum.