Has Manitoba Left The West?

Manitoba football fans may have begrudgingly accepted the fact that our province’s Canadian Football League team plays in the East Division, but outside of football, most Manitobans clearly identify themselves as being western Canadians.

It’s no wonder then that Maclean’s magazine in a recent article entitled, “Manitoba Can’t Get Any Respect”, noted that Manitobans should be troubled by the exclusion of our province from Western agreements.

Over the past several months, there have been several agreements signed to improve cooperation among western provinces to remove trade barriers, work cooperatively on fighting crime and improve the ability to invest in the provinces. While that should sound like good news to Manitobans, the problem is Manitoba isn’t included in any of these agreements. In fact we weren’t even invited to the table.

The fact is that while Manitoba’s NDP government boasts about the provincial economy being stable over the past number of years, it fails to mention that we also missed out on the economic boom that benefited the residents of Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia.

Maclean’s describes Manitoba this way: The province’s debt load, meanwhile, is higher than when the NDP took office a decade ago. The West’s once-in-a-lifetime boom seems to be over—before Manitoba ever had a chance to cash in. As billions churned through B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan, Manitoba alone was unaffected—the province the boom forgot.

The reality that Manitoba did not benefit in the way it should have from the decade of growth in other western provinces is regrettable. The fact that, as Maclean’s points out, our province’s debt load went up when others were paying down their debt is a lost opportunity. Just as troubling however, looking forward, is the long-term negative impact of being left out of discussions and agreements between other western provinces. Being isolated from the rest of the west on these agreements will mean being less competitive and that means fewer jobs and less opportunity for growth.

So what does Maclean’s see as being the reason Manitoba is falling behind and left out of western agreements? It’s not a lack of resources or diversity. Instead, they point to the fact that the NDP government seems content to rely on getting 40% of its revenues as a result of transfer payments from other provinces. Because Manitoba relies so strongly on revenues from other provinces it depends on the success of other provinces. That reliance doesn’t leave other western provinces believing Manitoba plays a big role in the future economy and is one of the reasons we are increasingly left out of important discussions and agreements.

Manitobans may be able to stomach our team playing football in the east division, but they should demand the NDP make it a priority to restore our status economically so that we are not shut out of the west completely.