At around 8 am on the morning of Tuesday June 3rd, after more than 16 hours of voting and final debates on proposed legislation, the Manitoba Legislature ended its spring session which began in early March.
Like every spring session, a good deal of the time was consumed by questions and scrutiny of the Manitoba budget. It ended with the province under a state of emergency due to the forest fires which are impacting tens of thousands of Manitobans, many of whom are under an evacuation order. All Manitobans continue to keep those impacted by the fires in our thoughts and we pray for favourable weather so that those battling these blazes can get them under control.
For Manitoba Progressive Conservatives, the session was a significant one in many ways. The most important being that a new leader, Obby Khan, took on the role of Official Opposition leader after being selected as PC Party leader in April. Mr. Khan, who is the MLA for the Winnipeg constituency of Fort Whyte, quickly set about holding the NDP government to account for decisions that they were making. This included the NDP decision to increase taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars by eliminating the 50% rebate on school taxes that was in place when they came into government.
While the NDP have been busy increasing taxes on Manitobans, they have also been increasing the provincial debt and the annual deficit. One of the interesting things that happened during this session was in a committee known as Public Accounts. This is an all-party committee which reviews the past audited finances of the province and, following scrutiny, can approve the audited statements and report them back to the Manitoba Legislature. This spring, this all-party committee, including members of the NDP, reviewed the 2023 audited statements of the provinces finances and unanimously agreed with the report that confirmed that the former PC government left the NDP with a $373 million surplus. Unfortunately, that surplus has quickly been turned into a massive annual deficit by the NDP in less than two years.
And while there are, of course, many areas of disagreement between different political parties, Manitoba Progressive Conservatives were pleased to work cooperatively with the government to pass legislation to reduce the interprovincial trade barriers between provinces. Unfortunately, the NDP introduced this legislation just a few days before the scheduled end of the spring session which resulted in there needing to be several changes to the ordinary rules of passing bills to ensure this bill passed in time. It certainly did not have to be this way as the PC MLA for Midland, Lauren Stone, had weeks earlier introduced very similar legislation which could have been adopted. Instead, the NDP voted against that legislation and created, through their own actions, the real possibility that the trade legislation would not pass before summer.
Hopefully, now that the legislation is passed, the NDP show commitment to reducing trade barriers within Canada as our nation continues to deal with the unfair and unjust tariffs that have been imposed by the U.S. government.
While the Assembly is now done its spring session, throughout the summer there will continue to be committees and other work happening at the Manitoba Legislature and I look forward to spending more time at community events and connecting with local residents.
