Premier Greg Selinger and the NDP government want you to believe that they are looking for some savings. After last years billion dollar deficit and the recent announcement that the NDP will not balance the provincial budget by 2014 as previously promised, Mr. Selinger has said he is looking to cut costs. And to help him out, Manitoba Progressive Conservatives offered him a couple of suggestions this past week.

The first cost saving suggestion we made to Mr. Selinger was to scrap the new vote tax that his government is looking to bring in. Several years ago the NDP created a scheme that would give political parties taxpayer subsidies based upon the number of votes that a political party received in the previous election. This subsidy for political parties would have given the NDP about a quarter of a million dollars every year in taxpayer dollars.

Because of public pressure, the NDP backed away from this plan but right after the election came up with a new one and are moving full steam ahead to establish a new subsidy for political parties. The NDP are determined to get taxpayers to pay for the operations of their political party. As Progressive Conservatives, we have said there is enough taxpayer support for political parties already and there doesn’t need to be more. If Mr. Selinger is serious about looking for savings, this would be a good place to start.

Also last week, we brought forward information that the NDP government currently has 192 marketing and communications staff across government costing more than $12 million every year. These 192 staff spend their time getting out the NDP government’s message. It’s a 60% increase in communication staff since 1999. Just looking at the Department of Health alone, in 1999 there were 4 communication positions. Under the NDP there are now 41.

It is interesting that at a time when the NDP is cutting important government services such as snow clearing that it is also stocking up on government communicators to ensure that positive ‘spin’ is put on stories. In comparison, while the NDP government has 192 communications staff, the Progressive Conservative Caucus has only one.

These are just two ways in which the NDP government could save millions of dollars. One is to stop trying to get more taxpayers dollars to fund their political party and another is to reduce the number of government communication people who are there to spin stories and provide a buffer between NDP politicians and the media.

Given the fact that the NDP government is running record deficits and has no idea when it will be able to balance the budget again, you would think they would want to take measures like these to reduce costs. But then again, since these savings would impact the NDP itself, they likely are not the kind of savings Mr. Selinger is looking for.