It was quite the spectacle at the Manitoba Legislature last Friday as Premier Greg Selinger shuffled his cabinet in an effort to convince Manitobans that his government is now fresh and reinvigorated.
All of this was somewhat predictable of course. The NDP and Mr. Selinger have, as a result of increasing both the provincial debt and taxes, been falling out of favour with Manitobans. So it was expected that they would try to shuffle the chairs around the cabinet table.
It’s hard to imagine that the shuffle will have much of an impact on either Manitobans or the direction of the NDP government however. After all, the NDP have been in power for 13 years and many of the faces around the cabinet table have been there making decisions the entire time. In fact not only did every cabinet member vote to break a 2011 election promise and raised the PST from 7% to 8%, every non-Cabinet NDP MLA did as well. So regardless of which NDP members were going to be shuffled in or shuffled out of cabinet, it wasn’t going to look like much of a change.
The other problem is that regardless of where the NDP members sit in cabinet or in the Manitoba Legislature, collectively, they are committed to economic policies that are driving up our debt and increasing our taxes. And they are led by a Premier whose spending problem has become Manitobans high tax problem.
Since coming to office in 1999, the NDP have had many cabinet shuffles. With each of these shuffles either Mr. Selinger or his predecessor Mr. Doer put forward the idea that it would bring new energy to the government. And yet, with each, it was proven over time that not much of anything changed. In fact it has become clear that there is only one shuffle that is going to make much of a difference in reducing debt and taxes. And that is when the NDP are collectively shuffled out of government.
