The NDP government has, finally, decided to return to the Manitoba Legislature. This week it announced that a provincial budget will be unveiled on April 30th and that will also mark the beginning of a new legislative session.
Those that follow Manitoba politics will know that an April 30th start date is late, very late, for a spring session. In fact, last year the spring session began almost a full two months earlier. By the time the NDP get back to the Manitoba Legislature virtually every other provincial legislature in Canada will have already been sitting for weeks.
Of course, the late return of the Manitoba Legislature is just another sign of the dysfunction that is evident in the NDP government as it continues to suffer from division and leadership challenges. When the legislature does start up again and the budget is unveiled, further signs of that dysfunction are likely to appear.
When the NDP government announced the April 30th budget date, the rookie Finance Minister Greg Dewar seemed to indicate to the media the NDP would be breaking a past election promise to eliminate education tax from the property bills of seniors. Of course, after breaking a promise not to raise the PST, yet another broken promise wouldn’t have surprised anyone. But a couple of hours later, the NDP Finance Minister was again back before the media this time vowing to keep the commitment. When asked how he was planning to pay for the promise, which will cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars, he couldn’t provide an explanation.
It’s a bad sign when the province’s Finance Minister, who should be the person most familiar with the fiscal state of the province, seems unable to answer simple questions about financial promises and commitments. Sadly, this is more of a pattern than an aberration. Neither the new NDP Finance Minister, nor the previous two, have been able to tell Manitobans when they will be able to finally bring the province’s books into balance. With annual deficits nearing half a billion dollars, the target for a balanced budget continues to get pushed back further and further to the point that the NDP seem incapable of ever balancing the budget.
It seems like the beginning of the new legislative session on April 30th will look a lot like past sessions. The NDP will have the same leader and they will again be spending in the red with no idea how to pay for promises or ever balance the budget. For most Manitobans this is troubling, to say the least. For the NDP, it just seems to be business as usual.
