Budget Needs Focus

It would be an understatement to say that the provincial budget, to be unveiled later this month, is important. Already some bond rating agencies have put the province on notice that there may be further downgrades to the provincial credit rating if the massive NDP deficits continue.

And Manitobans have put the NDP on notice as well. They have spoken loudly and clearly that they are paying enough in taxes and fees and Premier Selinger and his MLA’s had better not come back to them asking for more.

So this will be a difficult budget for the NDP and for Manitobans. Mr. Selinger has already broken a promise to have the budget balanced and he seems unable to produce a budget that isn’t hundreds of millions of dollars in the red. And while he has been more than ready to ask Manitobans to pay more, that will be a very very difficult thing to do in this budget.

What it means is that, more than ever, this is a budget that needs the full and complete focus of government. And yet, that doesn’t seem to be happening. The NDP still seem unable to bridge their differences after several months of a very public and nasty family feud. In fact, more than a month after their leadership convention re-elected Greg Selinger as the NDP leader, seven NDP MLA’s are still not allowed to attend and participate in NDP Caucus meetings.

Last week things got so bad that two NDP MLA’s decided to create a “Pledge of Solidarity” document and publicly ask other NDP MLA’s and staff to sign the document as an indication that they will no longer fight each other or speak to the media about each other. Naturally, the “Pledge of Solidarity” did more to highlight the problems in the NDP then it did to solve them.

But even more troubling, it pointed to the fact that the NDP is a government that is distracted and dysfunctional at a time when Manitoba desperately needs a focused and effective government. The upcoming budget has significant ramifications for Manitobans both now and in the future. A downgrade to our credit rating will cost Manitobans in higher debt servicing for years to come. Any further tax increases will hurt families and cause even more people to consider moving to other lower taxed provinces.

The upcoming budget needs all the attention and focus that a government can possibly muster. And sadly, it comes at the worst possible time because there may never have been a Manitoba government that is more distracted and less focused then the current NDP government.