The NDP leadership race was supposed to be a family feud. NDP leader Greg Selinger managed, barely, to fend off two challengers and keep his job as leader of the NDP and Premier of Manitoba. Unfortunately, this internal squabble ended up both hurting Manitoba and costing Manitobans.
It hurt Manitoba in that the government was distracted for more than six months which resulted in the Legislature being shut down and important decisions being delayed. It also hurt the province as the instability could only cause investors and others to think twice about what was happening in Manitoba and whether it was the right place to invest.
This week we learned however that the NDP family feud also had a very real financial cost to Manitoba families. That’s because the NDP revealed that it had dished out at least $670,000 in severance pay to seven political staff who were sent packing by Premier Greg Selinger.
And the reason that they were sent packing is because they did not support Mr. Selinger during the leadership race. This despite an assurance by Mr. Selinger that all of his staff was free to exercise their civil rights and work on the leadership campaigns of their choosing.
That was of course until he won, and then the house cleaning began. And it has come at a cost to all Manitobans. The seven staff members received in total $670,000 in taxdollars’ to go away quietly. This extraordinary amount of severance was “negotiated” by Mr. Selinger despite the fact that some of the staff had hardly worked in government for two years. And it was done because Mr. Selinger had made a promise and then broke that promise.
The obvious question is why should Manitoba taxpayers have to pay for this at all. This was all the result of an NDP family feud and an NDP leadership convention. Why should Manitobans have to pay the nearly $700,000 out of their pockets to clean up the mess. Shouldn’t the NDP as a political party pay the money? The $670,000 staff severance is money that can’t go to help reduce wait times in our healthcare system, or to improve our education system or to improve infrastructure. It goes directly to clean up an NDP mess.
In defending the massive severance payouts, Mr. Selinger simply said that this was business as usual. Indeed it may be business as usual for the NDP, who have a long history of giving big payouts to their friends, but for that vast majority of Manitobans there is nothing normal about this situation.
The NDP leadership race did enough damage to Manitoba as it is, it’s a further disgrace that Manitobans are forced to reach into their pockets to pay to help clean up the mess.
