On Monday the NDP government delivered its first Throne Speech under the leadership of Premier Greg Selinger. A Throne Speech is the government’s opportunity to outline in general terms its vision for the province as well as the opportunities and challenges that are ahead.

This week’s NDP Throne Speech was long on the problems that Manitoba faces, but very short on potential solutions.

In the speech the NDP admitted that the financial position of Manitoba was worse than what they had been leading residents to believe over the past several months. It was just a few weeks ago that the former NDP Premier, Gary Doer, told the Legislature our province was the “economic engine” of the country. This week, the new Premier said our economy would actually shrink this year and that even tougher days were ahead.

That should hardly come as a surprise. For some time the NDP has been warned that its reliance on handouts from Ottawa, which now make up nearly 40% of the budget, was no way to prepare the province for tough economic times. But over the past decade when economic times were good in North America, the NDP lived like a downturn would never come and spent every penny that came its way.

As a result, Mr. Selinger now admits that the province has a problem, but he has offered no solution. He has warned that Manitobans will have to do with a little less, but he has not indicated his willingness to make the decisions needed at the government level to lessen that pain. He is still committed to wasting more than $600 million dollars on building the new Manitoba Hydro transmission line down the much longer western route instead of the safer, cheaper and more environmentally friendly eastern route. He is still wasting millions of dollars on enhanced ID cards that Manitobans are not interested in buying.

Not only did Mr. Selinger not provide any indication he is willing to reverse these decisions to help soften the blow for Manitobans of the downturn in the provincial economy, he offered little hope for how the province will grow and become less reliant on Ottawa handouts in the future.

In fact, for the first time in memory, the Throne Speech didn’t even mention the role that Manitoba Hydro will play in the economy. The total failure to mention the province’s largest and most important Crown Corporation is shocking. Perhaps this slight is the result of the recent accusations by Hydro insiders that the Crown Corporation under the NDP government is in far worse financial shape that is being publicly disclosed.

The first Throne Speech by Mr. Selinger frankly outlined many of the problems that Manitoba faces after 10 years of NDP government. What was missing was any indication on how those challenges will be confronted.