Is MPI Really Broke?

Sometime soon, the NDP government is planning to go to the Public Utilities Board and ask for a rate hike on your auto insurance. The reason for the increase, according to Premier Greg Selinger and the NDP, is because Manitoba Public Insurance (MPI) needs the money after the long cold winter.

By now you may be noticing a trend. Every year the NDP come looking to Manitobans for more money. They asked you to pay more PST. They asked you to pay more in Hydro rates and now they are going to ask you to pay more for auto insurance. The frustrating part for Manitobans is that instead of looking for savings internally first, the NDP always turn to Manitobans and ask them to pay more. Asking Manitobans to pay more should be the last resort, but to the NDP it’s almost always the first option.

The expected rate increase on MPI is a good example. Just recently it was revealed that MPI had paid a retiring executive nearly $500,000 in a retirement package. And then, just a few days later, the NDP authorized the rehiring of that same person at $180 an hour to do consulting work for MPI. Hardly seems like the action of a company that is short on money. Don’t forget, it wasn’t that long ago that MPI purchased a Winnipeg mall, City Place. Currently they are renovating that mall. Not surprisingly, the renovations are already a million dollars over budget and the projects final costs have not even come in. Is that what you want your insurance premiums to be paying for?

These costs are in addition to the high-end company cars, sponsorships, advertising and expenditures on promotions that happen at MPI. Surely, the NDP, if they really cared about the pocketbooks of Manitobans, would be looking at trimming some of these costs before they came back to Manitobans looking for more money.

More and more I am hearing from local constituents who tell me that they are tapped out for money and that the high taxes in Manitoba are really impacting them and their families. That’s hardly surprising. In the last two years they have seen the PST increase from 7% to 8%. They have seen PST applied to their home insurance and they have been subjected to four Hydro rate increases in the past 18 months. It adds up to a lot of money coming out of the pockets of Manitobans.

And the reality is that in each of these cases, had the NDP looked for savings internally they could have found them. And those savings would have in turn spared Manitobans from having to pay more in taxes and Hydro and insurance rates. Instead, Manitobans continue to dig deeper and deeper while getting further and further behind.