October 3, 2023 is the Manitoba election. The ruling PCs led by Heather Stefanson are on the ropes after first coming to power two terms ago in 2016. They deposed an unpopular, exhausted and divided NDP dynasty that had held office for seventeen long years. The NDP is on the cusp of retaking power under the leadership of Wab Kinew. Kinew was leader in the 2019 election and was soundly defeated. If the NDP wins, he will become the first Indigenous provincial premier in Canada.
The Manitoba election has seen the PCs adopt a nasty scapegoating strategy against trans people first developed by America's right-wing movements and now provincial governments in Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Ontario. The scapegoating of trans people under the guise of “parental rights” serves to rally its right-wing base among various conservative and religious communities. However, scapegoating of this nature is also about deflecting attention and scrutiny from the PC government’s terrible policies of permanent austerity, privatization, and profits over people.
Kinew and the NDP have positioned themselves against the PC’s scapegoating and have also pushed hard on promises of healthcare reinvestment. However, a closer investigation reveals a broad and deep consensus between the NDP and PCs on most economic and fiscal policy. These shared policies put wealthier people and business interests first while containing social programs, public development and democratic planning within the strict confines of permanent austerity. The following is an attempt to unpack aspects of this right-wing consensus between Manitoba's PCs and NDP.
Embracing PC austerity budgets
The Manitoba NDP’s foundational economic policy is a
commitment to a balanced budget “within the fiscal framework of the 2023
Summary Budget.” (source)
In other words, after eight PC budgets that strangled the province in favour of
the rich and business class, the Manitoba NDP, if elected, will proceed within
the confines of the most recent PC austerity budget. How the NDP will deliver
on its promises under conditions of austerity raises serious questions. This is especially true of their
promise to reinvest in healthcare.
The NDP’s healthcare promises largely revolve around
restoring what was cut by the PCs over the past seven years. The NDP promises
to restore Emergency Rooms at three Winnipeg hospitals (Seven Oaks, Victoria,
Concordia) and in Eriksdale. Other reversals of unpopular PC cuts include the
restoration of plans to build a second Cancer Care building at the Health
Sciences Centre, reopening the Mature Women’s Centre at Victoria Hospital, and relaunching
the St. Boniface Hospital’s cardiac care centre. An MRI will be added to the
Thompson Hospital. To address the healthcare jobs crisis which only deepened
with the pandemic, the NDP promises to hire 100 home care workers, 300 nurses,
and 400 new physicians. It also plans to recruit international healthcare
professionals.
This effort to restore healthcare to what appears to be
pre-PC levels would have to happen within the confines of the 2023 PC budget. Yet, as the NDP itself has pointed
out, the PCs have accrued a $911 capital funding deficit over the span of
eight budgets. Furthermore, if the Manitoba NDP were to spend all the money allotted to healthcare
capital expenditures in 2023 PC budget, healthcare capital expenditures would
still be $151 million less than the first PC budget in 2016-17. If the NDP is
going to boost capital and operating expenditures in healthcare, the critical question
is where this money will come from.
Beyond the promise of restoring healthcare services, there are no NDP promises to expand the sphere of public healthcare in Manitoba. For example, in the critical area of long-term care, the Manitoba NDP has no plan to bring for-profit long-term care under public ownership in response to the unacceptable failures of privatized ownership and its deadly corrupting influence on public health policy. This stands in contrast to the Ontario NDP’s 2022 election platform and federal NDP’s 2021 election platform, both of which promised to bring long-term care under public ownership (albeit dubious promises under very long multi-term timelines). In this sense, the Manitoba NDP is more like the ruling BC NDP which has done nothing to end private profiteering in long-term care.
Austerity Tax Regime for the Rich
If the Manitoba NDP implements a balanced budget based on
the 2023 PC budget, then where will the new healthcare spending come from?
Relatedly, how will the Manitoba NDP find the money to deal with the
inflationary pressures on labour costs in a highly-unionized public sector?
Normally, a government seeking to increase spending for public
development would either go into deficit or raise revenues or both. Deficit spending is
out of the question with the NDP’s balanced budget promise. As for raising revenues, the NDP is doing the opposite.
While promising a “broad middle-class tax cut”, with no
details attached, Kinew has announced
no new income tax increases on the wealthy. His 2019 election promise of higher
income tax on people making over $250,000 has been scrapped. Given how
progressive taxation works, a “broad middle-class tax cut” will mean substantial tax cuts
for the richest Manitobans.
There is also no sign of revenues being raised from the
business class which has enjoyed a steady few decades of regular tax breaks. For
example, Manitoba was the first province where taxes on small business were eliminated. This wasn't a Pallister or Filmon policy, but an NDP policy introduced in 2010. As of July 2023, only the Saskatchewan Party of Scott Moe has followed the Manitoba NDP's footsteps and abolished small business taxes. There are no Manitoba NDP promises to raise
taxes on businesses or excess business profits.
The NDP is also promising other tax cuts. It promises to
maintain the PC government’s 50% property tax rebate (Education Property Tax
Credit). This took a $453 million bite out of the last budget. The NDP is also temporarily
cancelling the gas tax. This promise in particular has drawn criticism as a “right-wing” policy. However, the gas tax is a flat tax that
hits working and poor Manitobans the most. Eliminating flat taxes like this are a good
idea, but only if they are replaced with progressive taxation. In the case of
the gas tax, a progressive tax policy might be a new tax on luxury
vehicles, but the opposite is in fact happening.
Under the guise of climate policy, the NDP is
promising a $4,000 rebate for anyone purchasing an Electric Vehicle. EVs are
notoriously expensive. The cheapest mass production EVs on the Canadian market
are the hatchback Nissan Leaf at $40,000 and Chevy Bolt sedan at $39,000. EV
car batteries need to be replaced every five years, and these units cost at
least $5,000 and cost more for larger capacity. New affordable gas
cars are still in the mid-$20,000s. EV rebates are not an inherently bad idea to help transition off gasoline vehicles, but this policy is going to help rich people first, not those of us driving cheap gasoline vehicles because it's all we can afford. Getting $4000 off a new EV isn't going to cover a $15,000+ jump in price.
The NDP’s tax policies will not raise revenues and will likely do the opposite. They favour the wealthiest Manitobans who have already enjoyed years of low-tax regimes. Any hope of tax relief for working-class Manitobans will be undercut by austere balanced budgets that will strangle public services and likely lead to wage repression - first in the public sector which will then drag on private sector wages.
A Road to Nowhere
The NDP’s entire transportation strategy appears to revolve
around EV tax breaks. There has been no promise to restore Winnipeg’s 50/50
provincial-municipal transit funding even though Winnipeg Transit is marred by lacklustre service, chronic understaffing, and numerous other problems stemming
from austerity budgets. Winnipeg Transit infrastructure and services have
fallen behind in significant ways as priorities continue to favour private car
transportation.
The Manitoba NDP’s environmental plan includes a vague
promise to “create new jobs in electric transit” and “grow our economy” by
working with companies like electric bus manufacturer, New Flyer. Presumably
this means helping replace and renew bus fleets New Flyer's electric buses (a crown corporation privatized by the NDP in the 1980s). However,
such capital expenditures will do little to improve the operating budget
problems, such as those suffered by Winnipeg Transit. Lack of funding empowers management to maintain their part-time employment strategy which guarantees high turnover, lack of retention, and deteriorating working and service conditions.
Last May, in a
speech to the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, Kinew said part of his climate
strategy included new mining of the province’s critical minerals for export to
the United States and use in EV manufacturing. In the absence of a crown mining
corporation and a plan to develop value-added EV manufacturing in Manitoba,
this strategy guarantees that Manitoba’s natural wealth will be sucked out of
the province by multinational corporations and leave mining communities at
their mercy.
Most mining communities as well as northern and rural communities have no bus or
rail service. The NDP has made no statement on the restoration of bus services
since Greyhound’s corporate abandonment of Western Canada in 2018. There is also
no word on any kind of partnership with the Arctic Gateway Group, the
consortium of First Nations and northern municipalities, which owns the
Hudson’s Bay Railway. The Arctic Gateway Group has promised passenger rail service, but
so far does not offer it. The Pas, the HBR’s southernmost point, only connects
to Winnipeg via VIA Rail. An opportunity to restore passenger rail transit to
the north, along with the jobs and tourist money it brings, have been ignored.
The NDP governments of Doer and Selinger subsidized the privatized HBR during its 17 years in office, despite its multinational owner, Omnitrax, allowing HBR to collapse into disrepair and severing the vital rail link to northern communities and the Port of Churchill. When it comes to how Manitobans get around, the NDP has several interlocking plans to support a corporate-dominated EV market, but provides no response to collapsed or decimated transit systems.
Housing
Promising to build “more social and affordable housing” is
the vague framework for the NDP’s housing strategy. How the NDP intends to do
this is through targeted tax breaks and rebates which have done nothing to reverse the housing crisis in other provinces.
At a Manitoba Chamber of Commerce event on September 19, Wab
Kinew announced the elimination of PST for developers building new rental
units. It is unclear how this tax break for private developers will result in
more affordable rental units given that no mechanism was outlined by Kinew.
There was no cost estimate for the developer tax break.
Taking a page out of the BC NDP’s playbook, Kinew has also
promised a one-time $700 rebate for renters. Beyond this, there are no promises
of more effective rent controls, only the tweaking of controls
around above-guideline rent increases. There remains no rent control for units
vacated by a tenant, meaning if one tenant ends their lease, landlords can set
the rent at whatever they like for the next tenant.
It is not at all obvious how this strategy will build “more social and affordable housing” when the government is not directly involved in capital financing of supportive non-profit social housing for those most in need, or capital financing of co-operative housing that once upon a time was very attractive to younger working families. The NDP housing strategy looks to keep private developers in the driver’s seat and tenants subjected to “market forces” rigged by landlords and developers.
Pro-Scab
While promising change for Manitoba’s workers, including the vague promise of 10,000 new jobs (no timelines, no specifics), Kinew has already signaled to employers that the long-standing
labour demand for anti-scab laws will not be entertained. In
October of 2022, Manitoba NDP convention delegates once again voted unanimously
in favour of anti-scab laws. While claiming anti-scab “makes sense”, Kinew
signaled his willingness to delay any such policy through “consultation” and claiming Manitobans don’t understand the issue.
The anti-scab law is pretty simple and straightforward law, and
it is certainly the case in Manitoba’s labour ranks. It means an employer can’t
hire someone else to steal the job of a worker who is on strike or locked out. The
demand for anti-scab has been heard recently again from the MGEU picket lines at the
Manitoba Liquor and Lottery and MPI strikes. Anti-scab policy is nowhere to be
found in the NDP’s election plans.
When it comes to anti-scab laws, the Manitoba NDP has a long and shameful history dating back to 1976-77 when Ed Schreyer’s NDP government allowed Griffin Steel to destroy a union through mass scabbing backed up by extensive police violence. The next NDP Premier, Howard Pawley, was first elected in 1981. Pawley ignored renewed labour demands for anti-scab in favour of Final Offer Selection which did nothing to address scabbing, and instead empowered arbitrators.
When a new NDP dynasty came to power in 1999, Premier Gary Doer, former leader of the MGEU, rejected the ongoing demands for anti-scab in favour of the 60-day automatic arbitration law. This arbitration law has done little to improve the lot of workers and labour while violating Charter Rights to strike and bargain collectively. By comparison, NDP governments in Ontario and BC introduced anti-scab laws in the 1990s, and the Parti Quebecois introduce anti-scab laws at the same time as the 1977 Griffin Steel strike. In the 55 years since Schreyer was first elected in 1969, the NDP has held power for 32 years and won eight elections. Every time it has refused to bring in the anti-scab law.
Silence on workplace democracy
As for democratic reforms to union recognition laws, Wab
Kinew’s NDP has said nothing, even though the BC NDP introduced “automatic card
check” in 2022 some five years after first forming government. Such reforms
allow workers to freely exercise their Charter Rights of freedom of association
and collective bargaining. This means having governments and employers recognize a union if more than half the
workforce join a union by signing membership cards.
Wab Kinew is not promising this. Nor is he promising to restore the very-limited union recognition reforms brought in by Gary Doer’s NDP in the year 2000. Doer’s labour law required unions to achieve 65 percent membership cards signed in a workplace to achieve automatic recognition – otherwise a vote supervised by the labour board had to take place following a seven-day period in which employers could retaliate, intimidate and bust the union. It is unclear if Doer's reform really helped workers form unions, as union density in Manitoba under the 1999-2016 NDP governments actually dipped from 37.2 percent to 35.1 percent, with public sector union membership growing from 99,000 to 130,000, but private sector union membership declining from 67,000 to 63,000. (Source: Statistics Canada tables 14-10-0129-01 and 14-10-0070-01)
Doer’s law was quickly repealed once the PCs came to office in 2016. The PCs eliminated limited automatic card check, and implemented its own two-stage system involving a board-supervised vote seven days after membership cards are submitted to the Labour Board. This is the system favoured by employers and the business lobby because the two-stage system gives them time to interfere with union organization through many underhanded means, legal and illegal.
Inflation, wages and public ownership
Last but not least, workers across the province are seeing
wages eaten up by inflation. There will be immediate pressures on an NDP
government operating with a wage-suppressing PC budget. It is here where the
NDP’s extensive patronage relationships with senior union leaders will come in handy for them. As happened under the last NDP government, strikes declined and were even reduced to zero in some of the later Doer/Selinger years. Cooperation between
the NDP government and its friends at the top of the unions ensured labour
peace while workplace grievances mounted, and union democracy and power suffered. Union
organization and strength were at a low when the PCs came to power in 2016, and
it showed.
The patronage relationships between senior union leaders and
the NDP will continue with any new NDP government, but inflationary pressures will
put major strains on this relationship. This will be the case if public sector workers
move too fast and hard against lousy government wage offers for the union brass to head the members off. Anticipate the traditional NDP strategy of threatening job cuts in lieu of real wage cuts. At present, it
appears that the senior union leadership in Manitoba has no interest in rocking
the NDP boat. No union leadership in the province is demanding
anti-scab laws or automatic card check from the NDP.
At the moment, strike votes being taken by Manitoba healthcare workers at the facilities owned or operated by corporate healthcare giant, Extendicare. Yet, the NDP has no answer
to such sectors that got hammered in the pandemic. As mentioned, the Manitoba
NDP’s healthcare plans do not include any significant expansion of public
healthcare, including long-term care. Like Schreyer did with
home care services, the long-term care sector could and should be brought under public non-profit ownership
and control. Working conditions and quality of care could be boosted by
reinvesting the public and patient money that companies like Extendicare are sending
to shareholders and corporate executives.
In another sector where public non-profit ownership and union jobs are superior to the for-profit, non-union alternative, the NDP is only promising limited change and $10 million more for the province's public child care system. The plan here is to bring non-profit child care fees down to $10 per day. There is no promise of expanding the public child care system.
Conclusions
The Manitoba NDP’s promise to operate within the “fiscal
framework” of the 2023 PC budget puts radical limits on what is possible under
a new NDP government. This promise is the party’s key message to its real base: the business class. Shifting money around in this budget to
repeal or marginalize the most unpopular PC policies is
entirely understandable to a business class that by and large grasps the
necessity of maintaining a degree of legitimacy for the ongoing rule of
business. The PCs can and have become a liability to the business class's status quo, and the NDP promises to stabilize this situation.
The prospects of the Manitoba NDP carving out a different
path forward are long gone. This should have been obvious enough during the Doer/Selinger years. Should the Manitoba NDP win this election, it will be a restoration of the permanent austerity regime of the Doer/Selinger
years. No sectors of the economy will be brought under public ownership and
democratic planning. If the Doer years are any indication, NDP allies in labour
and even community groups will stay silent over NDP-imposed austerity.
One can already anticipate labour and progressive ranks being warned of protesting an NDP government because it will lead directly to a return of the PCs. Dissent will also be attacked by the substantial layer of union leaders, staffers, and NGOs that have long-standing and lucrative patronage relationships with the NDP. Yet, the necessity of an attack on the business-approved austerity consensus will require addressing the fact that Manitoba long ago lost an alternative to the status quo.
There is more than one wolf in sheep’s clothing. The NDP's blackmail of the left and democratic dissidents is all about keeping it contained, dependent and subordinate to the right-wing consensus. For the Manitoba left and union members fighting for a democratic redistribution of wealth and power from the few to the many, get ready to take on a right-wing NDP government.