Manitobans have an opportunity to provide input into the provincial budget, or at least pretend that they can, for one more week. The in-person consultations are over, but the survey is still open if you wish to have your say, as we careen towards a $1.6B deficit.

I have no idea if the opinions of ordinary people like you and me make a difference, but I took the survey in case it does. I suspect at some level it does — what it really is is an opinion poll, and governments pay attention to polls. Surveys like this also give people who take them an idea of where the government’s head is at when it comes to priorities.

Question number one, logically, is about “rebuilding health care”. No surprise. Most people are aware that our health care system has serious issues and would probably list improving it as a high priority, but you don’t get a say in how that should be done. You can only see what the government is thinking:

• recruiting and retaining staff
• adding beds and surgical capacity
• open new ERs and clinics
• mandating nurse to patient ratios
• etc

The problem is that one of these things will probably make the problem worse. I would have liked to have had the ability to give my opinion on that, because it is one of the most expensive and also most likely to be executed.

The Premier promised to open all three ERs that were closed by the previous government, already moving ahead with reopening one. Why do I say it won’t work? Because people who seem to know what they’re talking about say it won’t work, like this guy, like a doctor that I know personally, and like the contributors to the Peachy report:

“currently, all hospitals in the WRHA are considered to be acute care facilities. This means that they all have emergency departments, they all have critical care units, and they all strive to provide the same level of acute care on the medical wards. By doing this, the system has evolved into an expensive, unsustainable model that is failing patients”

Closing the ERs was unpopular no doubt, and failed to produce the results we needed. But it wasn’t the wrong thing to do — it was poorly executed by the Pallister government who rushed the process and pushed ahead with it even as the pandemic created enormous strain on the system. What we should be doing is repairing the system, not reverting to a system that was “unsustainable and “failing patients”.

A short story to close off this one: I recall one of the very first promises made by Gary Doer back in 1999 (?) was ending “hallway medicine”. Throughout 16 years of NDP rule under Doer and Selinger spending on healthcare increased steadily (and unsustainably) as a share of the provincial budget — Access clinics opened, Quick Care clinics opened, nurses were guaranteed to be among the highest paid in the country — but healthcare metrics never really improved much and “hallway medicine” was never eliminated. Food for thought.

Question number two is about “lowering costs for people”. Their ideas:

• cutting the gas tax
• providing relief to renters and homeowners
• lowering the cost of groceries
• freezing hydro rates

No, Probably not, No, and Are you fucking kidding me?

Firstly, cutting the gas tax further is a bad idea for three reasons: it reduces government revenues at a time when we can’t afford it; it encourages increased burning of fossil fuels and increased emissions, harming the environment and the NDP’s environmental credentials; and it is regressive because it tends to benefit wealthier suburban folks more than less wealthy urbanites (although rural people of any income level benefit from it perhaps more than most). In real terms, the retail price of gas has been getting cheaper over time. As something we ought to be using less of, making it even cheaper is not the right move.

Re. the cost of groceries and housing: I am not certain these are provincial problems to solve. They are macro problems that impact everybody everywhere. They aren’t caused by provincial policy for the most part and won’t be solved by provincial policy. I am afraid that any attempt to do so will waste a bunch of money and create inefficiencies, but I guess we’ll see what they put forward …

High housing costs are largely a supply problem. If our friends on Broadway want to help, they could start by reining in the Manitoba Municipal Board, and not encumber Winnipeg and other jurisdictions with another hurdle to jump when they want to build housing.

As for freezing hydro rates, I almost have a hard time believing they are suggesting this. Two months ago the Public Utilities Board approved a rate increase above what Hydro proposed because it was “necessary to protect the long-term financial health of the Crown utility”. Are we not concerned about the long-term financial health of Hydro? Manitoba Hydro is over $25B in debt and pays $1B annually in interest charges. Piling on more debt is not wise policy. Hydro debt is Manitoban’s debt, and freezing rates only imperils Hydro’s financial stability and credit rating.

I am not going to go through each question in the survey. I have less to criticize about most of them, but I found it interesting that “reducing the deficit” was last in the list. I hope this is not a reflection of their priorities. Not all deficits are bad deficits, but $1.6B deficits that are twice as large as they were budgeted to be, when you are supposedly aiming to balance the budget, are not great. One would hope this is a focus over the next fiscal year.

Anyhow, go take the survey and have your say. Let your MLA know what you think. Let Adrien Sala know what you think, if you think what you think is important. You have one more week to have your say, officially.