A version of this article was first published in the Winnipeg Free Press June 8, 2016.
By Pete Hudson
Budget 2016 pledges $160 million to create 1,200 new Personal Home Care (PCH) spaces. It is to be hoped that this laudable move will be implemented based on the evidence. Regrettably this is a practice woefully lacking.
There is, for example, a consensus of experts in the field that long term care is a continuum. The Manitoba Centre for Health Policy (MCHP) study reported in the Free Press yesterday makes exactly that case. It found that an expanded Supportive Housing Program could meet some of the predicted increased need, thereby reducing the need for more PCH beds. An identical argument was made in a 2012 MCHP study which included the Home Care Program The combination of the two programs has already reduced the admission rate to PCHs. In short, the new government should avoid favouring one part of the system at the expense of others.
Don’t let the name of Manitoba’s latest budget “Correcting the Course” fool you: this budget stays the course, at least in the immediate term. It is a status quo budget that continues with many of the initiatives of the previous government and does little new to address income inequality and poverty issues. If one is to glean any information as to how they plan to really change course, one needs to unpack some of the messaging incubating in the background information. We’ll get to that in a moment, but first let’s examine what hasn’t changed much, and why.
By Lynne Fernandez
It will take more than one budget – hastily prepared – to fully appreciate the Conservatives’ master plan, but the Throne Speech, a fiscal update and Ministerial mandate letters tell us what we should be keeping our eye on.
Finance Minister Friesen’s dire warnings about the size of the deficit (at just over $1 billion) cause him to blame the NDP for overspending. But the $366 million difference between the Conservatives’ estimate and the NDP’s relate to expenditures that appear unavoidable, including flood disaster assistance and environmental liability costs. There’s also $143 million in federal compensation for the 2011 flood that the province has yet to receive, but is forthcoming.
By Lynne Fernandez and Nicole Smith
Each year up to 400 mostly Mexican workers come to Manitoba under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) to work on local farms. They perform physically strenuous work on vegetable farms and in greenhouses for up to eight months, year after year. Workers regularly toil twelve hours per day, six to seven days a week, and they live socially isolated from Canadian society.
Social enterprises fill an important gap in Manitoba’s economy for those struggling to enter the workforce. The provincial government has seen the value of investing in social enterprises through funding training and procuring housing retrofit services. This in combination with financing from the Manitoba Hydro Pay As You Save (PAYS) program is producing great results. For instance, 194 people are employed in the six social enterprises involved in this study.
By Lynne Fernandez
Throne speeches typically are run-of-the-mill exercises that say very little while evoking lofty ideals such as prosperity, innovation and “establishing an open principled government that reflects the values and priorities of Manitobans . . .”. Pretty hard to argue with any of that.
But in case you’re wondering who gets to decide what Manitobans’ priorities are – because let’s face it, we’re a pretty diverse group with different ideas – the answer is quite clear: business gets to decide what Manitobans’ priorities are.
By Cora Morgan
Children need to feel and see they are important members of their communities and treated as such. A new study out Tuesday finds that Manitoba has the highest number of on-reserve First Nations children in poverty in the country at 76 per cent and the highest indigenous children in poverty off-reserve at 39 per cent. This number is rising and the situation is getting worse. There is no excuse for this in a wealthy country like Canada — this is a state of emergency.
The recently elected Progressive Conservative (PC) party in Manitoba ran on a call for change. But change for the sake for the sake of change can cause more harm than good, especially for Manitoba’s most marginalized. While there are many policy areas to monitor, here are four to watch as they begin their mandate.
By Fletcher Barager
The Manitoba Employers Council (MEC) recently released a report that delivers a damning indictment of the Manitoban economy. Fortunately for the province it is the report, not the economy, that deserves the failing grade.
Deploying a selective set of economic indicators, the report compares Manitoba’s economic performance not to that of the other nine provinces, nor even to the national average, but to a select group of four―a group that not coincidentally contains the four wealthiest provinces, and four of the six largest.
With this realignment, Manitoba moves from its accustomed mid-level placing in the national rankings to a slot at the bottom of this handpicked group. A Free Press editorial (April 5, 2016) then claimed that the report “shows Manitoba failing in almost every key economic indicator”. A strong claim, but not an accurate one. And certainly not a sufficient foundation to support the MEC call for smaller government and lower taxes.
Assessing economic performance, admittedly, is not straightforward. Different indicators highlight different aspects of the economy and also different economic outcomes.
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