By Jim Silver
Brian Pallister has said that if his Conservative Party wins this month’s provincial election, he will not rule out the possibility of experimenting with privatization in Manitoba’s health care system.
It may be worth recalling what happened when the provincial Conservative government privatized 10 percent of Winnipeg’s home care market in 1997. Mr. Pallister was Minister of Government Services at the time, and was fully in support of the “innovative” privatization experiment.
By Susan Prentice
Childcare is a surprisingly important election issue. It figured prominently in the 2015 federal election, and is playing a role in the 2016 Manitoba provincial election. Why does childcare warrant such political and public attention? The answer lies with demographics, care deficits, federal cutbacks and most importantly political choices.
By Josh Brandon
Manitobans rate themselves to be a generous and caring society. When natural disasters strike, we are the first to respond. Manitobans are Canada’s most reliable donors to causes both at home and abroad. So how is it that poverty continues to afflict more than 140,000 Manitobans, including 40,000 children? Quite simply, as dedicated volunteers at Manitoba’s many food banks and shelters confirm, poverty cannot be solved by charity. It requires determined collective effort through government policy and leadership.
By Cheryl Lysy
With the provincial election around the corner, parties are gearing up with promises for Manitobans. The Liberal leader, Rana Bokhari, is promising to turn liquor sales into private business. The Conservatives and NDP have stated they will not privatize liquor stores. As a social work student, former employee of Manitoba Liquor Control Commission and current employee at the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba, I am concerned.
By Brianne Goertzen and Michael Barkman
Lazy, entitled, apathetic, disengaged, these are just some of the words that are used to mis-categorize and label post-secondary students. The reality of the average Manitoban student strings together a series of part-time jobs, incurs large amounts of student debt to pay for tuition and figuring out how to make their food budget stretch until another pay day.
By Josh Brandon
Budget 2016 provides some welcome news for nearly 600,000 Canadian families who depend on social housing. The budget allocates $2.3 billion dollars over two years for housing initiatives. While this announcement falls short of the amount housing activists have said is needed, and lacks many important clarifying details, it will provide relief for up to 100,000 families experiencing homelessness or at risk from unaffordable housing.
By Jim Silver
Provincial government policy can be designed to punish those in poverty, or to reduce poverty. Both approaches have been tried in Manitoba, the first in the 1990s and the other more recently. We can compare these approaches by examining Winnipeg’s inner city.
Over the past 15 years, and especially the past five years, Winnipeg’s inner city has benefitted from a community-led form of development supported by substantial public investment. The Winnipeg Foundation, United Way of Winnipeg and other such public bodies, and especially the provincial government, have led the way in investing public dollars in initiatives and strategies driven in large part by inner city community-based organizations (CBOs). Neighbourhood renewal corporations, women’s resource centres, youth-serving agencies, alternative educational institutions, social enterprises and a wide variety of Aboriginal organizations have developed sophisticated anti-poverty strategies in which public dollars have been invested.
By Tina Keeper and Shauna MacKinnon
Winnipeg Free Press columnist Gordon Sinclair’s depiction of Wab Kinew is offensive with damaging implications that reach beyond the election (WFP March 12th and 26th, 2016). Sinclair uses his privileged position as a columnist to portray Kinew as a violent man who can’t be trusted; a person with ulterior motives and someone to be feared. It’s shocking that Sinclair, a powerful and intimidating man himself, describes feeling physically threatened by Kinew stating that he offered to shake Kinew’s hand at a recent press conference because “walking up and offering my hand to him first was a good idea, because you know what they say. A man can’t hit you when you’re shaking his hand.”
Having attended that event, we were taken aback by Sinclair’s representation of events, especially in the context of a city and province struggling to deal with deep-rooted racism.
While there is no excuse for the misogynistic, homophobic words Kinew communicated in past years, there is a broader conversation that needs to take place and longer term implications to be considered.
By Greg MacPherson and Molly McCracken
The province has invested widely in community development and “place-based” approaches to renewal and poverty reduction, with many positive results. Place-based approaches such as these are now being adopted in communities across the country as research shows that residents overwhelmed by poverty need complementary supports and resources close to home. Innovative, grassroots, community-led initiatives make a difference and are a wise public investment. Take the West Broadway neighbourhood as an example.
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