Credibility in short supply for Manitoba’s memory-challenged Tories

Opinion

Exactly 364 days after a provincial election returned the NDP to power, is it finally time for Manitoba Progressive Conservatives to leave the political penalty box?

The fall sitting of the Manitoba legislature, which began Wednesday, certainly offers the wounded Tories some much-needed opportunities to escape the legacy of their time in government. But it will still be a struggle.

There is no one way for parties to rebuild and recharge after losing an election. Depending on the popularity of the governing party that replaces them, it can take years to re-establish political credibility.

At this point, that credibility continues to be elusive for the Tories.

Last week, the NDP released the 2023-24 public accounts, which featured a $1.97-billion deficit, the largest in the province’s history outside of the worst years of the global pandemic.

Although the NDP certainly contributed to the deficit — it was $300 million larger than estimated in an economic update last fall — the lion’s share of the deficit can be fairly attributed to the Tories.

In their last budget before the election, delivered in the spring of 2023, the Tories forecast a $363-million deficit. The public accounts confirmed that over their last year in government, the PCs overshot that target by more than 400 per cent.

Part of the increase was due to losses at Manitoba Hydro, which was suffering from drought conditions that dramatically lowered net income. However, as many critics have pointed out, everyone knew about the drought and the PC government’s optimism in the face of unambiguous weather data was little more than an election-year deception.

There were also hundreds of millions of dollars for new schools and other expensive capital projects that were announced in the run-up to the election, but never built into the budget.

But the biggest fiscal mistake the Tory government made was aggressively cutting taxes during its time in government.

Over the eight years they were in power, the Tories cut more than a billion dollars out of annual revenues — more than a billion dollars of lost revenue each and every year going forward.

As they continued their tax-cutting agenda, the Tories were warned by economists and political observers that they were weakening the very foundations of the treasury and, in the process, undermining their ability to deliver core services.

Progressive Conservative premiers Brian Pallister and Heather Stefanson dismissed those concerns out of hand. The public accounts now stand as an irrefutable record of their fiscal foolishness.

Can any political party shed that kind of baggage is just one year?

Truthfully, the last year has been tough sledding for the Tories.

The prime role of the official Opposition is to level criticism at the governing party to ensure accountability. However, the criticism the Tories have levelled at the NDP to date has been pretty cringey, considering the deep hole they dug for government before losing the last election.

For example, when the public accounts came out, interim PC leader Wayne Ewasko said the NDP had put government on a path to “financial disaster.” He tried to blame the deficit on an NDP post-election “spending spree that has primed the pump for tax hikes and large deficits for years to come.”

We should give Ewasko credit for keeping a straight face while he tries to blame the NDP for the current fiscal mess created by his own party. In fact, his ability to suppress his political shame reflex and double down on attacks against the NDP is, in its own way, a sign of political accountability.

The logic here may be somewhat tortured, but here goes: governing parties that get their asses kicked in an election do not have the luxury of retaining the pride and arrogance they enjoyed while in government. They did a bad job and voters punished them.

However, wallowing in their defeat or shying away from criticizing the NDP for not meeting their own lofty expectations would be a dereliction of their duties as opposition critics. You can say a lot about Ewasko’s talk track right now, but he’s not wallowing.

The bigger problem going forward is that the Tories, after putting us in this fiscal mess by cutting taxes, are largely silent on the NDP’s biggest fiscal mistake to date: the extension of the provincial gasoline tax holiday.

Giving away more than $300 million annually at a time when health care and education are suffering, and the NDP government is straining under a record deficit left by the Tories, has become the albatross around Premier Wab Kinew’s neck. So counter-intuitive is the gas tax cut that if his government runs into additional fiscal headwinds, he will have no one to blame but himself for the reduction in services that will follow.

Lamentably, given their misinformed belief that tax cuts solve all economic woes, that is not a point the Tories are prepared to make. It doesn’t help the opposition’s cause that Kinew has largely kept all of the Tory tax cuts.

The Tories will eventually have their day at some point in the future when the NDP’s accomplishments and failures become more important than the mistakes of the previous government.

But that day is, unfortunately for Manitoba Tories, not today.

dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com

Dan Lett
Columnist

Dan Lett is a columnist for the Free Press, providing opinion and commentary on politics in Winnipeg and beyond. Born and raised in Toronto, Dan joined the Free Press in 1986.  Read more about Dan.

Dan’s columns are built on facts and reactions, but offer his personal views through arguments and analysis. The Free Press’ editing team reviews Dan’s columns before they are posted online or published in print — part of the our tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.

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