The Kinew government will announce plans to freeze Manitoba Hydro rates for a year, starting in 2025, in today’s throne speech.
A source told the Free Press that delivering the measure — a notable plank in the NDP’s 2023 election campaign — is a priority.
Electricity rates rose two per cent in 2023-24, in addition to an interim 3.6 per cent hike introduced a year earlier to address drought-related challenges.
RUTH BONNEVILLE / FREE PRESS FILES
In today’s throne speech, the NDP government will announce plans to freeze Manitoba Hydro rates for a year starting in 2025.
The new affordability measure comes on the heels of the Crown corporation revealing another dry year that featured record low water conditions had resulted in a net loss of $157 million during the latest fiscal period ending March 31.
“People are suffering. Cost of living is rising and there’s actually limited things governments can do,” said Malcolm Bird, an associate professor of political science at the University of Winnipeg.
Pausing hydro hikes is unlikely to make a significant dent in household savings, but it shows the NDP is making good on a campaign promise, Bird said.
The announcement is being made against the backdrop of a gas-tax holiday slated to expire at the end of the calendar year.
During the second year of its mandate, the government will already be looking ahead to the next election and how to show tangible improvements and a positive track record on health care and affordability, Bird noted.
The cost-of-living crisis, health-care staffing shortages and reconciliation were key themes in the speech this time last year that ushered in the first Manitoba government led by a First Nations premier.
Manitobans can expect much of the same when the second session of the 43rd legislature begins this afternoon.
“We’re going to be talking a lot about health care, the economy and making life more affordable for you,” Premier Wab Kinew said last week, when asked by reporters what to expect in the second year of his mandate.
Kinew said the government also wants to address how people are feeling at present, and share a message of positivity and “coming together.”
“What unites Manitobans? I would say it’s the sense that we have freedom to live the life that we want here,” he said.
“We’re only free as Manitobans if you have that money in your pocket to be able to do the stuff that you want to do with your kids — if you have the health care that you need to be able chase after them in the yard or go skating with them on the local rink.”
But from his view inside a Winnipeg emergency room, Dr. Doug Eyolfson said the limited number of hospital beds available and related challenges continue to be “demoralizing.”
“We’re trying to be hopeful for the future but it’s hard to keep going when you’re in midst of it,” said Eyolfson, a former Winnipeg Member of Parliament who practises emergency medicine at Grace General Hospital.
Eyolfson noted multiple colleagues were on the verge of tears as they moved stretchers around in a jam-packed hallway Sunday.
The NDP has made “small improvements” with new hires and in-patient beds but there is no quick fix, he said.
“This is going to take more than one full term in office to fix. This might take a decade to fix,” he said, adding significant investments in both in-patient and long-term care beds are desperately needed.
Chuck Davidson, president and chief executive officer of the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce, said the government needs to grow the economy in order to pay for services that improve lives and also balance the budget before 2027.
Davidson said the government has to promote itself outside of Manitoba and address the out-migration of young people in order to do that.
And he said Donald Trump’s recent election victory south of the border — which has given rise to trade concerns in Canada — makes that self-promotion particularly important.
He has been lobbying for Manitoba to have its own trade representative in Washington.
“We still don’t have a trade strategy in Manitoba. We still don’t have an economic development strategy in Manitoba,” Davidson said. “We’re hoping that the throne speech might provide a bit of a glimpse.”
On the education file, the province is expected to bring its teacher registry online, develop Holocaust curriculum and increase resources to combat Islamophobia in schools in the coming months.
“We can expect, certainly, stuff on teacher education and Indigenous languages — reclaiming them and retrieving them in some way and building a process to do that,” said John Wiens, a retired superintendent and dean emeritus at the University of Manitoba’s faculty of education.
The province recently tapped a teacher, who is both Anishinaabe and Métis, to create a curriculum framework for both Indigenous land-based education and Indigenous languages.
Following the throne speech, a choir made up of students from Riverbend Gikinoo’amaagewigamig — a kindergarten-to-Grade 5 school with an Indigenous-language immersion program — is slated to close Monday’s ceremonies in the chamber with the singing of the national anthem in Anishinaabemowin.
Wiens said he is urging officials to implement stricter monitoring of home-schooling and introduce financial-disclosure requirements for school board candidates this year.
The NDP should take steps to ensure the integrity of school boards and “be more bold,” he added.
As post-secondary institutions grapple with a reduction in international-student enrolment due to the new federal cap, the Manitoba Organization of Faculty Associations is calling for new funding to address shortfalls.
Also on the subject of international students, association president Allison McCulloch questioned the status of an NDP pledge to restore health-care coverage for non-Canadians on local campuses.
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ Manitoba director, Molly McCracken will be looking for new affordability measures targeted at low-income and working-class Manitobans in the throne speech.
The progressive think-tank is in favour of improved income transfers through the tax system after the Parliamentary Budget Officer reported the bottom 40 per cent of households on the income spectrum have lost purchasing power and upper-level earners have become wealthier.
While noting the Kinew government has shown strong support for reproductive rights, McCracken said she anticipates the throne speech will include details to further advance the rights of women and LGBTTQ+ people.
“For example, acting on their commitment to funding the capital improvements at the Women’s Health Clinic,” she said.
McCracken added she’s hopeful Manitoba will take full advantage of federal funding for housing, infrastructure and health care ahead of the looming election and a change in Ottawa that could turn off the tap.
Lt.-Gov. Anita Neville is scheduled to read the speech from the throne at 1:30 p.m.
carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca
Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter
In 1997, Carol started at the Free Press working nights as a copy editor. In 2000, she jumped at a chance to return to reporting. In early 2020 — before a global pandemic was declared — she agreed to pitch in, temporarily, at the Free Press legislature bureau. She’s been there ever since.
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