As the provincial NDP markets itself as a guardian of public services, the reality is quite different here on the ground in northern Manitoba.
For while the New Dems may paint the opposition Tories as scissors-carrying budget-slashers, the governing party must answer for some cruel cuts of its own.
The most notorious NDP cut came in mid 2012 when the government not only slashed, but outright eliminated, a subsidy for Greyhound that had enabled a broad highway bus schedule for the northern region.
The NDP believed that some $4 million a year wasn’t worth the expense to ensure northerners, particularly low-income earners and seniors who lack their own vehicles, could access a crucial and timely link to the rest of the province.
Recently, in a lame pre-election gambit, the NDP announced it would commission a study that could restore bus service, though it’s not clear to what extent.
The basis of the idea is that the province spends significant dollars to transport its employees throughout the province. By contracting a bus service to meet those demands, the NDP believes it could also potentially make public busing available in communities where it is lacking.
It sounds like a convoluted half-measure, but what’s most insulting is that it took the NDP three-and-a-half years, right before an election, to even pretend it cared enough about northerners to try and rectify a problem of its own creation.
Another wrong-headed NDP cut also came in 2012 when the province reportedly did away with overnight shifts for highway maintenance workers.
At the time, a government official told the Winnipeg Sun the move would save more than
$2 million a year and mean 12 fewer seasonal workers would be needed come winter.
In an editorial, the Brandon Sun slammed the decision, aptly noting: “In our opinion, the province is attempting to cut corners on safety on the backs of rural Manitobans and rural businesses, and hiding behind the phrase
‘fiscal responsibility’ will not change that fact.”
A couple of years earlier, in 2010, Manitoba Public Insurance, a Crown corporation, was allowed to eliminate in-vehicle testing in Flin Flon for class 1, 2 and 3 driver’s licences.
The new testing location? The Pas. Surrrpize, surrrpize! They never get anything from the government, do they?!?
Then there are the NDP’s de facto cuts to education. Case in point: mandating class-size caps without providing enough cash to the Flin Flon School Division to cover the added costs.
That means more dollars must be drawn from elsewhere in the budget, meaning those other areas sustain cuts.
What’s funny about the NDP’s “only we can protect services” horsecrap isn’t so much that it’s a bald-faced lie – it’s the hypocritical sense you get from New Dems that any cut to any government spending is always bad.
But was it so bad when the NDP cut health-care positions – albeit at the administrative, not front-line, level – when it merged regional health authorities across the province in 2012?
Actually, no, considering that much of the public prefers to see precious health-care resources expended on items other than bureaucrats. Alas, the NDP itself has proven that useful government cuts are not mythical occurrences.
I’m not siding with any one party, by the way. If you ask me whether the Progressive Conservatives or Liberals value $4 million in savings over a healthy menu of busing options for northerners, I will say that I don’t know.
But there’s no sense in pretending that the NDP is above enacting vicious cuts that harm Flin Flonners and other northern Manitobans for the sake of a few bucks.
They’re not. And the fact that they make believe they are is offensive to voters who know better.
Local Angle is published on Fridays.
