If I told you that some far-right Republican state government in America was denying full funding to an urgent health care project, you probably wouldn’t be surprised.
If I told you that this same Republican administration refused to reveal how much taxpayer money it had just handed over to big business,
you might shrug your shoulders.
But if I told you that this government is actually of the Canadian, social-democratic and Flin Flon-supported variety, you might say I’m full of beans.
Well, I’m not. Manitoba’s NDP government, for reasons only it fully understands, is guilty as charged.
As has been reported extensively, the NDP has pledged a new, modern hospital ER for Flin Flon – but with a costly string attached.
Northern Manitobans must – somehow, someway – fundraise as much as $4.4 million, if not more, for this massive project.
The NDP argues that the fundraising prerequisite is emblematic of a provincial-community partnership and allows area residents to “have a say and be involved” with the new ER.
It’s alarming that the NDP apparently believes people only deserve a
say if they fork over personal cash in addition to their tax dollars. Is this democracy to the highest bidder?
And if private sector funding requirements are such wonderful, funderful things, why apply them only to Canada’s supposedly public health care system?
Why not hold bake sales for the revamped highway to Bakers Narrows? Or set up lemonade stands to buy new RCMP cruisers? Perhaps a penny drive for the water treatment plant?
Indeed let no government project pass by without teaching us all the valuable lesson of sharing!
Won’t disclose
Almost as offensive as that notion is the NDP’s newfound refusal to disclose how it disperses taxpayer dollars to private mineral exploration companies.
For years the province has operated the Mineral Exploration Assistance Program (MEAP), which partially covers expenses for prospecting outfits searching for viable ore in (mostly northern) Manitoba.
Journalists never had a problem finding out how much cash from the public purse was flowing to each company – until this year, that is.
In a surprise move, the NDP has done away with MEAP transparency. While taxpayers know
that MEAP is doling out $3 million to 22 companies in 2014-15, they aren’t allowed to see how that sizable chunk of change is being divvied up.
Defending the insulting new policy, a provincial spokesperson said a MEAP dollar breakdown would divulge “sensitive information” that a benefitting company’s competitor could use to their advantage.
But what about giving taxpayers the advantage of knowing how their money is being spent? For the NDP, that is secondary to the hypothetical fears of for-profit companies who get to have their taxpayer-funded cake and eat it, too.
When Flin Flonners helped re-elect the NDP in 2011, they believed they were getting a government committed to the principles of public health care and that understood dollars don’t grow on trees in the North.
They were convinced the NDP would be transparent, that even if they disagreed with why tax revenue was being spent, at the very least they would always know how it was being spent.
Silly them.
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