How’s this for misplaced priorities?
When you drive into Flin Flon, you pass a taxpayer-funded running track that is hardly ever used; when you need to fly out of Flin Flon for medical reasons, your taxpayer-subsidized escort will no longer be able to join you.
I realize that I’m talking about two different public entities controlling two different pots of money – the Flin Flon School Division and the Manitoba government – but as they say, there is only one taxpayer.
According to previously reported figures, the school division spent $672,922 to upgrade Queen’s Park as of September 2014. Trustees later voted to spend up to $75,000 for additional landscaping, fencing and new basketball hoops.
To his credit, Trustee Tim Davis opposed the extra spending. He spoke for many taxpayers when he said, “I just figured that we had spent enough money on it already.”
As many a taxpayer has noted, the running track, soccer pitch and basketball hoops appear to receive little use, at least relative to their $700,000-plus combined price tag.
Not zero use, of course, but enough to make residents question whether that cash should have been better allotted in the classroom or returned to taxpayers who have been feeling the squeeze.
The Queen’s Park upgrades made all the less sense considering students already had places to run (Foster Park, Creighton’s Oval of Dreams), play soccer (Phantom Lake, existing school fields) or shoot hoops (four school gymnasiums, École McIsaac School playground).
Fast forward to 2017 and Manitoba’s PC government, pressured by mounting debt and declining credit ratings, is looking to cut spending without damaging the public good.
And so comes a policy to kibosh a subsidy offering affordable airfare to the escorts of sick or injured northern Manitobans who fly to Winnipeg for medical reasons.
The province’s Northern Patient Transportation Program currently allows patients and their escorts to purchase commercial flight tickets for $75 each, far below the standard price.
While eligible patients will continue to have this option, the province is set to remove the subsidy for escorts at a date yet to be announced (presumably soon).
According to the province’s calculations, this will save… are you ready for it? A whopping… $1 million per year!
Remember the scene in Austin Powers where Dr. Evil’s henchmen have to point out that $1 million really isn’t much money anymore? Someone needs to counsel Premier Brian Pallister’s aides.
As Flin Flon MLA Tom Lindsey rightly noted, the subsidy cancellation will be “devastating” for people in the North who need help getting around the city.
Lindsey said some patients may need an escort because of mobility issues, dementia or simply being elderly and lacking familiarity with Winnipeg.
One can appreciate that the province is facing smaller health care transfers from Ottawa and the harsh reality that no matter where spending is cut, someone will complain.
But support for sick or injured northerners who out of necessity must travel 800 km away from home? That’s a cruel cut that reinforces every negative stereotype people have about the PCs.
The Queen’s Park upgrades obviously played no meaningful role in the province’s present-day financial troubles.
But the truth is there are a million little unnecessary endeavours like Queen’s Park, funded by multiple levels of government, that add up to big bucks.
If we could magically crop out that spending, then transfer the dollars to a generic pot of money earmarked for valid purposes, perhaps the real needs of people, particularly the sick and injured, could be met.
