There’s a familiar bit of folk wisdom that coarsely delineates the relative merits of nebulous verbal assertions and direct material commitments.
Money talks, the saying advises, and bull(excrement) walks.
There are few arenas in which this holds more true than in politics, and its veracity is never more clearly on display than in the run-up to an election.
MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Files Premier Heather Stefanson
Despite its being a fundamental aspect of electoral politics for as long as ballots have been cast, however, Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative government seems only very recently to have seized upon the idea that loosening the figurative purse strings is a necessary part of whatever plan its strategists have for convincing voters a third governing mandate is warranted.
The watchword of this PC government — particularly under former premier Brian Pallister, but similarly so since Heather Stefanson assumed its leadership — has been austerity. Across-the-board budget cuts, consolidation and contraction of health-care services, civil-service attrition, refusal to negotiate with public-sector unions and a seemingly obsessive focus on reducing taxes and putting more money back on Manitobans’ mythical kitchen tables (even when doing so required borrowing money) have driven the Tory agenda.
While the PCs would undoubtedly defend all this as prudent management of public accounts, the tangible results of their uncompromising approach have been an overwhelmed and understaffed health-care system, a cash-starved and compromised education system and, as reflected in numerous public-opinion polls in recent years, a widespread feeling among Manitobans that this government has run its course.
Until very recently, there was nothing to suggest anything but ignominious defeat awaits the Stefanson government in the upcoming provincial election. But the latest Probe Research poll shows a decided uptick in the Tories’ public approval — the PCs and NDP are tied in overall support provincewide, and the New Democrats’ still-substantial lead in vote-rich Winnipeg is slightly less formidable than in previous surveys.
The explanation is not difficult to divine: those in charge of the Tory re-election effort have finally figured out that the only escape from their plummeting-popularity predicament is to spend their way out of it.
An additional $14.5 million into Winnipeg’s “stratetic infrastructure” basket, a commitment of $260 million for school capital projects in the province, $4.9 million for manufacturing training at Red River College Polytechnic, $3.4 million to hire 19 new Crown attorneys, an $8.7-million investment in addictions treatment spaces, $2.9 million for development of renewable transportation fuel processing, $5.9 million to increase capacity for joint-replacement surgeries, a $30-million joint federal/provincial investment in early-learning and child-care training, $2.4 million to enhance virtual mental-health supports for rural and remote areas, $154 million to improve access and reliability of northern health services, $7.5 million to support the province’s commercial beekeepers.
That’s just a sampling of the Tories’ spending announcements since June 1. With the pre-election blackout period destined to bring the payout parade to a halt before summer’s end, we can expect an even more frenzied distribution of largesse between now and mid-August.
The odds remain long that PCs will be able to avoid a stern reckoning at the hands of voters, but Ms. Stefanson and company have clearly decided to either spend their way to victory or go out in a blaze of munificent glory the likes of which Mr. Pallister could never have entertained.
Whether this sudden unshackling of funds talks loudly enough remains to be seen. But there’s no question continued austerity would have walked the Tories right over to the other side of the legislative chamber.
