Wab Kinew, Manitoba’s NDP Premier, is running out of other people’s money.
A doubled deficit on life support
The mid year fiscal update now pegs Manitoba’s deficit at about $1.6 billion, more than double the $794 million shortfall forecast in the spring budget. What was supposed to be contained has blown wide open, blamed on “faster than expected spending” and a familiar parade of “one offs” from fires to droughts to floods, disasters that somehow recur in one form or another every year.
This follows a $1.2 billion deficit in 2024 25, roughly $800 million worse than projected in the previous budget; this is not bad luck, it is awful planning. Taxes and fees, including education property taxes, are coming in higher than expected, so the government is running enormous deficits even while digging deeper into a decreasing base of taxpayers’ pockets.
New federal figures show Manitoba set to receive just over $5 billion in equalization in the upcoming fiscal year, up about 7.5 per cent from roughly $4.68 billion and about double what the province received in 2020. Manitoba is the only western province dependent on equalization and, after Quebec, its second largest user in gross terms.
On a per capita basis, Manitoba far surpasses Quebec and is the largest, or one of the largest recipients of federal transfer payments. In other words, we are Canada’s biggest welfare recipients and have been for years. This is a choice that should be unacceptable to Manitobans for ourselves and for our children…
From Minnesota to managed decline
Manitoba did not always underperform. In the 1960s, its growth rates were comparable to similar sized jurisdictions like neighbouring Minnesota. The divergence that began in the 1970s, coincides with Manitobans repeatedly electing socialist NDP governments, embedding command and control economic thinking in policy and driving the province off the path its US peers followed.
The comparative numbers today are stark. In 2022–23, Minnesota’s GDP per capita sits around 78,000 US dollars, with Iowa and Kansas in the low 70,000 dollar range and South Dakota above 74,000. Manitoba, by contrast, is about 46,800 US dollars per person, roughly 40 per cent below Minnesota and far behind most Mid-Western States.
In fairness, Wab Kinew is not the only incompetent NDP leader…
And 15% of the Manitoba provincial budget is covered by EQUALIZATION.
We Canadians outside of Saskatchewan and Manitoba rarely get news from the corporate media, since they consider the two provinces as flyover country. And what the media publish is always praiseworthy in helping Premier Kinew.
Jeez, that link for another incompetent NDP leader, should be directed to Drugstore Dave Eby.
He has a longer, more incompetent record than Nensharia.
At least the purple dick was limited to damaging a city, not a whole province,
Ninshipoop should be unelectable after the water main fiasco, but I’m sure the true believers of expansive government don’t care.
The thing about Manitoba is … much of it is a false economy. Its major sectors are Commercial Banking, Gasoline and Petroleum Wholesaling (?), and Healthcare. Since when is healthcare a sector of the economy? A necessary cost to the economy yes, but not something you want to be bragging about in the Economic Times.
Manitoba top employment sectors are Real Estate, Rental and Leasing, Healthcare and Social Assistance. I’m struggling to determine why Manitoba has a hot real estate sector but I’m comforted by the fact that two of its top employment sectors are health care and social assistance. It really is a social paradise. Thanks Alberta.
Your point about healthcare is spot on. Manitoba could claim it as a growth sector if people from other provinces were coming here to use it, but that’s clearly not the case.
When the Manitoba deficit numbers were estimated a year ago, the NDP said “next year” it will be much better, maybe near 1/2 of the current numbers, even while there’s no indication that was true, and then the equalization payments were made public, and the #Libranos federal gov’t is working overtime to make life more difficult from coast to coast. Amazing. What a country.
If you’re in Manitoba it may be interesting (but not at all “helpful”) to see what the NDP’s plan is for the year after AB separates and that $5 Billion disappears. I’m not saying believe whatever fiction the NDP tell you, no doubt that’ll be pure theatre, only that it may be helpful to “have a plan”.
Make friends with someone with access to garden land, figure out raising chickens/eggs, but to hope for gov’t aid is simply not going to happen. Their stores are empty, their ideas broken.
Trying to be optimistic, at least Manitoba isn’t an Atlantic province. There’s that.
The deficit is a joke when Manitoba gets $15 billion in transfer payments. That is 20% of their economy.
I think Manitoba’s take is a bit over $5 Billion, for 15% of their gov’t spending, 3 of the 4 Atlantic provinces are at 20% … However if the economy continues to crater, that deficit will continue to rise and a balanced budget will be as near as it is in BC, like not even a dream at that point, and while the federal gov’t may see spending more there is probable or necessary, I don’t know where they’re going to access that money. Perhaps ask Ukraine if they could help?
It isn’t the actual amount of the deficit, or the equalization payments, or how hooped Manitoba Hydro is, only the effect of this fiduciary malfeasance is what’s important.
I’m certain it won’t be AB equalization payments which are paying for their assistance then.
The Manitoba NDP will look at that deficit and say, “we have no alternative” and start to cut everything all at once. It’s unfortunate to get to that point but it’s not like the laws of economy care if they’re “trying” to stop spending. The deficit will have risen to crisis levels by then and Manitoba citizens should have a plan.
I’m not joking about tilling the front lawn to plant a victory garden.
” what difference, at this point, does it make? ” (someone infamously said)
They’ll just get another 5 or 10 billion from Saskalta, and their books will be in the black !
I thought I’d ask the very left leaning Gemini AI a question about this:
“Could Manitoba continue to exist without Equalization payments?”
Here’s the response. And, keep in mind that Gemini is coded to acquire information from those sources that the liberal programmers think appropriate:
((Manitoba “could” technically continue to exist without equalization, but it would face severe fiscal challenges, requiring significantly higher taxes or major cuts to essential services like healthcare and education to maintain comparable levels to other provinces, likely leading to economic decline, “brain drain,” and increased national tension, as equalization underpins Canada’s commitment to reasonably comparable public services across all provinces. ))
This…exactly this, is why Alberta will never be allowed to seek independence and compromise the Equalization tribute for non-producers such as Manitoba.
This is part of the reason for which Canada will oppose AB separation.
We have a legal framework for this, and if tier 2 Canada refuses to negotiate terms, there is way forward with that too.
They can’t stop us. We’re not responsible for whatever “national tension” or regional disparities remain.
Yup, they’ll oppose.
I would guess the Forever Liberal Federal Government will take steps that make their actions against the Trucker’s Convoy look like a water balloon fight.
In the minds of Liberals from coast to coast, Alberta is the antithesis of K-bec.
There won’t be outpourings of love, that’s for sure.
Certainly the Elbows Up proles will shout/tweet “Hurry up and leave, you traitors!” while the powers in the shadows attack – they know where their bread is buttered.
Alberta needs to remove every RCMP office in the province prior to any vote, given their long history of engaging in “dirty” (i.e. criminal) conduct in the province.
Good one Orson. I asked Grok the same thing and the summation is:
No, Manitoba could not realistically continue to exist in its current form without federal equalization payments. Losing this funding would create a massive, immediate fiscal hole that would force extreme austerity, major tax hikes, deep service cuts, or a combination of all three—likely leading to severe economic and social disruption.
If it were not for Kanadians being addicted to free stuff and being paid more than they are worth, the Dippers wouldn’t exist.
For you hardcore Dippers out there, a “living wage” does not exist. The laws of economics cannot be broken no matter how hard commies and socialists try. Paying a person more than what he produces causes inflation and destroys the value of the money he is given. Even at $1,000 per hour there will still be working poor living under the bridge. Unfortunately, only a few understand this enough to know free stuff ain’t free and overpaid means perpetually poor.
It’ll only get worse.
Manitoba Hydro has been touted, by a variety of leaders over the years, as our equivalent of the oil patch. But the gushers of money never actually materialized. Whenever Hydro had a surplus, it instantly disappeared into general revenue. The cost overruns on new dams, particularly in the Doer years, were legendary. And don’t get me started on the idiotic decision not to build a transmission line down the east side of Lake Winnipeg. Manitoba voters, it seems, deserve to get what they ask for, and are now getting it good and hard, to paraphrase Mencken.
Manitoba communists kept Turdeau Liberals around despite him shipping much of the prairie’s tax business from Winnipeg to Charlottetown, Jonquiere, and Sudbury. Must have pulled out at least 1,000 jobs.
Until 1970 or so Winnipeg was the financial capital of the west. Much of downtown Winnipeg was built within 10 years of that date. Manitoba still did a shitload of mining and every agricultural business was headquartered in Winnipeg as was a ton of distribution and manufacturing. I wonder if the communist, Ed Schreyer, killed it. Schreyer and his commie clones along with the chickenshit rudderless Conservative Quislings likely killed the golden goose.
Oh but Winnipegers just loved Lloyd Axworthy.
Wasn’t there supposed to be a CF-18 Maintenance facility in Winnipeg, run by Bristol Aerospace, which was cheaper than what Bombardier sucked out of Canadian Taxpayers?
Just like the F35 maintenance contract is going to L3Harris in Mirabel – couldn’t even us a Canadian Company this time around.
So will this year’s equalization payment go up?
Has it ever gone down?
Canoe is a greasy corrupt grifter.
Don’t they sing a song about him? “Wab Kinew? You were coming? I’d have baked a cake! Wab Kinew, Wab Kinew, Wab Kinew!”