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…