Stefanson begins new year sporting denial-coloured glasses By: Tom Brodbeck Posted: 7:00 PM CST Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/01/2023 (712 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If Premier Heather Stefanson’s sit-down interviews with local reporters this week were designed to turn public opinion around, less than nine months before a scheduled Oct. 3 election, they flopped.

The premier did a series of “year-end” interviews with several media outlets, including the Free Press, after illness and a family trip to Florida prevented her from doing them at the end of December.

Year-end interviews are an opportunity for premiers to set the tone for the new year. In the case of a government struggling to find public support, it’s a chance to rebrand and reconnect with voters. Instead of seizing that opportunity, Stefanson trotted out the same old rhetoric that tax cuts and a tough-on-crime agenda is what Manitoba needs right now. The only thing she plans to do differently in 2023 is improve her government’s communications strategy.

“We’ve achieved a lot over the last year, but people don’t necessarily know some of the things that we’ve achieved,” she told the Free Press.

In fact, Manitobans are well aware of the Tory government’s record. It’s just that few would call what they’ve done over the past few years “achievements.” Starving hospital budgets and chasing away front-line health workers after a botched consolidation plan (and depriving nurses of a contract for four years) could hardly be considered achievements. Those actions have caused severe staff shortages in emergency departments, operating rooms and on medical wards. The Tories’ funding cuts to physiotherapy have contributed to backlogs in surgical procedures.

Limiting funding to public schools has negatively impacted the quality of K-12 education, including increased class sizes. Some schools can no longer afford full-time librarians. Despite that, Stefanson insists her government has a stellar record.

“I think we’ve got a really good story to tell and we’re looking forward to telling it,” she said.

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of Stefanson’s messaging this week is her claim that polls showing her government is well behind the NDP in public support are wrong. She says the fact her party won two byelections in Winnipeg last year (Fort Whyte and Kirkfield Park) is proof of that, even though byelections say nothing about the public’s voting intentions in a general election.

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of Stefanson’s messaging this week is her claim that polls showing her government is well behind the NDP in public support are wrong.

Stefanson is in denial. That’s a fatal flaw in politics. When premiers and prime ministers are not nimble — and humble — enough to admit their mistakes and change course, they almost always pay a hefty price at the ballot box. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is political suicide. It appears that’s where the Tories are headed.

Stefanson says her government will cut taxes further in 2023. That’s not only bad policy (especially as the province continues to starve municipalities, public schools and hospitals of much-needed resources), it sends a mixed message to the public.

The premier has been complaining for the past year that the reason Manitoba is short doctors and nurses is because of a lack of federal funding. The Council of the Federation, which Stefanson chairs, took out inflammatory ads last year claiming it’s Ottawa’s fault the provinces don’t have enough money to adequately fund health care. Despite that, the Stefanson government plans to reduce the provincial government’s own-source revenues by cutting taxes further, leaving the province with even less money to recruit and retain health-care staff. It’s a regressive policy that will hurt Manitobans.

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Finance Minister Cameron Friesen bragged last year that his government’s tax cuts add up to more than $1.1 billion a year since 2016. That’s over $1 billion a year that could have been used to finance hospitals, recruit and retain health-care staff, open more medical beds, provide public schools with adequate resources and end the funding freeze to municipalities. Worse, government had to borrow that money to give people tax breaks. That’s not fiscal conservatism, or a “balanced approach,” as Stefanson calls it. It’s recklessness.

Cutting taxes and pushing a tough-on-crime agenda will not turn the Tories’ fortunes around. It didn’t work in 2022 and it won’t work this year.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca

Tom Brodbeck
Columnist

Tom has been covering Manitoba politics since the early 1990s and joined the Winnipeg Free Press news team in 2019.

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