Budget day a crucial moment for Stefanson

Opinion

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This article was published 11/04/2022 (1026 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There are few occasions that offer a government and a leader the opportunity to define themselves and reaffirm the trust the public has placed in them than the presentation of a budget.

For Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson, whose first few months in office could not reasonably be described as exemplary, Tuesday’s presentation of the 2022 provincial budget is a moment whose magnitude is difficult to quantify.

From the moment last August when she publicly declared her intention to take an aggressive run at the Progressive Conservative leadership, Ms. Stefanson has taken great pains to position herself as an antidote to the abrasive and authoritarian tendencies of her predecessor.

“Manitobans … are looking for a different approach,” she said that day, and “I think it’s time we start listening to Manitobans.”

In hindsight, “TogeTHER with HeaTHER” has turned out to be a leadership-campaign slogan that rolled smoothly off the tongue but looked incredibly awkward in printed-out form. And the underlying sentiment — that Ms. Stefanson would be a unifying force capable of rescuing Manitoba’s PC party from the depths of Pallister-induced despair — has proved to be more the stuff of fanciful Tory reverie than actual popularity turnaround.

Under the current premier’s watch, the PC government has experienced essentially nothing in the way of a new-leadership popularity bounce. Polling shows Ms. Stefanson and her party lagging badly behind the NDP and, barring something unforeseen in the next 12 months, likely headed for an ignominious assignment to the Opposition benches.

For Ms. Stefanson, whatever hope remains for resurrecting her government’s fortunes depends heavily on the unveiling of the provincial budget.

A fine line must be observed in the document presented by Finance Minister Cameron Friesen — it must remain faithful to the principles of small “c” conservatism while still offering evidence that it is not focused on austerity with the ideological zeal that drove former premier Brian Pallister.

Where he seemed obsessed with cutting taxes and controlling spending, Ms. Stefanson would be well advised to identify areas in which an outlay of resources is warranted — most notably health care, where the dire consequences of attempting a massive restructuring while still demanding across-the-board austerity were laid bare by the arrival of the pandemic.

Health will require a significant injection of money to address the staffing shortages and systemic inadequacies that have left tens of thousands of Manitobans languishing as they await long-delayed surgeries and diagnostic procedures. The term “hallway medicine” was central in the fall of the Filmon government in the 1990s; it’s back in common parlance these days as wait times ascend to unprecedented levels in the province’s restructured and overwhelmed emergency rooms.

Other areas will also require conservative but committed expenditure. Infrastructure — where it was Mr. Pallister’s habit to underspend by hundreds of millions of the dollars budgeted — will require a more generous approach, as will education.

These things can be prudently accomplished if Ms. Stefanson is willing to let loose of the tax-reduction fixation that made “PST cut” something of an ill-advised mantra during Mr. Pallister’s tenure.

Cutting taxes while the budget is in deficit — an inevitability given the burden imposed by COVID-19 — is simply bad policy. The economy is now in rebound; tax revenues will continue to increase, and federal transfer payments will once again significantly pad the province’s pocketbook.

Incremental progress on deficit reduction should satisfy the party faithful’s demand for a return to conservative principles. For the rest of Manitobans who are clearly dissatisfied with the current government’s performance, Tuesday’s budget rollout is a crucial — and, perhaps, final — chance for Ms. Stefanson to demonstrate that hers truly is the different approach they’ve demanded.