Pallister’s austerity dividend becomes apparent By: Editorial Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Thursday, Nov. 3, 2022

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/11/2022 (783 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Over the last two years, 26 Crown attorneys have left their posts. Of 175 current full-time positions, 17 are vacant. It’s a vacancy rate many believe will threaten the criminal justice system’s viability.

Why has Manitoba lost so many Crown attorneys? The Manitoba Association of Crown Attorneys says prosecutors here are being recruited to work in other provinces, where they are paid more money and can work in a service that is better staffed. Others switch to work for the defence bar.

Regardless of where they are going, they clearly don’t want to work for the prosecution service in this province, which has become chronically underpaid and understaffed. And why is that?

Welcome to the austerity dividend.

After five years of frozen wages and budgets lines, former premier Brian Pallister’s austerity strategy is starting to pay dividends. And not the kind that anyone wants.

While threatening a wage-freeze law he ultimately did not proclaim, Mr. Pallister simply refused to negotiate with public-sector unions. The result was a raft of unsettled contracts, and a huge unfunded liability lurking in the background of Mr. Pallister’s fiscal plans.

The consequence has been chronic understaffing across many areas of the public sector. Although fiscal conservatives embrace the idea that government employs too many people, that is certainly not the case in many of the most important areas of public service.

This province’s prosecutors went three full years without a contract before winning a retroactive wage increase through arbitration in June 2021. However, that contract did not include any increase in the number of full-time prosecutors, and it expired in March.

A similar situation has arisen with nurses. After five years without a contract, the Manitoba Nurses Union finally reached a new deal with the Tory government just over one year ago. That contract included millions of dollars in retroactive pay, and increases in wages and benefits in an effort to retain nurses. One has only to look at the current state of health care in Manitoba to see it’s not working.

After five years without a contract, the Manitoba Nurses Union finally reached a new deal with the Tory government just over one year ago.

Nursing shortages have become so severe that health authorities are spending nearly $5 million a month to hire private agency nurses to cover open shifts. At this rate, Manitoba could spend as much as $60 million on private nurses in the 2022-23 fiscal year, 50 per cent more than the previous year, and 400 per cent more than the $13.3 million spent in 2017-18.

Private agency nurses come at a premium, as they are paid more per hour than those working in the public system, and they get travel expenses and per diems for assignments in rural or northern postings.

Now, here’s the kicker: a great many of the nurses being hired through private agencies are public-system nurses who left to find better pay and working conditions.

Mr. Pallister used blind austerity to bring the budget into balance and then made massive tax cuts, seemingly without any concern about the future public-sector wage liabilities left to his successor, Premier Heather Stefanson.

Mr. Pallister used blind austerity to bring the budget into balance and then made massive tax cuts, seemingly without any concern about the future public-sector wage liabilities left to his successor, Premier Heather Stefanson.

Ms. Stefanson can clearly see Manitoba’s ability to maintain a minimum level of functionality in key services will continue to be at risk as long as valued public servants — nurses, prosecutors and others — are being treated as afterthoughts.

Ms. Stefanson will deliver a budget next spring, her last before a scheduled October 2023 election. She must use that budget to address the austerity dividend and stabilize public services.

The dividend may have been created by Mr. Pallister, but it will become Ms. Stefanson’s legacy if she does not address it.