Manitoba's NDP Disadvantage

[Anonymous]

I just returned from Manitoba and I witnessed first the devastation years of No Development Party rule WILL inflict. Shitty roads/infrastructure, low wages, high taxes, brain drain(Alberta, Saskatchewan and BC are the common destinations), high crime rates, poor health care outcomes and high poverty rates. All this in a province with an abundance of natural resources to boot.



Winnipeg in general and Manitoba in particular are the armpits of Canada. Please NDP, do not turn Alberta into another Manitoba.

They may not have figured it out yet, but the Selinger government's biggest obstacle to winning the next election has little to do with mending fences within its own party.



It has almost everything to do with the NDP's lousy record in areas such as health care, education, child welfare and taxation.



The Selinger government has been preoccupied for the past six months with internal politics after five cabinet ministers bolted from the government's inner circle of power last fall, demanding the premier resign. But other than the brief, bizarre spectacle that created for the general public, people don't really care about the finer points of the NDP's internal problems. Whether former cabinet ministers like Theresa Oswald and Jennifer Howard are now comfortably back in the NDP caucus is of little consequence to most busy Manitobans going about their lives.



And it will have virtually no impact on how people vote on April 19, 2016.



What people do care about is how long they have to wait in emergency rooms when they show up to a hospital for medical care, or how long they have to wait for hip or knee surgery. They care about the quality of their kids' education and how well — or poorly — students are doing on national testing compared with other provinces. They care about how Child and Family Services is looking after children in need, and how many kids are being warehoused in hotels.



People care about the level of violence in Manitoba and about child poverty. And they care about how much government is charging them in the form of taxes to pay for the services they're supposed to be getting.



Unfortunately for the NDP government, after nearly 16 years in office, the record on all of the above is extremely poor.



Those are the issues NDP candidates will face at the doorstep when they go to the polls next year, including questions about why the premier promised Manitobans he wouldn't raise the PST and then turned around and did the opposite.



They won't ask candidates how former health minister Erin Selby is doing and whether she's now on speaking terms with the premier and the rest of caucus. No one cares about that.



What they care about is the government's record on the public services people pay for and count on. And the NDP's record on those services isn't very good.



Emergency room wait times are the longest in the country, national testing for Grade 8 students in all categories are the worst in Canada, child poverty is the highest among the provinces, and Manitoba still has the highest violent crime rates in the country.



And it's not for a lack of money. Middle and upper-income Manitobans now pay the second highest income taxes in the country. And Manitoba receives among the highest per capita transfer payments from Ottawa compared to other provinces.



So the money is there, our wallets are lighter than they were 15 years ago, and the results are disastrous.



That's what NDP candidates will face at the doorstep in the next election whether they're "united" as a party or not.



Sure, the internal fighting hasn't helped the NDP's image. It makes them look even more disorganized than they were before the open warfare began. Their preoccupation with internal party politics is deflecting focus away from governing and managing the economy. For that, they are being rightly criticized.



But for the most part, for rank-and-file Manitobans — the people who will be marking their ballots 12 months from now — they don't give a rat's rear-end about NDP solidarity and whether caucus members are calling each other brother and sister again.



The NDP record over the past decade and a half will be the only thing that matters on voting day.

http://www.winnipegsun.com/2015/04/20/ndp-has-to-overcome-own-record-to-win">http://www.winnipegsun.com/2015/04/20/n ... ord-to-win">http://www.winnipegsun.com/2015/04/20/ndp-has-to-overcome-own-record-to-win

[Anonymous]

However, on their license plates it reads "Friendly Manitoba". That motto is well deserved. Nice folks.

[Anonymous]

I just returned from Manitoba and I witnessed first the devastation years of No Development Party rule WILL inflict. Shitty roads/infrastructure, low wages, high taxes, brain drain(Alberta, Saskatchewan and BC are the common destinations), high crime rates, poor health care outcomes and high poverty rates. All this in a province with an abundance of natural resources to boot.



Winnipeg in general and Manitoba in particular are the armpits of Canada. Please NDP, do not turn Alberta into another Manitoba.

They may not have figured it out yet, but the Selinger government's biggest obstacle to winning the next election has little to do with mending fences within its own party.



It has almost everything to do with the NDP's lousy record in areas such as health care, education, child welfare and taxation.



The Selinger government has been preoccupied for the past six months with internal politics after five cabinet ministers bolted from the government's inner circle of power last fall, demanding the premier resign. But other than the brief, bizarre spectacle that created for the general public, people don't really care about the finer points of the NDP's internal problems. Whether former cabinet ministers like Theresa Oswald and Jennifer Howard are now comfortably back in the NDP caucus is of little consequence to most busy Manitobans going about their lives.



And it will have virtually no impact on how people vote on April 19, 2016.



What people do care about is how long they have to wait in emergency rooms when they show up to a hospital for medical care, or how long they have to wait for hip or knee surgery. They care about the quality of their kids' education and how well — or poorly — students are doing on national testing compared with other provinces. They care about how Child and Family Services is looking after children in need, and how many kids are being warehoused in hotels.



People care about the level of violence in Manitoba and about child poverty. And they care about how much government is charging them in the form of taxes to pay for the services they're supposed to be getting.



Unfortunately for the NDP government, after nearly 16 years in office, the record on all of the above is extremely poor.



Those are the issues NDP candidates will face at the doorstep when they go to the polls next year, including questions about why the premier promised Manitobans he wouldn't raise the PST and then turned around and did the opposite.



They won't ask candidates how former health minister Erin Selby is doing and whether she's now on speaking terms with the premier and the rest of caucus. No one cares about that.



What they care about is the government's record on the public services people pay for and count on. And the NDP's record on those services isn't very good.



Emergency room wait times are the longest in the country, national testing for Grade 8 students in all categories are the worst in Canada, child poverty is the highest among the provinces, and Manitoba still has the highest violent crime rates in the country.



And it's not for a lack of money. Middle and upper-income Manitobans now pay the second highest income taxes in the country. And Manitoba receives among the highest per capita transfer payments from Ottawa compared to other provinces.



So the money is there, our wallets are lighter than they were 15 years ago, and the results are disastrous.



That's what NDP candidates will face at the doorstep in the next election whether they're "united" as a party or not.



Sure, the internal fighting hasn't helped the NDP's image. It makes them look even more disorganized than they were before the open warfare began. Their preoccupation with internal party politics is deflecting focus away from governing and managing the economy. For that, they are being rightly criticized.



But for the most part, for rank-and-file Manitobans — the people who will be marking their ballots 12 months from now — they don't give a rat's rear-end about NDP solidarity and whether caucus members are calling each other brother and sister again.



The NDP record over the past decade and a half will be the only thing that matters on voting day.

http://www.winnipegsun.com/2015/04/20/ndp-has-to-overcome-own-record-to-win">http://www.winnipegsun.com/2015/04/20/n ... ord-to-win">http://www.winnipegsun.com/2015/04/20/ndp-has-to-overcome-own-record-to-win

My brother and his wife live in a small town in Manitoba..



Yes, their roads are not as good as Alberta's..



They have good lives there though.

[Anonymous]

The New Democrats have a strange aversion to resource extraction. They are a better fit for have not provinces.

[Rambo Wong]

A racist, sinophobic spammer like Shen Li would feel at home in a racist city like Winnipeg.

http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/welcome-to-winnipeg-where-canadas-racism-problem-is-at-its-worst/">http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/welc ... its-worst/">http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/welcome-to-winnipeg-where-canadas-racism-problem-is-at-its-worst/

[Romero]

A racist, sinophobic spammer like Shen Li would feel at home in a racist city like Winnipeg.

http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/welcome-to-winnipeg-where-canadas-racism-problem-is-at-its-worst/">http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/welc ... its-worst/">http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/welcome-to-winnipeg-where-canadas-racism-problem-is-at-its-worst/

An awful and untrue statement, Rambo, but a good article. I remember it being discussed and Winnipegers saying they're better than that. They certainly are.

"Oh Goddd how long are aboriginal people going to use what happened as a crutch to suck more money out of Canadians?" Winnipeg teacher Brad Badiuk wrote on Facebook last month. "They have contributed NOTHING to the development of Canada. Just standing with their hand out. Get to work, tear the treaties and shut the FK up already. Why am I on the hook for their cultural support?"



Badiuk's comments came to light the day Rinelle Harper—the shy 16-year-old indigenous girl left for dead in the city's Assiniboine River after a brutal sexual assault—spoke publicly for the first time after her recovery. She called for an inquiry to help explain why so many indigenous girls and women are being murdered in Winnipeg, and elsewhere in Canada.



Badiuk's comments came while the city was still reeling from the murder of Tina Fontaine, a 15-year-old child from the Sagkeeng First Nation who was wrapped in plastic and tossed into the Red River after being sexually exploited in the city's core.



They came after Nunavummiuq musician Tanya Tagaq, last year's Polaris Music Prize winner, who complained that while out to lunch in downtown Winnipeg where she was performing with the city's ballet this fall, "a man started following me calling me a 'sexy little Indian' and asking to f–k."



They came the very week an inquest issued its findings in the death of Brian Sinclair, an indigenous 45-year-old who died from an entirely treatable infection after being ignored for 34 hours in a city ER.



For decades, the friendly Prairie city has been known for its smiling, lefty premiers, pacifist, Mennonite writers and a love affair with the Jets. Licence plates here bear the tag "Friendly Manitoba." But events of last fall served to expose a darker reality. The Manitoba capital is deeply divided along ethnic lines. It manifestly does not provide equal opportunity for Aboriginals. And it is quickly becoming known for the subhuman treatment of its First Nations citizens, who suffer daily indignities and appalling violence. Winnipeg is arguably becoming Canada's most racist city.



But indigenous activists believe Tina Fontaine's death also marked a turning point in race relations; that, for perhaps the first time, the brutalization and murder of a 15-year-old was not dismissed in Winnipeg as an "Aboriginal problem." Ironically, from the fall's horrific events, a sense of unity has begun to emerge. Even Thelma Favel, who raised Tina, believes her niece did not die in vain. Meaningful change will not come easily, but all this holds the promise, however faint, of a more hopeful future for the city.

[Anonymous]

^Winnipeg has it's problems, but racism would not be high on the list. I did not feel more or less welcome in Winnipeg than most other cities in Canada(St. Johns NFLD is the most racist city in Canada IMO).



Missing and murdered Aboriginal women's attackers are usually Aboriginal men. There is a problem with violence and sexual assault in the Aboriginal community. This is the 800 lb gorilla in the room that nobody wants to address.

[Anonymous]

^Winnipeg has it's problems, but racism would not be high on the list. I did not feel more or less welcome in Winnipeg than most other cities in Canada(St. Johns NFLD is the most racist city in Canada IMO).



Missing and murdered Aboriginal women's attackers are usually Aboriginal men. There is a problem with violence and sexual assault in the Aboriginal community. This is the 800 lb gorilla in the room that nobody wants to address.

My brother lives in rural Manitoba, but he and his wife go to Winnipeg frequently..



There is a noticeable problem of Aboriginal poverty..



My brother coaches pee wee hockey in an Aborignal community..



Most of their equipment is donated and most of the boys come from unstable homes..



I don't know how much of the despair is because of racism, but I do know the poverty causes anger among Manitoba's First Nations communities.

[Anonymous]

^There is a lot of urban poverty, drug addiction etc in Winnipeg. Both Native and white. The cops in the inner city stay pretty busy.

[J0E]

^Winnipeg has it's problems, but racism would not be high on the list. I did not feel more or less welcome in Winnipeg than most other cities in Canada(St. Johns NFLD is the most racist city in Canada IMO).



Missing and murdered Aboriginal women's attackers are usually Aboriginal men. There is a problem with violence and sexual assault in the Aboriginal community. This is the 800 lb gorilla in the room that nobody wants to address.

My brother lives in rural Manitoba, but he and his wife go to Winnipeg frequently..



There is a noticeable problem of Aboriginal poverty..



My brother coaches pee wee hockey in an Aborignal community..



Most of their equipment is donated and most of the boys come from unstable homes..



I don't know how much of the despair is because of racism, but I do know the poverty causes anger among Manitoba's First Nations communities.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-s-aboriginal-population-continues-to-grow-1.1337131">http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/ ... -1.1337131">http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-s-aboriginal-population-continues-to-grow-1.1337131

Manitoba continues to have the highest percentage of aboriginal people among Canada's provinces, and it's a growing and youthful segment of the population, according to figures from Statistics Canada's first National Household Survey.



Figures from the survey, released on Wednesday, show that 16.7 per cent of Manitoba's population identified as aboriginal — four times the Canadian average of 4.3 per cent — when the survey was done in 2011.

Saskatchewan is slightly less at about 15%

[J0E]

I just returned from Manitoba and I witnessed first the devastation years of No Development Party rule WILL inflict. Shitty roads/infrastructure, low wages, high taxes, brain drain(Alberta, Saskatchewan and BC are the common destinations), high crime rates, poor health care outcomes and high poverty rates. All this in a province with an abundance of natural resources to boot.



Winnipeg in general and Manitoba in particular are the armpits of Canada. Please NDP, do not turn Alberta into another Manitoba.

...according to the Conference Board of Canada, Manitoba isn't doing that badly and will fare well in 2015 and 2016:



http://www.conferenceboard.ca/press/newsrelease/15-05-28/bright_days_ahead_for_manitoba_s_economy.aspx">http://www.conferenceboard.ca/press/new ... onomy.aspx">http://www.conferenceboard.ca/press/newsrelease/15-05-28/bright_days_ahead_for_manitoba_s_economy.aspx



http://www.conferenceboard.ca/Libraries/PUBLIC_IMAGES/PO-Winter2015-ES_Chart1_web.sflb">

Manitoba is expected to post real GDP growth of 2.8 per cent in 2015 and again in 2016, when it will lead all provinces.



"As a wind of change blows through the country thanks to the slide in oil prices, Manitoba will be one of the country's strongest economic performers until at least 2016," said Marie-Christine Bernard, Associate Director, Provincial Forecast. "Strong growth in construction, a rebound in agriculture, and stable domestic demand are expected to lift labour markets and increase disposable household income for Manitobans."

Highlights



    Manitoba's economy is expected to remain strong for the next two years, with gains in construction and agriculture and stable domestic demand.

    Real GDP growth is forecast at 2.8 per cent this year and next.

So if the NDP's popularity is down, perhaps the solution is to get rid of the Leader and ride the coattails of favorable economic news.



I think they oughta ditch Sellinger and nominate a relatively young but attractive woman in her mid to late 40s.



That could revive the Party's fortunes considerably, heading into an election next year.



A good news budget, and they may be on track.

[Anonymous]

Manitoba has a serious brain drain. They keep unemployment low because their best and brightest move to the provinces West of them.



"The Manitoba Bureau of Statistics recently reported that Manitoba suffered a net interprovincial migration loss of over 4,500 people. A comparatively high tax structure in Manitoba has stunted not only the provincial economy but population growth as well," said Victor Vrsnik, CTF Manitoba Director. "For many young Manitobans starting their careers, Manitoba has been viewed from the rear view mirror."



The Alberta Tax Advantage explains the tug but not the shove that is sending off a convoy of Manitoba moving vans toward a western sunset."