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Manitoba budget 2025

 

The budget survey conflated a lot of ideas which made it hard to vote accurately.

For example, on “Lowering costs for people”, “cutting the gas tax” was looped in with “freezing Hydro rates, providing relief to renters and homeowners, finding more ways to help families pay the bills at the end of the month.”

Although I understand many Manitobans are finding bills too high to pay, and I support the government taking steps to lower those costs as possible, I’m fully convinced that pollution pricing on carbon consumption is not the problem. Costs will keep going up as climate change worsens, causing more disasters and more instability. Hydro rates may be difficult to keep artificially low if water levels are completely unpredictable due to climate change. Food will only become more expensive as extreme weather regularly wipes out crops in entire regions. It is imperative that we do what we can to fight climate change, and research shows that pollution pricing is one of the simplest yet effective tools governments have to motivate reduced consumption in their citizens.

On “Making our communities safer”, the subpoints were “Working with law enforcement to make our communities safer, being tough on crime and the causes of crime, targeting violent offenders and retail crime and cracking down on drug traffickers.”

Again, I support making communities safer but am entirely unconvinced that any of these strategies will accomplish that. Criminalizing poverty and pouring money into policing while starving social services and basic health, education and recreation services that serve a crucial preventive function is a recipe for less safety not more.

On “meeting the climate challenge”, I completely support prioritizing this but must underline that cutting the gas tax is diametrically opposed to this priority. Furthermore, rebates for EVs are not effective at stimulating any of the behaviour change needed. Our population needs significant mode shift; switching from ICE to EV has a tiny impact on tail pipe emissions but doesn’t reduce our collective carbon footprint the way a significant shift to mass transit and active transportation would. A rebate on electric bikes, on the other hand, would be completely transformative. Whereas EV rebates merely reward upper middle class folk for the choice they were going to make anyway, a rebate on e-bikes would make them affordable to thousands of Manitobans, allowing parents to bike as transportation -- including grocery shopping and daycare drop offs -- and expanding the range and autonomy of lower income folks who are locked out of car ownership due to the high prices.

Finally on balancing the budget, cutting taxes is no kind of priority whatsoever. Our taxes are not high to the point of onerous. We expect our governments to use our taxes wisely to build a fair and caring society that helps all folks flourish, including those who need a bit of extra help. Ordinary Manitobans can all do our bit without “tax relief" while the wealthiest Manitobans can afford to contribute quite a bit more.  

Thank you for soliciting Manitobans’ opinions through the budget survey. However, I hope, in the future, it will be possible to do so in a way that is less manipulative in forcing voters into prescribed choices that lead to the appearance of support for the policies that are easiest or most convenient for government.

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