TAKE a look at your cellphone. If it isn't outdated, it soon will be. Such is the pace of change in the rapidly evolving world of hi-tech international telecommunications.
Most people learn, adapt even innovate, but not Manitoba's NDP, which is so fixated on doing things the same way that it has become the most conservative force in Manitoba. It clings to past models. It still mourns the privatization of the old state monopoly known as Manitoba Telephone System in 1996.
It's important to understand the NDP's continuing opposition to the sale of MTS because it exposes its attitude on economic development in general. The party prefers the old ways of doing business because they are familiar, easy and allow government to play an increasingly outsized role in the economy. It's an attitude that guarantees more of the same, slow unimpressive growth that Manitoba has witnessed under the NDP. In fact, Premier Gary Doer pleaded with Manitobans on the weekend to avoid the impulse to even entertain change in the upcoming election because they might end up with the Progressive Conservative Party, the very villains who destroyed the state telephone company.
For the record, MTS Allstream Inc., the public company that emerged from the debt-ridden Crown monopoly, has an annual economic impact of $1 billion in Manitoba in the form of salaries, taxes and spinoffs. The company has invested $2 billion alone on a network that brings high-speed Internet service to more than 160 rural communities, including Churchill. There's a lot of risk in the communications industry, but the NDP would like taxpayers to bear it all. "Rates went up," the party cries, ignoring all the dynamics that made holding on to MTS bad business.
It's hard to believe that Mr. Doer believes all that stuff about how Manitobans lost their birthright when MTS was sold, but he likes to use the sale to support his claim that the Tories will sell Manitoba Hydro. This is the familiar tactic he used in the last two elections. It worked twice before, so why not again?
Unfortunately, Mr. Doer is not levelling with voters on the Hydro file, either. He claims that Hydro power is the Manitoba equivalent of Alberta's oil. Well, it could be, but only if the NDP was willing and able to be innovative. The utility currently pays the province roughly $250 million a year in water-rental fees and other charges, depending on sales. That, plus below-market rates, are the total benefit paid to Manitobans under NDP policy. At a minimum, the utility should be paying a hefty dividend to taxpayers in addition to a water rental fee, but if that happened, rates would rise to market levels. The NDP opposes such a strategy, even though higher rates would induce conservation, creating a pool of surplus power that could be exported. It's sound economic and environmental planning, but it involves change. (Let's also keep in mind that Doer conveniently ignores that Alberta owns its oil resources, but not the companies that develop and sell the black gold.)
This election should not be about Mr. Doer's tiresome fear-mongering on MTS and Manitoba Hydro. The old tactics suggest the party is washed up and bereft of real ideas. The election should be about who has the best vision for creating a dynamic economy and who is prepared to make the tough decisions needed to make it happen.
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