Bokhari promises balanced budget without tax hikes

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This article was published 28/03/2016 (3771 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Liberal leader Rana Bokhari promised Monday a Liberal government would balance the budget within six years, with no increase in taxes.

“We can balance the budget over five or six years through economic growth and fiscal discipline,” she declared.

But Bokhari attached a lot of conditions, and a lot of “ifs”.

Voters still don’t know the effect of all of her election promises still to come, which Bokhari said would be in the $200 million range compared to the billions she claimed Greg Selinger and Brian Pallister are rolling out.

Bokhari’s numbers rely on spending the same amount each year servicing the existing debt, even given additional deficits she’ll run over the next few years — albeit she expects the growth of annual deficits to be progressively smaller. She forecasts higher transfer fees from the federal government.

And Bokhari gave herself an out if something unexpected occurs that could put Manitobans at risk, such as floods or forest fires that exceed annual expactations.

But more than anything, the Bokhari plan depends on senior civil servants finding ways to control spending without cutting jobs and without putting Manitobans at risk, including capping social services at two per cent a year.

Bokhari said she would hold spending increases in health to four per cent a year, in all aspects of public education to 2.5 per cent, and to all other core spending, including social services, to two per cent a year.

She would do that by giving senior civil servants a free hand to find savings, she said, but emphasized that it would be without cutting jobs or putting Manitoba families at risk.

“We’ll be going through spending line-by-line,” Bokhari said. “If we want to get ourselves out of the Selinger mess, we have to control spending on everything.”

Programs “can’t be funded by government dollars if they aren’t producing results,” said Bokhari.

She said that the NDP under Selinger has not required that programs show outcomes are being met. If programs don’t meet outcomes, a Liberal government won’t fund them, Bokhari vowed. “Our plan requires discipline.

“We can’t pretend magically we’re going to shake money out of people.”

But asked several times to define outcomes in health, education, and social services, Bokhari would only say, “A perfect example is poverty reduction.”

Bokhari said she would provide the auditor with an additional $1 million for greater oversight of provincial spending.

Despite imposing tight controls, “when there are reasons to spend more dollars, we will,” Bokhari said. “If it takes longer to balance the deficit, we’ll do that. We’re not going to put Manitobans at risk.”

Bokhari said she is not touching existing education tax credits, which includes the education property tax credit, rebates on education tax for farmland, and seniors’ education property tax rebates.

She will not change the provincial sales tax until at least 2023.

The NDP, to no one’s surprise, was less than impressed.

“A fiscal plan that has no costing for hundreds of millions of dollars in promises is not a plan,” NDP campaign officials said in a news release. “The Bokhari Liberal platform is either not thought through or insincere. They’ve made expensive promises they can’t explain or account for, which means they either can’t deliver or have no interest in delivering.

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“It appears that the Liberal campaign of the last few months has been nothing but easy sound bites with no substance or commitment behind them and no accountability. In other words, it has been a waste of Manitobans’ time. The fiscal plan released today just doesn’t make sense,” scoffed the NDP.

The sentiment was echoed by the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives.

“The Liberals do not show how they will pay for any of their $200 million or more in promises, nor do they provide any details on how they would control spending.

“The Liberals are proposing more of the same poor fiscal mismanagement Manitobans have gotten under the NDP. Manitobans deserve a better plan for a better Manitoba.”

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Nick Martin

Former Free Press reporter Nick Martin, who wrote the monthly suspense column in the books section and was prolific in his standalone reviews of mystery/thriller novels, died Oct. 15 at age 77 while on holiday in Edinburgh, Scotland.