Taxpayers federation fears MLAs sleeping through debt-clock alarm

The Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation parked its mobile debt clock beside the legislature Tuesday to voice its concern about the province’s rising debt.

“We’re seeing the debt go up about $4,000 a minute, $231,000 an hour, about $5.5 million a day, and taxpayers don’t understand how those numbers are going up until you actually see it on the side of the truck,” spokesperson Gage Haubrich said.

The electronic clock showed each Manitoban’s share of the $35-billion debt totals more than $23,000.

By the end of the year, the province is expected to be in the red by about $36.5 billion, or $24,215 per Manitoban, the lobby organization said.

The debt clock will make stops across across the province; the federation suggests Manitobans urge their MLA to demand the government control spending.

“We’re hoping that (MLAs) can see (the clock) from the window,” said Haubrich, who is based in Saskatoon.

“The bottom line is that, as the government borrows more money, they actually have less money to spend on services because almost 10 per cent of the entire budget is spent on debt interest.”

Interest charges on the debt are estimated to cost $2.3 billion this year — more than $6.4 million every day, and close to $1,550 per Manitoban. Taxpayers in this province pay the second-highest per person debt interest charges in the country, the federation said.

“If they keep borrowing and kicking that can down the road, that number is only going to go higher,” Haubrich said.

Premier Wab Kinew and Finance Minister Adrien Sala have promised to balance the province’s books before the end of the NDP government’s first term.

The premier was in Ontario Tuesday attending a first ministers meeting. Sala said in an interview that they’re still committed to balancing the budget by October 2027, which is the end of their mandate.

“We’re going to do that through fiscal prudence and multi-year financial planning,” Sala said without providing details.

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“The challenge that the former government left Manitobans is a significant one,” the finance minister said. “A $2-billion deficit is very large — it was the biggest in the province’s history” outside of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are very proud to be making progress in reducing that deficit,” Sala said. “I’m confident that, once the (fiscal) report comes out at the end of September, that we will have reduced the deficit by about a third,” he said.

“We’re going to keep making continued progress on that as we work to deliver on that balanced budget in the last year of our mandate,” Sala said.

“There certainly are some additional challenges as a result of some of the tariffs that we’ve seen from Mr. Trump to the south of us. However, we remain committed to that goal and we’re doing the work necessary to deliver on it.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.

Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.