Pointing fingers at Tories three years after election tiresome, accomplishes nothing

There is a point in every government’s life when blaming the previous government stops being an explanation and starts becoming an excuse.

For Manitoba’s NDP government, that point has arrived.

Justice Minister Matt Wiebe was asked last week about a grievance filed by Crown attorneys over excessive workloads and a government attempt to keep a report documenting those workloads out of an upcoming arbitration hearing.

Wiebe said he couldn’t discuss the arbitration case.

But he was perfectly willing to discuss who was responsible for the problem.

The Progressive Conservatives, he said.

The grievance was filed in 2023, when the PCs were still in power. Wiebe said the former government had not acknowledged or begun dealing with it before the NDP took office.

There’s an important detail missing from that version of events.

Just months before the 2023 election, the PCs committed $3.4 million to increase the number of Crown attorneys and support staff.

That doesn’t absolve the former government of anything. If Crown attorneys were already overwhelmed, the PCs deserve scrutiny for not doing enough sooner.

But that was more than three years ago.

The NDP has been in government since October 2023.

At some point, they have to stop looking in the rear-view mirror and start looking at the road ahead.

That’s especially true because the problem Crown attorneys are describing isn’t simply a question of how much money the previous government spent.

The criminal justice system has changed.

Technology has changed. Electronic disclosure has exploded. Criminal cases have become more complicated. Changes to the Criminal Code have created additional demands on prosecutors. And all of those things take time.

A Crown attorney dealing with a mountain of digital evidence isn’t doing the same job a prosecutor was doing 20 years ago.

Yet the NDP government appears reluctant to acknowledge the obvious question: Does Manitoba have enough Crown attorneys to deal with the workload?

Wiebe wouldn’t say Thursday.

Instead, he pointed to what his government has done: hiring at least 62 Crown prosecutors, increasing pay by 14 per cent with back pay, adding support staff and introducing other court-related programs.

Those are legitimate accomplishments. But they don’t answer the question.

The Manitoba Association of Crown Attorneys says the government has not added a single net new prosecutor since taking office. The association says it needs another 50.

That apparent contradiction — 62 hires but no net increase — is important. It suggests the problem isn’t simply whether people have been hired. It’s whether the prosecutions branch has enough prosecutors to handle the workload after departures, turnover and the increasing demands of the job.

And the prosecutors themselves are saying they don’t.

“They continue to deny there is a workload problem in our office, despite all the evidence to the contrary,” association vice-president Ben Wickstrom said last week.

The government can argue about how many people it has hired. It can point to better salaries and support staff. It can say the relationship with Crown attorneys has improved.

But if the people actually prosecuting cases are saying the workload remains excessive, government should be listening rather than explaining why the problem belongs to somebody else.

There’s also a bigger contradiction here.

The NDP government wants Manitobans to believe it is serious about public safety. It supports tougher bail rules. It talks about keeping dangerous and repeat offenders behind bars. It has made crime and justice a major political priority.

But public safety doesn’t begin and end with police making arrests. Someone has to prosecute those cases.

If Manitoba wants to hold more accused people in custody, there will be more bail hearings and bail applications. If police are laying more charges, prosecutors have to deal with them. If cases involve more digital evidence and increasingly complicated legal issues, Crown attorneys need the time and resources to prepare them.

You can’t simply demand that the justice system become tougher without investing in the people who make that system work.

This isn’t an argument for unlimited spending. It’s an argument for spending money where the government’s own priorities require it.

The NDP has spent the better part of three years telling Manitobans how badly the former government managed health care, justice and other public services.

There is some truth in that criticism. Governments make mistakes. The PCs made plenty.

But after almost three years, the NDP can’t keep treating every problem it inherited as though it remains the exclusive responsibility of the people who preceded it.

The dispute with Crown attorneys is a perfect example.

If the prosecutions branch needs 50 more Crown attorneys, or something close to that, the government should determine whether that number is justified and, if it is, hire them.

If the workload is manageable, explain why the Crown attorneys are wrong.

But refusing to acknowledge the problem while blaming the previous government isn’t leadership.

If the NDP really wants the worst offenders kept behind bars, it should remember something very basic:

You can’t prosecute cases with political talking points.