Manitoba piles up new laws as house rises for summer

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This article was published 02/06/2022 (1570 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s 79-year-old Lt.-Gov. Janice Filmon was on the job late Wednesday, granting royal assent to 28 bills, including a rush job to hike the minimum wage this fall.

Bill 44 (Employment Standards Code Amendment Act, Minimum Wage) was introduced Monday to allow an hourly pay increase Oct. 1 higher than the previous year’s rate of inflation as required by legislation. With unanimous support from the house, it became law two days later.

While Premier Heather Stefanson had mused on CBC radio this week about a $15/hr minimum wage, the province has said it will consult with labour and business about what the increase should be over and above the 40-cent raise to $12.35/hr due in October.

Passing a bill to raise minimum wage and another to send out education property tax rebate cheques are likely what Manitobans most took note of in the spring sitting of the legislature, said University of Manitoba political studies Prof. Christopher Adams.

“I’m not sure how much they were paying attention to the actual activities within the assembly,” Adams said Thursday.

“I don’t think what happened will have a strong impact on people’s views about whether they’d vote Progressive Conservative or not,” he said, ahead of Probe Research Inc.’s quarterly provincial politics survey, expected in the coming weeks.

Manitobans are more focused on issues they can relate to, such as health care and flooding and when there’s a fumble, he said. “I do think that they do pay attention to mistakes.”

Meantime, Stefanson “inherited” an overtaxed hospital system and now has to deal with a disastrous flood, Adams said. “I think she’s she’s had a pretty rough ride and I think she’ll be quite relieved when we go into some sort of break.”

According to Félix Mathieu, a political studies professor at the University of Winnipeg, the 2022 provincial budget was the most positive legislative episode of the spring sitting but it didn’t stir any passion.

The premier’s absence from question period on several occasions and her initial response to flooding in the province probably cost her some survey points, Mathieu added.

When the session resumes in the fall, the Progressive Conservatives have unfinished business with a number of bills, including legislation on allowing pesticide use, expanded private liquor sales, and to alert people about intimate partners with a history of domestic violence.

Adams said he’s most watching Bill 36 (Manitoba Hydro Amendment and Public Utilities Board Amendment Act), one of five bills the NDP designated to hold over until the fall sitting.

The PCs say Bill 36 stabilizes Hydro and caps electricity rates.

A coalition that plans to fight the bill says it weakens the authority and oversight of the independent Public Utilities Board when it comes to setting electricity rates. The group dubbed Protect the PUB said it is planning a non-partisan campaign to press the PCs to withdraw the bill this fall.

“We don’t know how that will develop over the summer,” said Adams.

The PCs also have a bill in the works that would allow the social services appeal board to toss cases it deems trivial or vexatious and allows for appeals to be heard in writing, by phone or electronically.

Another prohibits a new resident who holds an international driver’s licence from driving a heavy vehicle or bus, unless their licence is issued by a jurisdiction in Canada or the United States, and increases the amount of third-party liability insurance required to $500,000 from $200,000.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca