Opinion

The annual budget is the most important document formulated by a government in a calendar year. Budgets serve financial and economic purposes, but they are also necessarily and appropriately political. In fact, they can be seen as the ultimate expression of politics. More than any other government action, they determine who gets what, when and how from taxing and spending decisions.

How budgets are formulated and what they contain tell us more about the real values and priorities of government than all the glittering generalities and appealing promises contained in more expressly political documents such as the Throne Speech, which outlines a government’s legislative plans.

Budgets put a concrete value on words and convert promises into actions.

As the political system has moved deeper into a dynamic of permanent campaigning, the political purposes of budgeting have increasingly come to rival the financial and economic purposes of such documents. This is most evident during an election year, especially if the governing party is seeking to pull itself out of a political rut after being low in the polls over several years.

This is the challenge facing Premier Heather Stefanson and the governing PCs. The budget to be delivered on March 7 represents the last, best hope for the party to achieve some measure of political recovery though their own actions. Without a budget that is effective in motiving many voters to rejoin the PC camp, the party will need luck in the form of a blunder by the NDP and/or a surge in popularity for the third-party Liberals in order to retain power after the October election.

Both the process and the substance of budget-making matter.

Budgets are voluminous, complicated, technical documents that take months to produce. Work on next year’s plan begins before the previous budget has been fully implemented. The capacity to maintain contact with public officials throughout the budgetary cycle is not equally available to all. Well-financed organizations with expertise have advantages over citizen advocacy groups in mastering the mysteries of the budgetary process.

The Stefanson government boasted that its 2022 budget reflected widespread consultation because it heard from 51,000 Manitobans through a combination of telephone town halls, Zoom meetings and participation in online surveys. However, that number does not tell us how representative of society at large the participants were, nor how meaningful the dialogue was.

The 2023 consultation process was launched late and was then disrupted by the surprise resignation of the finance minister Cameron Friesen, who opted to run for a federal party nomination. Usually the minister of finance is granted considerable freedom to develop the main contours of the budget and only presents his/her plan to the premier weeks before budget day. According to a column by the Free Press’s Dan Lett, the finance minister resisted new spending favoured by the premier.

Stefanson turned to veteran MLA Cliff Cullen, who is headed toward retirement, as a replacement finance minister. He missed the first public hearing and the Winnipeg hearing had to be rescheduled. These consultations are meant to convey the image of a government that is listening and responsive, an aim that has been compromised by the problems of organizing the process.

In terms of substance, under former premier Brian Pallister, the PCs staked their reputation on lower taxes, expenditure restraint and balanced budgets. This budgetary strategy, and other actions, left the government ill-equipped to face the pandemic and the related economic downturn. Government action and inaction led to widespread public anger, leaving them in the political rut mentioned above.

Since replacing Pallister as premier in November 2021, Stefanson has loosened the purse strings significantly, but the polls have not moved in favour of her party. Already announced spending initiatives will be re-announced with fanfare in the budget. However, to achieve a major shift in voting intentions, further bold spending initiatives will be required.

To promote public awareness and support for the new budgetary strategy, there will need to be an extensive advertising campaign. Equipped with pre-packaged messaging, the premier, ministers and other MLAs will have to become an active “sales force,” pitching the virtues of the budget in as many forums as possible.

Improving economic conditions mean the province’s own revenues are growing strongly at the same time federal transfer payments for equalization and health care are also increasing substantially. There is room available for new spending , especially if deep tax cuts are not part of the budget package.

There is, however, the awkward fact that as recently as two years ago the PCs were insisting on the need for austerity. A big spending binge may not go down well with the caucus and the party’s core supporters. Moreover, many independent voters will see a big-spending budget as crass political opportunism.

The politics of budgeting are tricky. No budgetary moves come with a guarantee of political success.

Paul G. Thomas is professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Manitoba.