It’s all on fire — what’s the plan?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/09/2023 (983 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. As the hurricanes lash coastlines, as fires burn out forests and communities, as floods burst dams and wash away the people who have survived everything else, surely everyone understands we are in the middle of a climate crisis.

Except, it seems, the people running for office in Manitoba’s provincial election. They seem to think the key to political success is pretending everything is OK — hiding from the truth as well as from the future.

To be fair, I can’t paint every individual candidate with the same brush. I know some of them, and regardless of their party, one of the reasons they are running is precisely because they care about the future, and about future generations.

But their parties? That’s another story. None of the opposition parties have made climate the central thrust of their campaigns. Granted, the current government has offered many other policy targets, given the serial ways it has mismanaged health care, education, labour relations, and just about everything else. Arrogance and incompetence are the chicken-and-egg duo of bad government — in Manitoba, it’s hard to say which comes first these days, on any specific issue.

In an effort to encourage all those parties to do more, however, Consider Climate, Manitoba (CCM) was launched. Already, it has more lawn-signs up than many candidates. CCM is a non-partisan effort to get people to realize, not just that our house is on fire, but that we all live under the same roof. It emerged from Manitoba’s Climate Action Team, the same coalition that published Manitoba’s Road to Resilience a couple of years ago.

So far, however, its well-intentioned efforts have not yielded obvious results. A public face-off with all parties on the subject was dodged by both Heather Stefanson and Wab Kinew, leaving their junior minister/critic instead to joust with padded lances.

So, our house is on fire — and evacuation is not an option. If we turn to the party in power to hear what they are going to do in a third term (after seven years of inaction), we get press releases about removing PST on individual items, like trees and flowers. (I confess to thinking the first headlines about this to appear were satirical!)

The basic problem with these tax-free snippets is that removing the PST only matters if you are a) buying something worth a lot of money or b) can afford to buy anything at all. Otherwise, who cares? Trees and flowers don’t. Restaurant meals are not all of a sudden more affordable, either, and who knows what will be next?

Perhaps, tomorrow, to honour Canadian innovation, they will remove PST from Robertson screwdrivers, basketball tickets, craft beer, and Icelandic brown bread and vinarterta (if purchased in Gimli). Next day, they will promise legislation to permit beer snakes at Blue Bomber games; require all singers of the national anthem to pause for the crowd to shout “True North!”; and ensure that tourtière is always on the menu in the legislative cafeteria.

The house is on fire, right? If you are not insulted by these and other trivial announcements soon to come, you haven’t been paying attention.

Imagine a family evacuated from Pukatawagan to Winnipeg, because of fires burning out the community, learning that the government’s response to the climate crisis has been to remove the PST on flowerpots.

Or a farmer, who has finally (after years of drought and flood) brought a good crop almost to harvest, only to watch a freak hailstorm pound it into the ground, hearing that there will be no PST on the restaurant meal he bought because he can’t face going home just yet.

It makes me angry, and as I watch the younger generations grapple with a future that is the result of bad business and worse government, that anger easily morphs into fury.

Which, I suppose, is the point. The Progressive Conservatives are not offering anything substantive, just tax cuts and goodies taken from the blood of future generations — which they then shamelessly label as fiscal responsibility!

As these trivial announcements continue to roll out, toward election day, I can see Wab Kinew getting angrier and angrier — but he and the NDP need to be careful about what they say and do in response. The PCs want to provoke an outburst, figuring they can ride that explosion back into office.

So don’t give them what they want — let Manitoba voters (like me!) get angry instead.

And, if you get the chance, do better.

Peter Denton writes from his home in rural Manitoba, where he grows perennials and (mostly) cooks his own meals.