Budget opportunity squandered

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/04/2024 (514 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Lately, it has been a struggle to choose topics for my columns — not because there were too few options, but too many. With only two opportunities a month, I have to choose carefully.

So, this time, I debated writing about reasons to avoid Pierre Poilievre’s latest BYOBS rally (Bring Your Own Bumper Sticker) — my T-shirt would have read “Skip Skippy” — segueing into the absurdities involved in his “axe the tax” BS (bumper sticker).

Then there was the idea that NHL teams should be allowed to decline penalties, the way they can in the Canadian Football League, because the Winnipeg Jets play so much better 5-on-5.

Then I thought of drawing parallels between a pedestrian crossing at Portage and Main and the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” over the Red River in North Selkirk, observing how disconnected from reality our politicians and planners can be.

But each of these possibilities hit the idea trashcan, because while I might be wound up about them today, when they appeared in print next week, people would wonder why — especially if the Jets rediscovered how to score on a power play.

Like everyone else, my thinking has been reactive, not reflective — the rant of the day, not something deeper or more considered. A quick laugh, not a sober second thought — and this is a problem. I am focused way too much on individual trees, rather than stepping back to consider the forest as a whole.

So, while I like my T-shirt idea, that first column should instead be about the way Canadian federal politics is starting to resemble American, largely because Poilievre prefers BS (bumper stickers) to respectful and constructive dialogue.

While the Jets still need to either score goals or line up golf lessons, that second column should instead be about the huge carbon burden professional sports lays on the planet — and how the billionaire owners and millionaire players need to step up and change how things are done, to make the system more sustainable.

As for the perennial Portage and Main debate, I could mimic Poilievre’s BS (bumper sticker) style and wave a sign that said “Proverbs 26:11” (“as a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly”). But the deeper question for that third column is why city planners and city leadership seem utterly incapable of making Winnipeg a walkable, sustainable and resilient city. We need a free, electrified transportation system, using internal rail lines and the streetcar tracks still buried under both Portage and Main, in combination with the electric buses we make (for the world!) in Manitoba. Instead, we squander opportunities, as well as the money our children won’t have, on fulfilling pedestrian fantasies; building more roads on which to drive personal vehicles the planet can’t afford; and plowing under green fields instead of developing old rail yards crossed by a rusted Arlington Bridge.

But while I debated these options, and fretted about missing the forest for the trees, the NDP government delivered its first budget and demonstrated it had same problems.

Seven long years of Pallister Toryism gave them lots of opportunities to pick low-hanging fruit and please a large number of Manitobans. Every time you pull out your new plastic health card, you will be reminded the NDP delivered what the Tories could not.

But after six months of promising better, I expected more than a scattering of largesse, paid for by future Manitobans. Clever is always better than spiteful or stupid, but I was expecting substantive.

The budget was delivered in splendid isolation from the realities that face us here in Manitoba, and globally. Unless I missed it, there was no specific reference to the climate crises we face, which could hit us broadside as early as a drought this summer — we got chump change, instead of climate change.

There will be lots of new housing starts, but no mention of refurbishing old housing stock — or how all those new homes will be heated. Blow another $200K on rail relocation, instead of just doing the job — moving thousands of tanker bombs outside the downtown, and giving us a huge leg up on a light-rail system.

A $4,000 rebate on a $70,000 electric vehicle? That’s no incentive — just forgiving half the PST. Where are the charging stations, or the investment in more electricity generation?

As our world spins hotter by the day, we have a lot to decide and do — right away and together — or we are all in serious trouble. The carbon tax is currently an inefficient rebate for fossil fools that instead should be used to fund alternatives — but there was no mention of that, either.

Premier Kinew, you and your government got a mandate to do something, for a real change, not to just play more cleverly in the sandbox than your predecessors. Step up, and really make a difference — or in six months, Manitobans will start looking for the next alternative.

Peter Denton writes from his home in rural Manitoba.