Truth and tough times in government

This Christmas, Manitoba’s 57 MLAs will find a book under the tree with their name on it, courtesy of the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union (MGEU).

It’s not a glossy coffee-table book or a leadership memoir. It’s Public Service in Tough Times, by Jesse Hajer, Jennifer Keith and Ian Hudson, a reminder that “doing more with less” really meant “doing everything with almost nothing” for the people who keep this province running.

The book walks through what happened after the 2016 election, when Brian Pallister’s Progressive Conservatives came to office promising to “restore balance” between revenue and spending. Balance quickly looked like imbalance for public-sector workers and the people they serve. Wages were frozen, emergency rooms closed, health-care jobs were eliminated and the provincial government workforce shrank by 27 per cent.

On paper, those decisions were called “savings.” In real life, they were overcrowded ERs, delayed supports for kids in care, longer waits and frayed nerves for anyone trying to get basic help from their own government.

Public Service in Tough Times does something politicians almost never do in a budget speech: it hands the microphone to the people behind the balance sheets. Drawing on survey responses from thousands of public sector workers and detailed staffing and spending data, it reveals a vicious cycle every MLA should recognize: understaffing leads to burnout, burnout leads to attrition and attrition leads to more understaffing.

The authors also pull back the curtain on who really benefits from austerity. Cuts to public spending disproportionately reward those already at the top, while pushing more people into poverty and deepening inequality.

Governments have changed, but we’re still seeing patients in hallways, and vacancies across public services remain high.

This is the moment to decide whether “tough times” remain our default setting or become a chapter we finally close. Repairing public services will take more than a different shade of campaign sign. It means reversing course on a decade of choices and rebuilding the services communities depend on; from hospitals and primary care to mental health and addictions supports, to housing, child welfare and justice.

It also means restoring capacity inside the public service so government isn’t constantly outsourcing its own work, then paying a premium to consultants to tell us what public workers could have explained.

And it means treating public services as the foundation of a healthy economy, not a drag on it. Businesses can’t thrive if roads aren’t cleared, if families can’t find child care or if colleges and universities aren’t graduating enough skilled workers. Public services are economic infrastructure just as much as bridges and schools are.

We cannot rebuild public services on applause and thank-you tweets. That means being honest about wages and working conditions. If we want enough paramedics, health-care aides, social workers and public servants on the ground and behind the scenes to deliver the programs governments announce, those jobs have to be worth taking and worth keeping. It requires wages that keep up with the cost of living and are competitive with other provinces and major employers.

But pay is only part of the fix. Workers also need reasonable workloads, safe staffing levels and a real voice in how services are delivered. They need the time and tools to do the job properly, instead of constantly triaging chaos and apologizing for delays they didn’t create.

We’ve seen where the opposite approach leads. Wage freezes, hiring freezes and endless “efficiency reviews” have left deep marks. The results are on every page of Public Service in Tough Times, and in every community in Manitoba.

The hopeful news is that this trajectory can change. Austerity was a choice. So is repair.

This holiday season, as MLAs unwrap their copy of Public Service in Tough Times, we hope they see it not as a lump of coal, but as a mirror that shows the human cost of decisions made in the Legislature and reflects back the faces of the many Manitobans who rely on public services.

The next chapter in Manitoba’s story doesn’t have to be more tough times. It can be about repair, fairness and respect for the people who deliver public services. And if MLAs are looking for a New Year’s resolution, here’s one: let’s finally give Manitoba’s public services, and the workers behind them, what they need to succeed.

Kyle Ross is the president of the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union, which represents workers across Manitoba.