Manitoba budget falls short in key areas

Despite some positives (child health, reconciliation), we in the Green Party of Manitoba are generally disappointed with the priorities and missed opportunities in Budget 2026. In this brief response, we outline how a lack of funding for a full-fledged strategy on climate and an absence of upstream approaches to health and social challenges are especially concerning.

Let’s be clear: We’re in the midst of a “climate emergency” — not merely “climate change” as Budget 2026 refers to it. Acknowledging the 2025 wildfire season as the worst in three decades and the significant risks and costs were commendable. But battling wildfires — and floods, storms, emerging infectious diseases and other catastrophic weather events — requires a full, concerted effort and investment. The climate emergency will otherwise bankrupt the province. Last year’s $300-million wildfire over-expenditure was just the tip of the melting iceberg.

Full-scale investment in solar, wind and battery infrastructure, including jobs-of-the-future training, is essential, for both environment and economy. Yet other than a small paragraph on a wind power initiative, these were absent from the budget. Extending the EV purchase rebate and free public transit for youth are a start. But the science and evidence are indisputable: renewable energy needs to be the pillar of an effective climate emergency strategy.

Safeguarding our ecosystems is also critical to both preventive and resiliency climate emergency strategies, as well as increasing green economic opportunities. Funding protection of at least 30 per cent of our natural spaces is long overdue, for years advocated by Indigenous and environmental groups. Protection of the Seal River watershed in northern Manitoba was mentioned in Budget 2026 but without any financial commitment.

It’s time for action, with concrete budget support.

Perhaps the largest missed opportunity, though, involved our pressing social challenges. Although much was offered in Budget 2026 addressing poverty, homelessness, substance use and crime, completely ignoring basic income was unconscionable.

Fifty years ago, the pioneering work of the Mincome project in Dauphin (and to a lesser extent in Winnipeg), and more recently pilot projects around the world, have demonstrated the value and viability of a basic income program. It’s all the more fitting now, with the profound impact of AI on both low- and high-tech jobs.

Manitoba could lead the nation with a full implementation of a basic income program, eliminating the archaic and stigmatizing income assistance (“welfare”) system we have today. The savings of such a program would yield in addressing the societal challenges above and in health care would more than pay for itself.

On health, Budget 2026 again clearly demonstrated our government’s downstream focus on fixing the ailing health-care system. Adding almost $1 billion to the health budget, it all but ignored the upstream, root causes of ill health and determinants of good health.

Addressing poverty with a basic income program described above would yield massive health-care savings, but most importantly improve the health of thousands of Manitobans. Likewise, expanding prevention programs to curtail the use of tobacco, vaping, alcohol, addictive drugs and unhealthy foods and expanding affordable opportunities for physical activity, social connection and healthful, plant-based food availability would see dramatic benefits to our health and in our health-care system.

These, sadly, were absent in Budget 2026.

Support to the music and arts communities, and our public libraries should have seen much larger increases. As noted in Budget 2026, these are not only essential to the health and vibrancy of our communities, they have large positive economic impacts. Certainly, investing $1.5 million in hosting the Juno Awards will pay off, but the music and arts communities need more. And with the growing proliferation of mis-/dis-information, our public libraries are more important than ever. The $700,000 provincewide increase is not enough.

Finally, although not usually mentioned in a provincial budget — and not mentioned in Budget 2026 — democratic reform is vital to our province’s future. Our current “first-past-the-post” system is a relic of olden times, most democratic countries have evolved to proportional representation. Also, lowering both the voting age and political donation limits would help ensure fairer representation in our legislature.

In conclusion, while recognizing the government’s challenges with local, national and international pressures, we urge the province to rethink its direction and priorities. Its fiscal goal to balance the budget by 2027-2028 and its language of neoliberalism locks the government into an inevitable failure on investments in human capital and action on the climate emergency.

Manitoba should be a leader in lobbying for increased federal cost sharing, tax reforms, and long-term federal funding programs. We ask that the government more carefully consider how it budgets for what really matters — a healthier and more environmentally sustainable Manitoba. A more thorough analysis, with a post-Keynesian economics lens and discussion on affordability, is available at greenparty.mb.ca.

Dennis Bayomi, Brent Bjorklund and Janine Gibson are members of the leadership team of the Green Party of Manitoba.