An NDP chicken in every pot — so they say

By: Editorial Posted: 2:01 AM CDT Wednesday, Sep. 6, 2023

The official writ didn’t drop until Tuesday, but that hasn’t stopped the campaign promises from piling up.

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The official writ didn’t drop until Tuesday, but that hasn’t stopped the campaign promises from piling up.

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/09/2023 (732 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The official writ didn’t drop until Tuesday, but that hasn’t stopped the campaign promises from piling up.

While all parties have offered up some form of platform preview ahead of October’s provincial election, the Manitoba’s NDP has been making near daily announcements for the last month. It’s a strategy that keeps the New Democrats in the news and, therefore, on voters’ minds, but is it a winning tactic?

By promising the world, NDP leader Wab Kinew has set expectations sky-high. With such lofty goals, valid questions remain about how, exactly, the party will implement and fund everything it has promised thus far if elected to lead the province this fall.

There was a flurry of NDP pre-election announcements.

Among the growing list, Kinew has committed to balancing the budget within four years, reopening and building new emergency rooms, freezing Manitoba Hydro rates, issuing electric vehicle rebates, improving child care and cutting the provincial gas tax all without raising the PST — a nagging skeleton in the New Democrat economic closet after former premier Greg Selinger promised the same and then proceeded raised the sales tax during his last term in office.

The party leader has also said he will retain policies introduced by the Progressive Conservative government, including a 50 per cent provincial property tax rebate and continue adjusting income tax brackets in step with inflation. Short of offering a fully costed platform, Kinew has said he will stick with the spending plan outlined in the 2023 provincial budget.

Yet, it’s difficult to see how the party’s laundry list of ambitious promises — many of which seek to maintain Tory tax cuts while also reversing Tory funding cuts — will square with the existing budget. Logic would dictate that something’s gotta give.

Manitobans have no shortage of issues to vote on: cost of living, crime, education, infrastructure, climate change and a crumbling health-care system, to name a few. While PC leader Heather Stefanson is fighting to right her party’s track record of austerity on these files, Kinew is fighting to appeal to the discontented masses — practical pledges be damned.

There isn’t a magic bullet for the myriad complex issues facing the province and there is a limit to what can be accomplished in a four-year-term. Voters know this. Campaigning politicians know this.

Still, modern politics are rife with examples of over-promising on the trail and under-delivering in office. There seems to be a shared understanding from both sides of the ballot box that this kind of behaviour is par for the political course.

Winnipeg’s last mayoral election was a rare outlier. Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham ultimately beat out his opponents with a transparent, measured approach to civic issues. He provided voters with a fully costed platform that outlined feasible solutions to local problems within the city’s tight budget. The two-time city councillor pulled no punches about the financial state of affairs at City Hall and even promised to raise taxes.

While it was a politically bland approach, it respected the laws of reality. Gillingham’s win — albeit by a small margin and with the lowest voter turnout in the last two decades — indicated an appetite for honesty and moderation.

It’s unlikely a similar strategy would fly provincially. Recent polls have the NDPs and PCs virtually neck-and-neck a month out from the vote, making every issue a possibly defining one.

Aside from a flurry of new funding announcements ahead of the pre-election blackout period, Stefanson and the PCs have been relatively silent when compared to the NDPs. The Liberals have thus far occupied the middle ground, rolling out a handful of platform promises in August.

Kinew has come out of the gates swinging. Whether he possesses the necessary follow-through is for voters to decide.