Some programs can’t be put on pause

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/10/2024 (343 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There are programs you can stop for budgetary reasons, primarily because they’ve reached their fiscal limit and their political goals.

If a government’s intention is that a certain number of homeowners may seek government-assisted energy upgrades for their homes — or that another group may take advantage of government assistance to install home security systems — when the target number is reached, a government can legitimately sit back and say it has done what it wanted to do. When the money’s run out, the program can stop.

The homeowners who have opted to take part in the program early in the process will be the ones who benefit — those who waited, will not. Obviously, the supply of government money isn’t endless, and when a program is quickly oversubscribed, the government can’t be expected to keep putting money to replace every storm window in a single fiscal year, or subsidize the installation of security systems for all.

But in other areas, a pause or a halt is, well, beyond unreasonable.

Take the Canada-Manitoba Housing Benefit, a joint federal-provincial program that is intended to get people out of shelters and into housing.

The program was paused when more people than were anticipated applied for funding to get “top up” funding that they needed pay rent on apartments. The pause came quickly, with a letter halting the intake process in early September.

Premier Wab Kinew told reporters Thursday that the joint program simply ran out of federal money.

He also said the program was going to be taken off hold, with an infusion of $1.2 million from the provincial government.

The NDP government’s decision to reverse its pause on the program is a good one, because you can’t simply ask people living in shelters to apply again next year when there’s a new budget.

Think of it this way: if more people than were expected needed heart bypass surgery, running up more costs that the government had budgeted for, the health minister wouldn’t simply say, “Sorry, folks, we’re at our limit. We’re pausing heart surgery because of unprecedented demand. Just take care of yourselves until the new fiscal year, and we’ll see if we can fit you all in then.”

If the Winnipeg Police Service overshot its budget, there might well be restraint and an examination of what had going awry in the budgeting process — but the WPS wouldn’t just park all its patrol cars and put its officers on furlough until the next budget came down.

Simply put, there are things that can wait, and there are things that can’t. There are programs that can have hard budget caps, year after year, and ones that can’t, because quite simply, people’s lives depend on the services that are being funded.

Kinew also said Thursday that the top-up program is not the way the province wants to go anymore — instead, the NDP wants to build more social housing.

“Things like the housing benefit, it is a bridge,” Kinew said. “This housing benefit is not the be-all and end-all goal … The goal should not be for us to provide top-ups for people to be able to get into private rental accommodations. The goal should be for the first step of housing, that it is government that’s playing that role.”

That may well be true, but when you have to get to the other side of the river, you need to keep a bridge in place, even if you plan to build a tunnel in the future.

Homeowners can wait a year for another opportunity for provincial assistance purchasing a heat exchanger or installing a security system.

The homeless can’t wait. Winter’s coming.