Right in the Centre - None too soon

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Published on Thursday, April 28, 2016

By Ken Waddell

Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press

The resounding defeat of the Manitoba NDP on April 19 was a long time coming. They won elections in 1999, 2004, 2007 and 2011. By 2016, their luck ran out and to many in Manitoba, it was none too soon. The NDP would never have won the 1999 election except for a combination of circumstances that worked in their favour.

The PC government of the 1990s, led by Gary Filmon, had been in power for three elections. That in itself creates a mood for a change. But it was more than that, the 1990s had been a decade of financial restraint. Filmon had to hold the line on spending as the federal government had tightened their payments to the provinces. The federal budgets were balanced and so the province had two choices, slow down on spending or run bigger deficits. 

Ironically, the federal spending restraint came from the pressure from the Reform Party in the 1980s, as Reform Party Leader Preston Manning spread his fiscal management message across the land. “Get your fiscal house in order!” trumpeted Manning and rightly so, in community hall after community hall. Prime Minister Jean Chretien realized an opportunity and rode that populist message. He moved to restrain spending and balance the budget. He did it well enough to win some elections over an opposition divided between Reform Party and the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.

So Filmon had fiscal restraint going against him in spite of the fact it was the right move. Then came regionalization of health care. Health care staff were transferred from local health authorities like local hospitals and care homes and placed under the employment of regional health authorities. Spotting a chance to create a wedge issue, the Manitoba Nurses Union and NDP leader Gary Doer spouted that, “The Tories fired a 1,000 nurses.” It was an outright lie, but it stuck. The PCs and the media let it stick for a decade and a half. Nurses were not fired. It took 15 years before two media types, namely Deveryn Ross and Richard Cloutier, really exposed the lie. 

Then there was the 1995 vote rigging scandal, which was rather small in size, but nonetheless a serious  breach of ethics by some very low ranking PC organizers. It, along with the “fired nurses” lie, the fiscal restraint and the wish for change toppled the PC government. 

The resulting NDP government, from 1999 to 2016, will go down in history as the worst government we have had in Manitoba.

It is rather sad as Doer was popular and smart. He could have led a government that had much more benefit for Manitoba.

The NDP promised to end hallway medicine, instead they created highway medicine and waiting room medicine. They ran up balanced budgets on fed payments and then ran up deficits. We still are short of investment in health care and education. All other departments have shrivelled in effectiveness, if not actual size. 

The NDP govern badly because they are founded on flawed basis. The NDP, like other parties, have local delegates attend and vote at their conventions. Unlike other parties, one-third of the delegates are automatic delegates from the unions. That distorts the NDP philosophy in a very undemocratic fashion.

Party due to the union influence and a stubborn clinging to failed socialism, the NDP see tax dollars as good money, but private investment from individuals or corporations as bad money. They somehow resent any money that isn’t dug from the public purse. That blind reasoning is manifested in several ways. Communities or individuals aren’t allowed to build care homes, hospitals or health care facilities that might allow for more MRIs or CAT scans. It’s utter nonsense as, and students of history will tell you, that most of our hospitals were built with non-government money from churches, individuals or benevolent organizations.

The NDP rode a lie to power. To the lie they added fear, to the fear they added some well placed and strategic bullying. In the end, the lie lost its sway, the fear lost its bite and the bullying lost its grip.

Now we have a new government with a large mandate to grow Manitoba and it’s none too soon.