Right in the centre - Viability is the key

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Published on Friday, October 7, 2016

By Ken Waddell

Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press

There are only two ways to increase net profit: increase income or decrease expenses. When a company wants or needs to establish a higher profit margin, it has those same two choices. A company can make more stuff or get in more product and then sell more. It can also decrease expenses. For a government at any level it is a bit more difficult, as they don’t have the same control over income. Taxes are based on the economy’s productivity and government can’t do much about that in the short term, they can, however, cut expenses. In a public setting, that is a very tough thing to do. Many government jobs are protected by contract or union agreement. In addition, when cuts are made, there is a public outcry about job losses.

It’s interesting that when a government cuts jobs, there’s often a huge public outcry. When a company closes a plant and there are wide spread job cuts, there is also the same kind of outcry. It’s also interesting that thousands of jobs have been cut in the news media and there hasn’t been much of an outcry. 

The Province of Manitoba is undergoing some job cuts right now and as Premier Pallister pointed out in a news conference this past week, not all the funding requests to government can be met. Personally, I think all funding requests to government should be put on hold. We have had 17 years of unfettered spending and a lot of it hasn’t been in the right places. The NDP were masters at avoiding the hard decisions and it came around and bit them. Unfortunately, it bit us all.

The province was absolutely correct in cancelling the new $75 million headquarters for Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries. It would have saved some money but cost four times as much as it would have saved. They are right in cancelling the East Side Road Authority. That group, I am sure, had all the right intentions but results were pretty skimpy. The province has a very difficult decision to make and that is how much money gets spent in maintaining what level of services and in how many communities. There are some remote communities where viability is very precarious, to live there must be a very tough existence. Some day, some time, the question has to be asked, “How long do we pretend there is viability in some communities?” It’s a horrible question but it has to be asked. North America has thousands of ghost towns. As people demand (and maybe deserve) better levels of services, we may well have more ghost towns as the economy makes its decisions. It is almost impossible to provide adequate levels of health care and education in every community. Governments may need to stop trying to provide everything to everybody and work on a transition strategy for some communities.

As far as government funding is concerned, some serious questions have to be answered on the capital side. We could automatically get 16 per cent more capacity in our schools if they were open 12 months a year and on a semester system. The whole world seems to revolve around the July/August school break but maybe we can’t afford that. It also no secret that there isn’t a whole lot of academic teaching going on in June as the school year starts to wind down. We could, and should, also be using our schools earlier in the day and later at night. In the early ‘70s, NACI was open for a variety of adult education and community recreational activities until 10 p.m. many nights. It was called the Neepawa and Area Community Schools program. There should be no school expansions until all schools are filled and filled 12 months of the year, 16 hours a day, at least five days a week and maybe six.

Our hospitals are running much longer than one would have thought and God bless them, it’s hard work. I know hospitals are staffed 24/7 but a family friend’s dad had a scheduled surgery at 10 pm last week. His family was grateful and amazed. I am sure there are complicating factors but if Manitoba is short of doctors who want to stay in Manitoba, then shouldn’t we be only training doctors who want to stay here? If a big medical school wants to train doctors to go all over the world, go for it, but Manitoba should be training doctors, Manitoba resident people, who want to stay here, period. Manitoba has no obligation to train for needs elsewhere when the province is going broke.

Manitoba has a huge deficit to slay and Canada’s is much worse. For the most part, politicians have no interest in balancing their budget. It’s very sad but losses have to be eliminated and then debt has to be addressed. Pallister was very correct in his analogy. Government is not Santa Claus, the government isn’t one big Christmas catalogue where you can flip the pages and expect to get whatever you want. The province should shut down all capital expenses for a few years. Some services may not be viable, some communities are simply not viable and the whole picture has to be examined. Basically, if there is no viable employment opportunities and no economic growth in a community it is time to examine if growth will ever come. Or does the community need to shut down.

That question has to be asked before any more taxpayers money is poured into it.