Right in the centre - NDP/Union cartel has stifled our economy

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Published on Thursday, May 25, 2017

Ken Waddell

The Neepawa Banner

The provincial government is looking again at allowing replacement and expansion of hog barns. It is about 10 years overdue, as it was in 2007 that the former NDP government imposed a moratorium on hog barn construction. It was an ill-conceived and devastating move. It’s main purpose was to set up an elaborate smokescreen to divert attention from the NDP’s main purpose. That main effect was to elevate public sector union numbers as high as possible to placate the union demands.

In turn, by way of a very undemocratically skewed designated delegate system that is unique to the NDP party, the unions could conceivably keep the NDP in power forever. Eventually, the people of Manitoba saw through the NDP/Union cartel smokescreen and the NDP government was demolished in the last election. The NDP/Union alliance forget that in order to have jobs, you need both private sector and public sector employers, but mostly private sector employers.

The hog barn ban became a unifying rallying cry to show the NDP/Union party was pretending to care for the environment and protecting waterways and lakes. Hogs produce manure, a product that is often described in a more graphic manner. A hog produces about the same amount as a human. The difference is that the hog manure is put into lagoons, breaks down somewhat in the process and is injected or spread on the land for fertilizer. Human manure is put into lagoons, somewhat treated, but sometimes not, and then put directly into rivers. In almost all rural towns that’s what happens. In Winnipeg, a lot of human manure goes directly into the river and Winnipeg is a lot closer to rivers and lakes than most of the hog barns in Manitoba.

So more hog barns may be built and some inefficient older barns may be renovated or replaced. The manure will go into lagoons, be treated somewhat and then go into the land as fertilizer and to a small extent, as irrigation. There are limits as to how much hog manure can be spread or injected. In Winnipeg, the amount of human manure that goes into the river is determined by how much rain falls, how quickly it falls and by how many mistakes are made by the people handling the sewage equipment.

The entire hog barn, hog manure debate is largely a farce, but it was useful farce to keep people from thinking about the real issues that affected Manitobans. Those real issues under the NDP/Union cartel were centered around a deliberate expansion of all things publicly funded and a suppression of all things privately funded. The grey, dank cloud of socialism was imposed on Manitoba for 17 years and it continues. It will take the new government a long time to turn things around.

There are many other socialist falsehoods that permeate our Manitoba economy. Private investment in health care, be it institutionally or personally is largely thwarted. A person can go to North Dakota and pay for no end of medical care if they can afford it but not in Manitoba. Health care needs a total overhaul, from diagnostics, to home care, to care homes.

Manitoba needs hundreds of changes, but the NDP/Union has to be only one source of information informing those changes. The government must go directly to the teachers, the nurses, the doctors and all other stakeholders to ensure that the economy grows in a wise and fair manner for decades to come. I have yet to talk to a teacher, nurse or a doctor who didn’t have great ideas to do a better job and grow the economy.  I have yet to talk to a teacher, nurse or a doctor who wasn’t extremely frustrated with the system they must work in. 

The NDP/Union cartel won’t be happy but unless a lot of things change, there won’t be a strong Manitoba economy for them to work in anyway.