Stefanson touts ‘record’ investments

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This article was published 09/03/2023 (971 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Premier Heather Stefanson is making no apologies for recent spending her government has made during an election year. When quizzed about that spending, Stefanson said the freshly released provincial budget and funding announcements address needs raised by Manitobans themselves.

As Finance Minister Cliff Cullen introduced the 2023 provincial budget in the legislature on Tuesday, he stated the Progressive Conservatives were returning to their roots as a party that is “progressive on social issues and conservative on fiscal issues.”

However, the budget contained a slew of new spending. So how can the PC government reconcile those expenses with its claim to be fiscally conservative?

Stefanson explained the spending is based on budget consultations with Manitobans who said they wanted investments in certain areas and some financial relief.

“We heard loud and clear from them that they wanted us to make more investments, particularly in the areas of health care, education, and justice and social services,” Stefanson told the Sun during a trip to Brandon on Wednesday.

“So, that’s really where you’ll see the bulk of those investments being made.”

Tax breaks in the budget provide relief from inflation, she said. The province raised the income tax exemption to $15,000, which it said would remove 47,000 low-income Manitobans from tax rolls. The budget also adjusted other tax brackets which the government said would save a family with two incomes of $50,000 each more than $1,250 in 2024. At the same time, she added, the government is on track to eliminate the deficit within five years.

Stefanson was asked, on the other hand, what she would say to citizens who questioned the need to make tax cuts now and want to see greater investment in areas like health care and education.

“Again, we’re investing $2 billion more in areas of health care, education, justice, social services, all of those areas that are important to Manitobans,” she said.

The province pledged to increase the school tax rebate for residential and farm properties to 50 per cent this year, which the government said will return $774 to the average homeowner.

However, the province has frozen the ability of public school boards to increase the rate of their special tax levy, which provided school divisions flexibility for introducing local projects. The province has also faced criticism that it is taking away that ability of divisions to raise taxes even though it doesn’t have a plan for funding a sustainable education system.

In response, Stefanson said her government has made the largest increase in education funding for the kindergarten to Grade 12 level in 25 years, spending $1 billion more on education now than when the PCs came to power.

“We’ll continue to make those investments in future years when it comes to education. I think you can already see we’ve taken 50 per cent off of property taxes, yet we’re continuing to increase at record levels the investments in education.”

Yet, in some cases, school divisions have still been forced to cut some programs due to their financial position. One example of this is the health-care aide program in the Brandon School Division. Board chairperson Linda Ross has stated it was the only program where the division paid fees for post-secondary education, which is not its mandate, adding the board doesn’t have “infinite” money.

The division and Assiniboine Community College partnered on the program that gives high school students a chance to gain hands-on experience in medicine, making it a possible future career path. ACC covered the bill last year, but the college’s president, Mark Frison, has stated it can’t be expected to pay moving forward.

Meanwhile, the division will see an increase of almost $8 million in revenue after it received a $6.3-million boost in funding from the provincial government. The BSD had funded the program in previous years, and Frison has described the school board’s decision to cut the program as a political move against the provincial government.

While Stefanson said she was not aware of the developments surrounding the local health-care aide program, the premier again pointed to what her government has described as record funding of school divisions.

“We’ll continue to make those investments in those divisions,” Stefanson said. “It’s of course up to those divisions how they decide to spend their money. And we hope that they’re listening to people locally. If that’s a program that they want to see continue, we hope that they continue that program because certainly the funding is there for it.”

“The funding is there” could also describe the premier’s response to Brandon’s public transportation system. While the province gave Brandon Transit a one-time $500,000 investment last year to help with deficits that resulted from the pandemic, Mayor Jeff Fawcett has indicated, down the road, council will seek more funding for the city’s beleaguered transit system that has seen cuts to routes and service in recent years.

However, Stefanson pointed to the recent lifting of a freeze on the municipalities operating grant that will bring an extra $2.3 million in unrestricted funding to the City of Brandon this year.

“Those are dollars that can be utilized in any way the mayor sees fit, and council sees fit,” Stefanson said. “And so, those are dollars that would be available for things such as transit.”

» ihitchen@brandonsun.com