The right move, but for the right reasons?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/07/2023 (1041 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

At a baseline level — where the rubber meets the road, so to speak — it’s a change that makes perfect sense.

The province announced Tuesday that effective Aug. 1, Manitoba Public Insurance will deny third-party liability coverage to individuals caught driving drunk or otherwise impaired.

This latest in a series of incrementally imposed disincentives to getting behind the wheel while impaired is another step in the unfortunately necessary process of convincing Manitoba drivers that it’s time to put an end to a reckless and unnecessary behaviour that far too many still seem to think is acceptable.

Justice Minister Kelvin Goertzen, flanked by MPI board chair Ward Keith, explained that the public insurer will continue to cover the damage to innocent people’s vehicles or property, but MPI will seek repayment of those costs from those found to have caused that damage while driving impaired.

“This, we believe, is both logical and consistent with our view of the harm of impaired driving,” Mr. Goertzen said.

Manitoba averages 26 impaired-driving-related fatalities annually. So far in 2023, seven people have died as a result of impaired-driving collisions. More locally, impaired driving remains an issue in Brandon as well. The Brandon Police Service told us earlier this week that, so far this year, 29 impaired charges have been laid, and 33 immediate roadside prohibitions have been made.

Without doubt, it’s an issue that still needs to be driven home — literally and figuratively.

Over the past five years, MPI has paid out an average of 178 third-party liability claims on behalf of impaired drivers — a number that represents an annual outlay of $2.2 million, or approximately $12,500 per claim, on behalf of individuals who have made the ill-advised decision to drive while under the influence.

In that context, it’s hard to argue with the province’s logic.

What’s less difficult to view with skepticism, however, is the announcement’s timing — arriving, as it does, as the provincial government faced daunting polling numbers while heading into a fall election and has clearly decided a “tough on crime” agenda is its best hope of garnering sufficient public support to snatch an against-most-odds victory from the jaws of what many are forecasting as defeat.

Given the problems it has had with the health care, education, poverty and labour relations files over the course of two terms, the Progressive Conservative government led by Premier Heather Stefanson seems to have settled on law and order as the bread-and-butter issue on which it might turn its flailing fortunes around.

Tuesday’s announcement on third-party liability coverage is the latest in a series of figurative Hail Mary passes launched with the apparent hope of scoring just those kinds of public-popularity points.

Among the Tories’ public-safety-related announcements since last fall have been a new Winnipeg Police Service unit focused on violent crime, increased funding for downtown street patrols and homeless shelters, additional staff at walk-in addictions clinics, a lobbying effort to convince the federal government to make it harder for violent criminals to get bail, and increased funding for the province’s prosecutions branch in an effort to “(get) those who are violent offenders off of our streets.”

Brandonites and Winnipeggers have also been buffeted with provincial-government advertisements, including some quickly debunked billboards featuring images of criminals wearing electronic ankle bracelets, touting “concrete action” and “real results” when it comes to tracking violent criminals.

Quite frankly, we should not expect the Tories to pivot away from the messaging campaign they have embarked upon — and certainly not after new data from Statistics Canada suggested recently that Manitoba’s crime severity index showed a 14 per cent increase in 2022 from the year before. In this province, both violent and non-violent crime contributed to this increase.

As we said earlier this week, the Tories have seemingly found their stride in being on message, blanketing the airwaves and headlines with announcements, and doing so with fewer gaffes over the last several months to bring them strife along the campaign trail.

And following the crime severity index news in the headlines, the Tories look almost prescient.

But that doesn’t change the fact that this government seems intent upon bolstering its own political fortunes by ratcheting up voter fears and resentments.

Rather than inspiring confidence in (and, presumably, votes for) the province’s tough-on-crime attitude, what has been created is an impression of a government that’s trying to create a single-issue election in a province in which deeply entrenched challenges are discomfitingly plentiful.

Is making drunk drivers pay for the damage they cause the right thing to do? Absolutely. Is this government imposing this measure at this time for the right reasons? That part is very much open to discussion.

» Winnipeg Free Press and The Brandon Sun