End of honeymoon for NDP government fast approaching

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This article was published 07/08/2024 (452 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Welcome to the unofficial, unscientific beginning of the end of the honeymoon for Premier Wab Kinew and his NDP government.

There is no official metric that tells us conclusively when a political honeymoon period ends for a new government. In fact, it’s usually something identified only in retrospect.

However, with the one year anniversary of last fall’s provincial election fast approaching, if the honeymoon isn’t over now, it will be in a matter of weeks.

In that context, how should we judge the progress — or lack of it — of the Kinew government? For argument, let’s look at two key files.

The first — homelessness, mental health and addictions — has been in the news lately, albeit for some of the wrong reasons.

Conflict has broken out between the City of Winnipeg and community groups trying to support the homeless, with the former — in the form of Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham — issuing a stern letter reminding community groups they cannot interfere with police and paramedics responding to medical and public safety issues at homeless encampments.

In last fall’s election, Kinew promised to “end chronic homelessness” within two terms. That’s an incredibly aggressive timetable that speaks to a need to act sooner rather than later.

However, although there has been some progress on this file, the policy and funding infrastructure needed to start acting on this pledge has been hard to find.

Which brings us to the recent decision by Bernadette Smith, the minister who oversees the homelessness file, to take a delegation of more than two dozen municipal and community leaders to study the so-called “Houston model,” which was cited in Kinew’s original pledge.

The problem is the Houston model is starting to come undone from a lack of government support and a failure to provide truly affordable housing on a sustainable basis.

The timing of the trip has been awkward, to say the least, creating an image of a new minister fiddling (or travelling, if you will) while the homeless in Winnipeg broil in our mid-summer heat wave.

There is nothing inherently wrong with fact-finding, but as we approach the one-year anniversary, Smith needs to start demonstrating the government has the capacity to deliver a crisis-level response to a problem that has certainly reached crisis proportions.

While the Kinew government percolates its options on homelessness, mental health and addictions, there are many waiting to see its ideas on how to structure a forward-leaning and comprehensive plan to ensure Manitoba’s long-term energy needs are being met.

In short, the former Progressive Conservative government spent so much time using Manitoba Hydro as a political chew toy that it completely neglected the challenge of ensuring the province’s long-term energy security. While the Tories had some political success hammering the NDP on cost overruns for dam and transmission line construction, it became evident that our seemingly limitless capacity to produce clean hydroelectricity was, well, quite limited.

When the Tories commissioned a detailed study on Manitoba’s future energy needs in what turned out to be their last year in power, they found out we were on a fast-track to run out of domestically generated electricity. Rather than act to increase generation and rapidly escalate energy conservation, the Tories tried to hide the report.

The NDP inherited all of it: the report, the PC government’s dithering incompetence and a future of uncertainty. And while that gives the Kinew government some slack moving forward, there are growing expectations that a new, bold energy policy will be coming. And soon.

Government sources confirmed that a draft energy policy has been created and is being passed around government to gather additional feedback. The sources said the policy will cover the gamut of challenges, from how to increase generation without building more dams to how to get Manitobans to be more mindful in their use of electricity.

These are enormous challenges. Finance Minister Adrien Sala, the minister responsible for Hydro, has painted himself into a pretty tight corner when it comes to expanding generating capacity.

Earlier this year, Sala publicly rebuked now-former Hydro CEO Jay Grewal for saying publicly the Crown energy company was going to aggressively pursue deals with “independent power producers” to increase generating capacity. Sala responded to Grewal’s suggestion by saying that any future deals would have to be “publicly owned.”

The problem is that Hydro is still shackled with significant debt from the last round of dam and transmission line building. If Manitoba can’t afford to build new dams — and it can’t — and won’t partner with private entities, then what options does it have?

Sala’s vision, in the form of a new policy, needs to be issued as soon as possible to gather debate and outside scrutiny. Particularly if the Kinew government is going to soften its hard aversion to private-sector partnerships.

Important progress has been made on both the homelessness and energy files. And it should be noted the former PC government made very little progress on either file, a reality that has created a legitimate policy deficit that is only now being addressed.

But there will come a time when the current government can no longer blame its inability to deliver solutions on a former government. Nobody knows exactly when that time will come, but you can bet that it will be soon.

» Dan Lett is a Winnipeg Free Press columnist. This column previously appeared in the Free Press.