Rising costs are hitting residents from all sides

The year 2026 is shaping up to be a financially unpalatable one for both Manitoba residents and governments alike. The signs are unmistakable.

Last month, the Brandon School Division warned that local property taxes could rise as much as 10 per cent for the owner of a typical $301,000 home, thanks in large part to the teacher salary harmonization that has taken place across Manitoba.

According to board chair Linda Ross, the shift to provincewide teacher bargaining has disproportionately hurt smaller and rural school divisions.

“The cost to divisions in Winnipeg will be negligible,” she said. “But for the rest of the province, it’s going to be a lot. The province has said all along they’re not going to pay for harmonization costs, and that creates a really uneven situation.”

The province offloading costs to local school divisions, and thus to local ratepayers, is not a new phenomenon. Last year, the division received a $3.3-million increase in provincial funding for its 2025–26 budget, which fell short of making up for rising inflation costs.

To balance its finances, the board approved a 6.78 per cent property tax increase — about $121 more for the owner of an average $301,300 home.

Thus far, there has been no word whether the province will change its stance, though the education minister has promised to meet with the school division early next year. Yet all things considered, the province isn’t flush with cash either.

This week, Manitoba Finance Minister Adrian Sala blamed “historic” wildfires and drought conditions for a bleak economic report that forecasts a $1.6-billion deficit for Manitoba by next spring.

The Winnipeg Free Press reported that the province had earmarked $50 million for wildfire-related expenses this year, within a budget that had already projected a $794-million deficit for spring 2026. But the latest report suggested fighting fires and evacuating northerners — among other expenses — cost the province about $224 million between April 1 and Sept. 30.

At the same time, Manitoba Hydro was impacted by a severe shortage in water flows, with its operations slated to cost $684 million more than first budgeted. These drought-related losses, along with the need to replace infrastructure and satisfy future energy demands, were cited by Manitoba Hydro this week when it asked the Public Utilities Board for an electricity rate hike of nearly 11 per cent over the next three years.

As a result, the Crown corporation said average residential bills would rise between $12 to $22 per month over that period, should the PUB approve the proposal.

The cost of living for ordinary Manitobans is on the rise, with the province’s inflation rate in November being the highest among Canadian provinces at 3.3 per cent. Add to that the rising year-over-year cost of grocery prices, which have risen by 4.7 per cent as of last month, and the financial strain on Manitoba households is growing unsustainable.

But wait, there’s more, particularly for Brandon residents, as more property tax hikes loom on the horizon.

In the last go-round of budgeting back in January, the City of Brandon approved a 6.9 per cent property tax increase for the 2025 budget, down from a first-proposed 11.7 per cent. That followed a 9.4 per cent hike in 2024.

In speaking privately with members of council, we have been told that we could potentially be looking at a similar tax increase in 2026 of anywhere between six to eight per cent. While those numbers are not official — the proposed budget has yet to be posted — the four-year budgeting practice enacted by the city had originally called for double-digit tax increases until 2028.

Given the rising costs of merely existing these days, it should come as no surprise that organizations that rely on donations in our community are also feeling the pinch. On Monday, Helping Hands soup kitchen went before council requesting a $15,000 lump sum, a $20,000 increase to its annual grant to bring it up to $50,000 per year, and an exemption on its property taxes, which currently sit at $7,500 per year.

“We’ve never had to consider what will happen if we run out of money,” board chair Andrea Epp said at Monday’s council meeting. “We’ve always been able to just kind of coast with the amount of donations that we’ve had and the level of usage that we’ve had at the centre. It’s just no longer at a point where we can continue to coast, and we have to make some serious plans for the future.”

That request has placed city councillors in an uncomfortable situation.

Already faced with exacting higher taxes from local ratepayers, they would be in danger of opening a floodgate of similar requests from other goodwill organizations that operate within the city, because the demand is limitless.

As Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett said, “This is not the kind of thing that the City of Brandon taxes for.

“With everything that we’re doing, it gets into a pretty slippery slope when we start doing things that are not sort of considered city (responsibility). But we also want to make sure that essential services is being sustained,” he said. “We’ll have to take a look.”

All of this adds up to a very bumpy ride for taxpayers in the coming year. Fasten your seatbelts.