Haha, that's a good line.

That said, I don't know how far the NDP can really go with the extreme austerity scaremongering given that Pallister hasn't been hacking away at core services so much as he has been putting a stop to a bunch of 11th hour NDP campaign promises that came in the last year or two of their mandate. Let's face it, the cupboards were fairly empty when Pallister came in.

Except government is not a business. There is much more to successful governance than turning profit, which is the sole driver of business. This point seems to have been forgotten these days. Government is about creating a quality of life for all of its citizens.

My biggest criticism of this government is that they are running the Province as if it was a business having to report to shareholders at the quarter. They have a single focus and have forgotten that while business is about money, government is about people. A fundamental difference.

I'll never understand why having the job of politician on your resume is a bad thing for the job of politician. Would you want a doctor who wasn't a 'career doctor'?

Glad to hear your father is ok as was my mother in law when she suffered her heart attack last year.

ER's are probably the best managed part of Manitoba health despite wait times in some locations at certain times of the year, the most critical patients do get the care they need first.

The main problem with MB health is the huge redundent bureaucracy that ballooned under the NDP regime who felt more managers was the solution to solving health care problems.

sad thing abiut the health care projects scrap is many of these have been in planning and design proces since the 90's :(

I don't mean this at all disparaginly, but the business experience they have is from small businesses and family businesses. Pallister's cabinet has people who owned gift shops, personal investment dealers, insurance brokerages, family farms, etc. These are great businesses, they're certainly not easy to run, I'm not saying that. They all know the value of a dollar, for sure.

But they don't have experience navigating large, complex organizations with lots of stakeholders. I think, for instance, I'd look at someone like Paul Mahon of GWL, and say, 'okay, that guy could handle government'. But some folks whose business experience is just selling mutual funds or flowers or whatever out of a small-town storefront? I don't know.

Don't get me wrong -- the NDP were worse in their ability to manage. But I just don't look at the provincial Tories and see their small/family business acumen as particularly helpful.

One thing missing from this.

Reality.

Sorry but everything is about money. Flowery talk like the government is about people ignores, dismisses really, the hard reality of rising intrest costs and decreasing credit ratings. You can't keep running up the credit card without any thought to how you will pay the money back. The NDP made so many poor decisions (see Hydro) that trying to get things back in order is going to hurt, a lot.

The wild card of course is economic growth. Remember in the 1999 election when Filmon pledged to cut taxes and increase spending by a billion dollars total over a four year term while balancing the budget? People thought he was nuts. Not many bought the idea.

Turns out that the NDP of all parties was able to exceed that total while keeping the budget balanced by simple virtue of the fact that the economy grew and transfers grew. Now granted, the NDP way overplayed its hand following some good economic years in the 00s leading up to the 08 crisis, but it goes to show that good conditions overall can make it much easier to run surpluses.

The NDP balanced the budgets in those early years by raiding Hydro.

It is a Crown Corp...

Taking profits is one thing but driving them deeper into debt by ever increasing water rates is another.

Increasing Hydro's debt while pretending to balance a budget. Cool?

Event though it's a crown corp, it's a business. The Government took hundreds of millions from Hydro. Then Hydro has to borrow billions. Makes sense.

The Government of Manitoba is responsible for Hydro's debt.

Hydro is borrowing billions to fund it's massive construction projects. Not because the gov't skimmed off their profits.

Hydro is a hugely bloated corporation. The government skimming off it's profits (which are theirs) is the least of Hydro's worries.

In any event, borrowing from Peter to pay Paul matters little when joe public Drew, owns both of them. Just shifting money around in columns.

^ Nailed it. The NDP got to the the point where they were no longer serving Manitobans but were serving themselves and the unions that supported them.

Their 1% sales tax increase, the highest provincial income tax % on the lowest tax brackets in Canada, does that hurt the people at the top or those closest to the bottom who supported them?!! Way too many bad, bad decisions made by the NDP REGIME that will haunt Manitoba for decades!:(

Without transfer payments from Ottawa this province is doomed!

I hope the Pallister gov't can start pointing it's attention towards the School Board problem we have in this province - i.e. that we have WAY too many of them. These are redundant bureaucracies with taxation powers.

If we are going to get hammered by double digit increase Hydro rates, it would be nice if that was cushioned by trimming a lot of the fat away from Education. Not teachers, but Board office staff, trustees, and all the related costs (offices, clerical, etc, etc,).

Don't we have a politics thread?

Don't see one.

Good article on the Sun today, here is an excerpt:

" Under the NDP, there were no limits on how much government could spend on both operating costs and capital projects. The former government ran up the province’s debt faster than any previous government in Manitoba’s history. They doubled the province’s net summary debt in just nine years, from $10.6 billion in 2007 to $21.4 billion in 2016. During that period, they increased debt as a percentage of GDP by nearly 50%, from 21.8% to 32.5%. It’s the main reason Manitoba’s credit rating was downgraded, which will result in higher borrowing costs for the province.

The NDP grew that debt in two ways. For seven straight years they ran operating deficits, which were added to the province’s overall debt. In addition to that, they added billions more to the debt by borrowing for capital projects, whether in health care, education or justice.

It’s normal for governments to borrow to finance capital projects. But it has to be affordable debt-financing. It has to be balanced with what taxpayers can reasonably afford to repay without jacking up taxes. Under the NDP, there was no balance. No debt ceilings or parameters of any kind were put in place. It was reckless."

link: http://www.winnipegsun.com/2017/02/0...-are-in-charge

NDP: credit card maxed? get another. max it out. Get another.

can't you right wingers get a room? this aint it...