[drew]

I suppose it's all doom and gloom as per usual.

But really - are we supposed to underpay our government employees so that we can never fill positions and always face labour shortages? This article conveniently left out comparisons of Nurses wages to see where Manitoba is competing with wages in that profession. I'll bet it's pretty close to our 3 "economic" powerhouse neighbours to the west. But really, Isn't this what equalization is for, to equalize basic services across the country? If provinces paying into the equalization program don't like the wages we are paying our nurses, then why don't they examine their own wages to see why Manitoba needs to pay more to compete.

Really though, this argument of increasing government excess and spending on the backs of equalization is sort of a tricky scenario.

Would the equalization contributing provinces be any more happy if Manitoba slashed it's taxes across the board (relying of course on being topped up by equalization payments from Ottawa), potentially luring companies, jobs, headquarters, etc. away from their own cities to ours? I very much doubt it.

And it's a little funny that all of a sudden after a couple years of getting fat off of "en vogue" resources that Sask. is now some sort of economic powerhouse. Please.

You can follow the economic performance of our two neighbours to the west simply by looking at a line graph showing the value of a half dozen basic resources. You don't need a degree to do that, and there is no one that can convince me that people out west are any "smarter" economically than in Manitoba. They just happen to sit on a larger volume of more valuable resources than Manitoba. It's a simple as that.