The Manitoba Provincial Politics Discussion

[Ando]

Originally Posted by windypeg

Our hyper-partisan, us-vs-them politics seems to have trained people on both sides of the spectrum to believe that every single problem they have is the fault of some politician or political group on the other side. It's aggravated by social media and the 24-hour news cycle constantly bombarding us with this stuff day and night. The news wants to rile you up to get clicks and social media is an echo chamber. Just my two cents.

Here! Here!

[rkspec]

i'm curious if the charges on Russ Wyatt are coming from a male or female?

edit: police released it was a female

[Jets4Life]

Originally Posted by rkspec

i'm curious if the charges on Russ Wyatt are coming from a male or female?

edit: police released it was a female

Really bizarre, considering he "came out" at Winnipeg's Gay parade a month ago. Do you think he is pulling a Kevin Spacey?

[cheswick]

Originally Posted by Jets4Life

Really bizarre, considering he "came out" at Winnipeg's Gay parade a month ago. DDo you think he is pulling a Kevin Spacey?

I believe he came out as bisexual.

[Jets4Life]

England lost.

[Biff]

^^^^ I agree, very political???

[dennis]

Originally Posted by Jets4Life

England lost.

Croatia wins!!!

[vid]

Originally Posted by Jets4Life

Really bizarre, considering he "came out" at Winnipeg's Gay parade a month ago. Do you think he is pulling a Kevin Spacey?

There are some gay guys (a minority) who think it's ok for them to molest women because they're gay and it "doesn't mean anything".

There are also straight men who do this to gay men, women who do this to gay men and other women, etc.

It could be a situation like that where he just has a really fucked up sense of personal boundaries and thinks his gender or sexual orientation acts as a free pass for messed up inappropriate behaviour.

[GarryEllice]

Originally Posted by vid

There are some gay guys (a minority) who think it's ok for them to molest women because they're gay and it "doesn't mean anything".

There are also straight men who do this to gay men, women who do this to gay men and other women, etc.

It could be a situation like that where he just has a really fucked up sense of personal boundaries and thinks his gender or sexual orientation acts as a free pass for messed up inappropriate behaviour.

As already mentioned, he came out as bisexual, not gay, so the "doesn't mean anything" defense wouldn't really apply.

[dmacc]

It looks like Lamont is going to try and steal NDP votes. That could make things tough for the left in the next election as they might split the vote allowing the PC's to run away with the next election. It will be interesting to see if Lamont can use this momentum to the Liberals advantage.

I wonder how much the Party gets in funding for reaching Official Party Status.

[Chrisforpm]

Originally Posted by dmacc

It looks like Lamont is going to try and steal NDP votes. That could make things tough for the left in the next election as they might split the vote allowing the PC's to run away with the next election. It will be interesting to see if Lamont can use this momentum to the Liberals advantage.

I wonder how much the Party gets in funding for reaching Official Party Status.

I think Lamont will attract a good number of NDP voters not comfortable with Kinew’s checkered history. I could see them parking their vote with the Liberals this time. Kinew will be pushed out and unless Lamont solidifies those voters, they will go back to the NDP in 2024.

[cheswick]

Got an ad on my facebook from the teachers union about a survey the government is doing on the upcoming budget. Ofcourse they wanted to oppose any sort of anything to do with education.

Survey is here for those interested:
https://www.gov.mb.ca/makingchoices/survey.html

In addition to education there are question on healthcare, green plan, and general fiscal.

[ywgwalk]

Originally Posted by cheswick

Got an ad on my facebook from the teachers union about a survey the government is doing on the upcoming budget. Ofcourse they wanted to oppose any sort of anything to do with education.

Survey is here for those interested:
https://www.gov.mb.ca/makingchoices/survey.html

In addition to education there are question on healthcare, green plan, and general fiscal.

Such awful questions. Trying to go through it:

"I don't think the premise of this question is true"
"Ya, I support the literal meaning of these words, but I really doubt I'd support how the government plans to take action on these words"

[rrskylar]

Originally Posted by dmacc

It looks like Lamont is going to try and steal NDP votes. That could make things tough for the left in the next election as they might split the vote allowing the PC's to run away with the next election. It will be interesting to see if Lamont can use this momentum to the Liberals advantage.

I wonder how much the Party gets in funding for reaching Official Party Status.

Seriously who would vote still vote NDP besides those totally dependent on govt. (yeah I know 25% of Manitobans) or unionized govt. employees?

[bomberjet]

There is no choice but to go with Brian P unfortunately. I don't like him and his attitude. But his party is the best option we have.

Maxime Bernier was in town last night. What a hack.

[Winnipegger]

Originally Posted by rrskylar

Seriously who would vote still vote NDP besides those totally dependent on govt. (yeah I know 25% of Manitobans) or unionized govt. employees?

If you think all public sector employees support the NDP government just because, you're terribly mistaken.

Plus while the stat about 25% of Manitoba's labour force is employed in the "public sector" (which includes federal, provincial, municipal, military, K-12 education, post-secondary and college education, healthcare, and public social service employees), it fails to recognize that provinces with smaller populations still demand the same level of public goods as provinces with larger populations. So naturally, with a small population, you still need some fixed level of government administration to deliver a given standard of public goods, but as the population gets larger, those services can be scaled up but usually less than a 1:1 ratio.

Said another way, if a jurisdiction has 100,000 people who all demand education, healthcare, and other public goods, it's going to take a small army to deliver those goods. If that jurisdiction grew to 300,000 people, the public service would need to grow but it wouldn't need to triple. Economies of scale can be achieved with larger populations. Just look at other provinces with similar populations to Manitoba. Their public service is similar in size. Once you start getting to the larger provinces, then the % working in the public sector shrinks, not because they are somehow "more efficient and less wasteful", but because of the economies of scale they achieve.

If you can't understand this concept, then it is likely that you will always be upset with the size of Manitoba's public sector unless this province grows by 2 million people overnight.

[cheswick]

Originally Posted by Winnipegger

If you think all public sector employees support the NDP government just because, you're terribly mistaken.

Plus while the stat about 25% of Manitoba's labour force is employed in the "public sector" (which includes federal, provincial, municipal, military, K-12 education, post-secondary and college education, healthcare, and public social service employees), it fails to recognize that provinces with smaller populations still demand the same level of public goods as provinces with larger populations. So naturally, with a small population, you still need some fixed level of government administration to deliver a given standard of public goods, but as the population gets larger, those services can be scaled up but usually less than a 1:1 ratio.

Said another way, if a jurisdiction has 100,000 people who all demand education, healthcare, and other public goods, it's going to take a small army to deliver those goods. If that jurisdiction grew to 300,000 people, the public service would need to grow but it wouldn't need to triple. Economies of scale can be achieved with larger populations. Just look at other provinces with similar populations to Manitoba. Their public service is similar in size. Once you start getting to the larger provinces, then the % working in the public sector shrinks, not because they are somehow "more efficient and less wasteful", but because of the economies of scale they achieve.

If you can't understand this concept, then it is likely that you will always be upset with the size of Manitoba's public sector unless this province grows by 2 million people overnight.

Instead of just guessing about such a correlation and berating those who dobn't "understand this concept" why not actually see if you're correct first. Looking at March 2012 data of public sector employees and labour force per province (March 2012 is the most recent public sector data set I could find)

Source stats can tables 10-10-0025-01 and 14-10-0287-01

Below is the % of the labour force, employed in the public sector. Ordered by population size. So we should see the highest uptop according to you.

PEI 24.1%
NL 26.3%
NB 22.7%
NS 26.4%
SK 25.8%
MB 27.2%
AB 15.5%
BC 17.0%
PQ 20.8%
ON 18.7%

Manitoba as you can see actually has the highest percentage working in the public sector despite being mid pack in terms of population. So yes, someone can perfectly reasonably be upset with the size of Manitobas public sector, even when accounting for your hypothesis of baseline service requirement.

[Hecate]

Thanks for posting some facts cheswick. Too many government employees is a hindrance to our province. Anyone who says otherwise is on the payroll. The first place i would start is the school divisions. Do we really need 30 of them? Such a waste of money that could actually be going towards education and programs to help keep Kids in school and fight poverty.

[Winnipegger]

Originally Posted by cheswick

Instead of just guessing about such a correlation and berating those who dobn't "understand this concept" why not actually see if you're correct first. Looking at March 2012 data of public sector employees and labour force per province (March 2012 is the most recent public sector data set I could find)

Source stats can tables 10-10-0025-01 and 14-10-0287-01

Below is the % of the labour force, employed in the public sector. Ordered by population size. So we should see the highest uptop according to you.

PEI 24.1%
NL 26.3%
NB 22.7%
NS 26.4%
SK 25.8%
MB 27.2%
AB 15.5%
BC 17.0%
PQ 20.8%
ON 18.7%

Manitoba as you can see actually has the highest percentage working in the public sector despite being mid pack in terms of population. So yes, someone can perfectly reasonably be upset with the size of Manitobas public sector, even when accounting for your hypothesis of baseline service requirement.

That's badly outdated information my friend. The latest estimates on public sector employment are available for October 2018 from Statistics Canada in table 14-10-0288-01. Based on the latest information, the order and values are much different than yours (from highest % to lowest % of workforce in the public sector):

NL: 28.8%
PEI: 26.7%
NS: 25.5%
NB: 25.2%
MB: 24.9%
SK: 24.6%
QC: 21.7%
ON: 19.1%
AB: 18.8%
BC: 17.5%

As you can see, that puts Manitoba in 5th place, and public sector employment is down by 2.3% compared to your stats. That's a significant difference compared to your 6 year old data.

Link to Source Data - Statistics Canada Table 14-10-0288-01

[Hecate]

It’s nice to see that the numbers are going down. Thanks for posting more facts winnipegger lol. Maybe it’s because the conservative government has been doing some trimming. Still lots of areas that could have cuts though. Maybe we are on the right track. Also saw in the free press today that emergency room wait times are down 25% after all the fearmongering from the NDP and the mgeu during the restructuring process, it’s nice to see that it’s improving.