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Manitoba - 2007 Throne Speech Highlights
Manitoba News Release
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November 20, 2007
2007 THRONE SPEECH HIGHLIGHTS
Green and Growing
- A $206-million investment for the upgrade of all three
waste-water treatment plants in Winnipeg as part of tri-level negotiations to address the City of Winnipeg's capital requirements.
- A $150-million commitment for rural and northern water and waste-water projects.
- New legislation to set out Manitoba's Kyoto target.
- A phasing down of the Brandon coal plant and requiring
the capture of methane emissions from large landfills.
- A commitment to reduce total greenhouse gas emissions in Manitoba below 2000 levels over the next two years.
- A new provincewide program to help lower-income
Manitobans make cost-effective, energy-efficient home improvements.
- A new fuel mandate for biodiesel.
- New restrictions on household use of dishwashing detergents and lawn fertilizers to help protect lakes and rivers.
- New measures to address cottage and residential septic fields.
- A new strategy to conserve water.
- A commitment to plant one million trees a year for the next five years in partnership with the Manitoba Forestry Association and other groups.
Innovation and Competitiveness
- An additional 4,000 apprenticeship spaces through a four-year plan.
- Expansion of the University College of the North.
- Further capital investments for university campuses in Winnipeg and Brandon.
- Enhancement of the Manitoba Bursary Fund to provide direct support for students.
- Additional labour market services for immigrants.
- A new Qualifications Recognition Strategy.
- Expansion and entrenching of the highly-successful Sector Council Strategy in legislation.
- New measures to reduce red tape.
- An enhanced driver's licence as an affordable and secure form of identification for travellers, to be offered beginning in the fall of 2008.
Addressing the Challenges of a Rapidly Rising Dollar
- Starting Jan, 1, 2008, beginning the phase-out of the
province's corporate capital tax and making the Manufacturing Investment Tax Credit 70 per cent refundable;
- Establish a rapid response team to expedite the resolution of issues faced by individual sectors or companies.
- Introduce a new timber-pricing policy.
- Increase the farmland tax rebate to 70 per cent.
- Launch the Road to 2010 tourism promotion strategy with a goal of reaching $2 billion in annual tourism revenue by 2010.
- Make an immediate, two-year investment in the equity investment program for local filmmakers while enhancing the incentives for foreign film productions to hire local personnel.
Tax Reductions
- A commitment to implement Budget 2007 tax reductions, subject to the requirements of balanced budget legislation,
including:
. farmland school tax rebate increase to 70 per cent in
2008;
. middle income bracket tax rate reduction to 12.75 per
cent from 13 per cent, effective Jan. 1, 2008;
. basic personal amount increase of $200, effective Jan.
1, 2008;
. corporate income tax rate reduction to 13 per cent from 14 per cent, effective July 1, 2008;
. small business tax rate reduction to two per cent from three per cent, effective Jan. 1, 2008; and
. beginning a Corporation Capital Tax phase-out with reduction of the rate to 0.4 per cent from 0.5 per cent, beginning in January 2008.
Healthy Families
- Expansion of child-care spaces by another 2,500 over the next two years.
- New measures to further improve school retention rates.
- A new partnership with First Nations and the federal
government to improve graduation and retention rates.
- A new Safe Child Care Charter to provide parents with further confidence that their children are being looked after in a safe environment.
- New legislation that builds on anti-bullying
initiatives.
- Mandatory physical education every year for students entering high school this year.
- New legislation to ban the sale of foods containing trans fats in school vending machines and cafeterias.
- A new bicycle trail to be built, to be named the Duff
Roblin Trail, extending 40 kilometres from the floodway inlet to Birds Hill Park.
Health
- New nurse training spaces to be added at Manitoba's universities and colleges.
- New training spaces to be added at the University of Manitoba school of medicine.
- A new primary-care paramedic program to be introduced
at Red River College.
- Additional nurses and aides to be hired in personal-care homes.
- More dieticians, respiratory therapists and occupational therapists to be added as part of a long-term strategy to improve quality of care for seniors.
- A new hospital in Selkirk.
- New operating facilities at Ste. Anne Hospital.
- Redevelopment of the emergency ward at Steinbach's Bethesda Hospital.
- Additional dialysis treatment facilities to be added in Winnipeg and Gimli, and in the First Nations communities of Berens River, Norway House and Peguis.
- Consultations to begin on constructing a new Women's Hospital at the Health Sciences Centre.
- A new South End Birthing Centre to be managed by the Women's Health Clinic.
- Redevelopment of the maternity ward at St. Boniface General Hospital.
- A new MRI and a cardiac catheterization lab at the Children's Hospital.
- A new asthma and allergy clinic for children at the
Health Sciences Centre.
- A new pediatric ophthalmology program at the Health Sciences Centre.
Safer Communities
- Hiring of more police officers as the first step in a
new commitment to add 100 officers.
- Expanding the Lighthouses program to provide more
places for young people to play sports, study or go online in the evenings.
- Expanding the Turnabout program to provide more
monitoring and alternative outings for children under 12 who come in conflict with the law.
- Adding a new anti-gang Crown attorney in the Brandon
region.
- Adding two new investigative teams to assist
communities in tackling organized crime.
- Introducing new legislation to provide protection for witnesses who testify against gangs.
- Dedicating a justice unit to enforce a new criminal
property forfeiture law.
- Dedicating a Crown attorney to work exclusively on child exploitation cases.
Inclusion and Citizenship
- An increase in the minimum wage based on previous public consultations.
- An increase to the child benefit to provide support to working families.
- An expansion of the popular Safety Aid program to provide security to low-income seniors.
- Changes to election laws to increase democratic
participation and improve accessibility and transparency for citizens.
- Appointment of a new privacy commissioner with the power to issue orders under Manitoba's freedom of information and protection of privacy legislation.
- Introduction of amendments to the Employment Services
Act to protect workers who are not covered by existing labour law protections.
Northern Manitoba
- Enhance the University College of the North's main campus facilities in The Pas and Thompson.
- Provide additional satellite university campuses in remote communities.
- Begin work on a tripartite partnership to strengthen primary and secondary education in the north.
- Expand training of health professionals for northern areas.
- Further expand the successful Northern Healthy Foods
Initiative with the development of a commercial greenhouse at Grand Rapids.
- Establish a new round table to allow youth in east side communities to discuss challenges and work towards solutions.
- Begin work on the first leg of the all-weather road from Hollow Water to Bloodvein with the building of two new bridges.
- Continue route selection now underway for the second
leg to Berens River.
Rural Manitoba
- An increase in the farmland tax rebate to 70 per cent.
- A $95-million commitment through the Canadian
Agricultural Income Stabilization (CAIS) program to support farm income including the livestock sector.
- A commitment to negotiate a new federal-provincial
safety net package.
- Begin work to extend the successful Bridging Generations program to rural small businesses and fishers.
- Consult with the co-operative sector to enhance support for co-ops.
- In partnership with the federal government, launch Value Chain Manitoba, an innovative business model to promote formal partnerships between producers, processors and suppliers.
Urban Centres
- Continue work on the Eastern Access project in Brandon.
- Expand Neighbourhoods Alive! to five new urban
centres: Flin Flon, The Pas, Dauphin, Portage la Prairie and Selkirk.
- Provide support for Brandon's newly-announced Renaissance Brandon project.
- Construct new affordable housing in urban centres across the province as part of the HOMEWorks! program and revitalize over 13,000 public housing units.
- Begin implementing a plan to double funding for
recreation facilities across the province including support for proposed facilities in Winnipeg, Brandon, The Pas, Portage la Prairie and the Selkirk Library.
- Provide funding to add four firefighting positions each
in Brandon, Thompson and Portage la Prairie to increase public safety and fire response.
- Provide $3.8 million to the City of Winnipeg to support 20 new firefighting positions and other priorities of the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service.
- Finalize agreements to be signed for the Museum for
Human Rights that will trigger the establishment of the first national museum outside Ottawa.
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