Getting Ready for the Tory Storm in Manitoba
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- Published on Friday, 07 October 2016 03:45
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1312 .... October 7, 2016
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Getting Ready for the Tory Storm in Manitoba
David Camfield
No one has a crystal ball that allows them to foresee precisely what's going to happen as the new Tory government of Manitoba really gets down to business in the months ahead. But there are some things we can be pretty sure about.
The Tories will claim that it's vital to curb provincial government spending to reduce Manitoba's deficit and move toward balancing the budget. In reality, there's no deficit crisis. Not only was the share of provincial revenue spent on servicing the debt in the 2015-16 fiscal year low, it was lower than it had been three years prior. The Tory "cure" -- austerity -- for the non-existent crisis might not even lower... the deficit.
But a balanced budget isn't the real objective (if the Tories had inherited one, they'd simply be talking about ‘reinventing government’ or some other justification for their program). Although some Tory MLAs may be so naive as to believe that lowering the deficit is the government's true goal, and that doing this will somehow lead companies in Manitoba to hire more people and pay them more, they're wrong on both counts.