oh hey here we go Manitoba election.
Do we even have any Manitobans that can fill us in on the political situation?
Well, I'm not dreading this election like the federal one because I don't hate all the party leaders so that's a positive. I can't really speak to stuff outside of Winnipeg though, if it doesn't hit the local section of the Winnipeg Free Press website I don't see it.
The NDP released
their platform the other day and I only skimmed through the income tax stuff - their promise to increase the tax rate on the highest earners looks fine enough to me (though it won't raise much money) but increasing the small business exemption is kind of counterproductive if taxing high-income folks is what you want to do. I'm really glad Steve Ashton didn't win the leadership.
Basic income peeps might be interested to hear the Greens are promising a basic income funded by cancelling tax credits, which means that won't raise anywhere near enough revenue to fund a decent basic income. But the Greens are a joke party.
Provincial Liberals are basically like the Alberta Liberals, before Notley led the NDP to victory; pretty much irrelevant. Haven't seen one of their candidates advise voters not to vote Liberal and they're throwing a lot of policy ideas out there so they've improved on last election.
Provincial Tories are of course the incumbent and I'd say they're pretty much Joe Clark-type PCs rather than the Kenney/Ford/CAQ nonsense we're seeing in other provinces. Pallister talked a big game about getting more money in the health accord negotiations with the Feds but of course he had no leverage and ended up having to take what was offered. Reversing on the carbon tax was the same thing but the federal design is better than what the Tories had so that's a win in my book. The dumbest think Pallister's probably done is his super-long vacations in Costa Rica early on in his Premiership (Well, that and getting lost that one time).
The only election-specific stuff I've seen so far from the Tories is Facebook ads highlighting Kinew's domestic abuse past much like Steve and Niki Ashton did during the NDP leadership campaign. Though I guess at least the PCs aren't dragging the victims' name into public against her wishes at every opportunity like the Ashtons did.
Unsurprisingly for a provincial election, healthcare's the big issue. The NDP and PCs are pretty much aligned on fiscal and taxation issues (The NDP has said they aren't going to increase the PST back to 8% again) from what I can see. The Tories converted a few ERs in Winnipeg to urgent care centres but the big problem there is they screwed up the staffing changes that come with that. Healthcare workers have been working a tonne of OT (mind you, the ones I know had OT available to them pretty much anytime they wanted before the changes).
I don't know, I think the Pallister government's been mediocre-to-okay, I think a Kinew government would be mediocre-to-okay, I can't actually name the Liberal leader. To me, at least, the campaign will actually matter to deciding my vote.