What do Liberals think of the Manitoba NDP?

Jack Layton and the NDP may keep using the Manitoba NDP as an example for party’s accomplishments for the rest of the country, but their claims don’t stand up - not on education, balanced budgets or democratic reform -  says Dr. Jon Gerrard, Leader of the Manitoba Liberal Party.

Gerrard says the NDP claims of balanced budgets in Manitoba are cherry picking from a time when the Federal Liberal government was steadily increasing transfer payments, and leave off the last two years - where the NDP has run deep deficits.

“The NDP's so-called balanced budgets in Manitoba were achieved by riding the coattails of a Federal Liberal government that increased funding for health, education and infrastructure, and they still couldn’t balance the budget, ” said Gerrard. “They've fudged the books by raiding Crown Corporations for their surpluses, or forcing crown corporations to take on debt and deliver programs."

In 2002, the NDP took over $200 million from the provincially owned electric utility, Manitoba Hydro, to balance the budget, claiming a “dividend” would pay for it. Ultimately, it only increased the corporation’s debt - which doubled under the NDP without a dam being completed.

The Manitoba NDP also:

       •       Used funding from the state-owned auto insurance, Manitoba Public Insurance Corporation, to pay for NDP political staffers and police officers
       •       Tried to use auto insurance profits to pay for programs for university students, until they reversed themselves after a public outcry.
       •       Broke their “tuition freeze” policy after starving post-secondary education institutions for years.
       •       The tuition policy only applied to undergraduate programs, and tuition in professional programs was allowed to increase to $10,000 a year for Law and over $20,000 a year for dentistry or medicine

Gerrard said the NDP in Manitoba “Conservative” budgets also came with a “Conservative” approach to social problems.

“The NDP under Gary Doer walked away from its progressive roots,” said Gerrard. “Manitoba has two of the poorest Federal ridings in Canada, but the NDP’s social assistance rates have been basically unchanged for 20 years.”

       •       After 12 years of NDP governments, Manitoba has the second worst high-school dropout rate in the country
       •       The number of children in the care of Child and Family Services has risen under the NDP, to over 9,000, many of them warehoused in downtown hotels.

Gerrard also said that the NDP’s promises of “democratic reform,” are nowhere to be seen in Manitoba. As an MLA, Kevin Lamoureux - now MP for Winnipeg North - presented a report recommending alternate voting options for the province, all of which were dismissed by the NDP.

“The NDP in Manitoba has totally rejected the idea of proportional representation in Manitoba, because it might actually make the legislature more democratic,” he said. “There’s a reason there is no NDP surge in Manitoba, and it’s because we’ve lived the reality. The rest of Canada should take heed.”