The Manitoba government is preparing a new effort to contain spending in order to meet its promise to balance the budget, Premier Wab Kinew said Friday on the second anniversary of his NDP government’s 2023 election victory.
“We’ll have some more details to share specifically about a pretty big government-wide initiative on that front. We’ll be able to share that with you very soon,” Kinew said in response to reporter questions.
Kinew marked the election anniversary by standing outside the Victoria Hospital in south Winnipeg and announcing progress on a key campaign promise to reopen the facility’s emergency department.
The department was converted by the former Progressive Conservative government to an urgent care centre, which offers fewer services and is not aimed at handling life-threatening matters such as heart attacks.
A contract tender for the work is set to be awarded this month and shovels should be in the ground by March, Kinew said.
Kinew has already fulfilled some other election promises, most notably searching the Prairie Green Landfill for the remains of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran — two First Nations women who were slain by a serial killer. Their remains were found earlier this year. The former Tory government had rejected calls for the search.
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But some NDP promises have proven more elusive, such as a pledge to balance the budget before the next election set for October 2027. Manitoba has run deficits in all years but two since 2009.
Figures released by the Finance Department last week showed the province ran a higher-than-expected deficit of $1.1 billion in the last fiscal year and is on track to miss its target again this year.
Spending, driven largely by health care, has risen faster than forecast under the NDP’s initial path to balance.
“The first spending target that I have is to be able to deliver the health care that you need as Manitobans,” Kinew said Friday.
“And so that’s the first step, is to figure out what have we got to do to build a new (emergency department), to keep adding staff in the health-care system to bring wait times down, and then we work backwards from there.”
Targets are being given to each government department in preparation for next year’s budget, Kinew said, but he did not provide details.
This year’s budget has been given added pressure from a long wildfire season that saw tens of thousands of people forced to leave their homes at various times throughout the spring and summer. The government has said costs so far have been estimated at $179 million with more to come.
Kinew continues to enjoy strong support in opinion polls as he enters the second half of his mandate. The New Democrats won a byelection last year in the Tuxedo constituency in Winnipeg, which had been a bedrock Tory seat held by two former premiers.
The NDP came close to winning another Tory stronghold — the largely rural seat on Spruce Woods in western Manitoba — in a byelection this summer but fell short by 70 votes.
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