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MAKE HOMEPAGE
Last week Gary Doer announced that the province won't have to dip into the rainy day fund this year. I am glad to hear this, and it is certainly good news for Manitoba. However, it would be even better if we could actually see the financial statements that Mr. Doer is referring to. The rest of us will have to wait until the numbers are released in September to get a real sense of how the province performed.
While Manitoba has fared reasonably well compared to British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec during this economic downturn - we need to keep it in perspective. When you start with less, there is less to lose. Even after the effects of the recession took a bite out of other province's economies, Manitoba still compares poorly to the rest of Canada when it comes to critical benchmarks.
While the Premier was patting himself on the back for showing restraint and not dipping into the province's piggy bank, he forgot to mention a few things. He failed to mention that Manitobans have the fifth lowest average weekly earnings in Canada, and the fifth lowest GDP per capita figures. He didn't mention that almost 40 cents of every dollar in Manitoba's budget comes from Ottawa, which is well above the per capita transfers to Quebec. And he didn't mention that our children and grandchildren are being burdened with the highest debt per capita figures in the west.
On top of these statistics, in the recently released June Labour Force Survey, Statistics Canada revealed that not only did Manitoba post the highest per-capita job losses in the west, more than a quarter of the total job losses in Canada came from our province.
Mr. Doer might think that we are doing well in Manitoba, but we could be doing much better. Our goal should be to make Manitoba a have province instead of a mediocre economic player. The NDP are managing without an economic plan for our province, and it's taking a toll.
Rick Borotsik
PC Finance Critic and MLA for Brandon West
