COLUMN: Think Again – The NDP will never balance the budget

During the 2023 provincial election campaign, Manitoba NDP leader Wab Kinew promised that an NDP government would balance the budget in its first term.

Is Kinew going to keep this promise? Not a chance.

It’s now been more than two years since the NDP took office. Instead of heading towards a balanced budget, we are further away from one than ever.

During the 2024-25 fiscal year, the government recorded a deficit of $1.165 billion. That’s billion, not million. While the deficit for that fiscal year was initially projected to be $796 million, NDP spending inflated that number to more than $1 billion.

Sadly, this government hasn’t met a fiscal target yet. Both of its budgets had increasingly large deficits that were well above the originally projected amounts. There’s no reason to expect anything to be different next year.

There’s widespread speculation that Kinew will call an early election—possibly as early as next spring or fall. If he does, there’s absolutely no way that his government will post a balanced budget in its first term.

Even if Kinew waits until 2027 to call the next election, his government has given us no reason to believe that it will get its fiscal house in order within the next two years. In fact, if the NDP keep governing the way they have been, Manitoba’s fiscal situation will be even worse in 2027 than it is now.

Kinew is fond of saying that the economic cart pulls the social cart. It’s a true saying. However, these words are meaningless if they don’t come with concrete action. For example, a recent Fraser Institute report that compares factors such as income tax rates and labour market regulations gave Manitoba only a mediocre score on its economic freedom index.

This explains why the Conference Board of Canada recently projected that Manitoba’s GDP will increase by only 0.8 percent in 2025. Our economic horse isn’t terribly healthy and NDP policies aren’t making it any healthier. No wonder Manitoba’s social cart (healthcare, education, social services, etc.) is struggling.

Thus, unless the NDP government concocts some new accounting tricks, I will go so far as to predict that this government will never balance the budget no matter how many terms it gets in office. That’s why we need to make sure that Kinew’s government is a one-term government.

Ironically, the NDP is taking in more tax revenue than ever before. For example, it quietly ended the practice of indexing income tax rates to inflation. What this means is that Manitobans pay more provincial tax each year as inflation eats away at their purchasing power.

In addition, the NDP cancelled the previous government’s 50 percent rebate on school property taxes and replaced it with a flat $1,500 tax credit. While the NDP claimed that most homeowners would be better off with the $1,500 credit, their tune quickly changed once the actual tax bills started coming in.

To make matters worse, the $1,500 credit applies only to primary residences, meaning that cottage owners must pay property taxes on all their properties, with a massive tax hike and no credit. That’s why school taxes in the seasonal community of Victoria Beach recently went up by 26 percent.

Under an NDP government we pay higher taxes and get worse government services. As one budget deficit rolls into another, we have an even larger total debt. Right now, the total provincial debt stands at a whopping $35.5 billion. That works out to more than $23,000 for each Manitoban.

The NDP will never balance the budget. Remember that the next time you vote.

Michael Zwaagstra is a teacher and deputy mayor of Steinbach. He can be reached at mzwaagstra@shaw.ca.