July 2024 PC Caucus Review
Friends,
It has been a busy nine months for your Manitoba PCs in the Legislature.
From forcing the NDP government to amend their first bill after they left farmers behind, to exposing the NDP’s cuts to your schools and community Green Teams in their first budget, we continue to advocate on behalf of you and your families to hold Wab Kinew and his ministers accountable.
Today, we are relaunching our monthly Caucus Review to keep you informed about what your MLAs have been up to as we meet with Manitobans across the province to hear the concerns and priorities of your families and businesses.
We’re working hard to deliver results, and we’re doing it together with your support.
There are so many exciting celebrations, festivals, and markets taking place throughout our great province this summer. We look forward to seeing you there and bringing your voices to the Legislature as we prepare for the fall legislative session.
Wayne Ewasko
Leader of the Official Opposition
Advocating to lower the breast cancer screening age to 40
Manitoba is the only province in Canada that has not taken steps to lower the screening age for breast cancer. Over the past two months, Roblin MLA and PC Deputy Leader Kathleen Cook has been advocating at the Manitoba Legislature for the NDP to catch up to the rest of the country and lower the screening age in Manitoba to 40 to protect the health and wellbeing of Manitoba women.
One in every eight women in Canada will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetimes. There is growing evidence that shows women are being diagnosed with more severe cases of breast cancer at younger ages. Evidence also shows that earlier screening will result in better outcomes and save lives. Despite this, the NDP have refused to take action.
Sign our online petition to join our call on the NDP government to do the right thing for Manitoba women.
Supporting our provincial parks
Over the last three years, Progressive Conservatives developed and launched a $220-million strategy to renew Manitoba parks and surrounding roadways over the next ten years, with input from more than 10,000 Manitobans.
Unfortunately, the NDP environment minister is not honouring the commitments laid out in the strategy. Worse, the NDP slashed parks capital funding in half in Budget 2024.
While the NDP defund and disregard Manitoba’s natural spaces, PCs are working to ensure their protection and revitalization. Earlier this year, Riding Mountain MLA Greg Nesbitt established a new specialty Manitoba parks license plate, where every dollar raised will be reinvested back into the Provincial Parks Endowment Funds.
These plates will also promote Manitoba’s great outdoors and drive even more visitors to our 93 provincial parks.
But collaboration is key: With Manitoba being home to many incredible artists and photographers, MLA Nesbitt is working with the creative community to help design what will surely be Canada’s most beautiful licence plate. A design will be announced in the fall.
Manitobans are excited to get their hands on this new licence plate, and we can’t wait to roll them out next year in partnership with MPI.
Time is of the essence for Portage MRI
Portage la Prairie MLA Jeff Bereza is calling for the NDP health minister to expand the new Portage Regional Health Centre to include a new MRI machine.
The NDP have underestimated demand in the area, according to more than 30 local doctors.
A machine in Portage will bring care closer to home in Portage while helping to ease the increasing wait times for MRI services in Winnipeg since the NDP took office.
MLA Bereza is joining the call by Indigenous communities, doctors and other healthcare staff, and Portage residents to push the government to install an MRI and better serve the community.
Join the more than 4,000 signatures on our petition here to expand MRI services in southern Manitoba.
Pushing for $10 summer daycare
During the 2023 election, all parties campaigned on affordable summer daycare.
Despite $2.5 million being allocated in this year’s budget, the NDP government let July 1st come and go with no action.
After bogusly hiding behind blackout rules, the NDP education minister still has yet to provide any information to Manitoba families.
Spruce Woods MLA Grant Jackson has called out the NDP on their broken promise, and called for a plan to be in place by August 1.
Manitoba PCs in the media…
- While the NDP trickle out overtime pay for Winnipeg police to step up retail theft patrols in downtown Winnipeg, Brandon West MLA Wayne Balcaen is calling on the NDP to announce a long-term plan to stop crime in all Manitoba communities and provide equal funding to police services across the province.
- The CBC reports hundreds of patients waiting for cataract surgeries have been delayed because of NDP mismanagement. Worse, the NDP are funding 3,000 fewer surgeries this year than in 2023 under our PC government. MLA Kathleen Cook calls out the NDP for their cuts and increasing wait times.
- Six months after firing the last Manitoba Hydro CEO for speaking the truth, the NDP have hired a new CEO. As Fort Whyte MLA Obby Khan points out, the NDP and their new CEO still have no mandate to reduce Hydro’s $25-billion debt, no plan to deliver on a promised rate freeze, and no vision to meet the future energy needs of our growing province.
Looking ahead to the fall
The NDP government has been slow to introduce legislation since taking office. After missing several of their own deadlines this past spring, they’ve crammed several bills into one $24-billion omnibus budget bill.
This is the same bill that they are using to raise school and education property taxes on homeowners by $148 million over the next year.
Why is this significant, you ask?
Well, budget bills are guaranteed passage by November but, unlike other legislation, do not normally go before a public hearing to allow the general public to make presentations on the legislation.
This procedural tactic by the NDP is denying Manitobans the opportunity to have their democratic say on major legislation that doubles taxpayer subsidies for the NDP’s re-election war chest, forces workers to unionize, and hikes the gas tax and Hydro rates behind closed doors.
If the NDP hadn’t mismanaged their own affairs and had followed the normal legislative process, they would have introduced these bills separately and on their own merit, allowing for a fulsome debate with public presentations. Instead, the omnibus budget bill and these pieces of legislation will be passed by the NDP majority with barely any scrutiny or public debate.
As the Official Opposition, the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives will continue to hold the NDP to account this fall, and call on them to allow their legislation and budget estimates to be fully debated by the public and in the Legislature.
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