Election battlegrounds: health care, education, labour
Kim Guttormson, CBC News Online | May 2

Every election is fought on the record of the government in power.

Paul Thomas, who teaches government at the University of Manitoba, says the governing NDP will also be fighting complacency this time out.

There have been no major mis-steps, and Premier Gary Doer’s government has managed to recover from any they may have made. Thomas says Doer is skillful at reading public response and not afraid to back away from unpopular policies.

Thomas thinks it’s a “foregone conclusion” that Doer will once again be premier, the question is how large his majority will be.

These are some of the main issues the election battle will be based on:

• Health care •

Health care will be centre stage again – it was the main plank in the NDP platform in 1999, and for that reason alone will be their most vulnerable area.
Both the Tories and the Liberals say they will attack the NDP record, even though pollsters say the governing party has the most credibility on the issue.

“It’s the one area where they may have over-promised and under-delivered,” Thomas says.

Although there are still numerous problems with the system, the Doer government has moved quickly to attempt to address the issues, including hiring out-of-province physicians to try to reduce the surgical waiting lists.

It has reinstated the two-year registered nursing program, cut by the previous government, which will graduate 638 more nurses this year. And they gave a 20 per cent raise to nurses over 2.5 years, to try to keep them in the province.

Maureen Hancharyk, president of the Manitoba Nurses’ Union, says the success of the RN program is “spectacular,” but cautions against looking solely at the number graduating – she says it will be impossible for the province to retain all of them.

And she believes the program needs to be expanded to rural centres, so that nurses can be trained in, or near, the communities where they want to work.

However, for all the gains they've made, the NDP's promise to eliminate “hallway medicine” hasn’t been fulfilled, and will be hammered on by both opposition parties. Hancharyk says "hallway medicine" is likely to stay until the nursing shortage is solved adding that in seven years, half the nurses working will be retiring.

• Business/Labour •

The NDP fought fierce battles with both business and labour during its first term. Everything came to a head over Bill 44, involving union certification. Business groups attacked it, some threatening to leave the province. Labour was no happier.

“From the business community perspective, it upset the balance of the labour-management relationship in the province,” Loren Remillard, director of public affairs for the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, said. “It diminished that relationship. We’re concerned about the current labour environment.”

Rob Hilliard, of the Manitoba Federation of Labour, thinks the business attack on Bill 44 was a warning to the NDP and that it was successful in producing a chill, making the government wary of moving ahead on other initiatives.

Labour was pleased with the worker health and safety bill that was brought in – although it took two years.

“We have to work hard to convince the government to do what we want them to do,” Hilliard said.

Remillard say his organization is also concerned about the province’s place in the country’s tax hierarchy. He says while Manitoba used to be able to compare itself to Saskatchewan, it is now falling behind its prairie neighbour.

Manitoba’s middle-income tax bracket of between $35,000 and $65,000 – compared to Saskatchewan’s $35,000 to $100,000 range – is driving away industries with high-paying jobs and forcing out young workers, Remillard says.

The chamber is also concerned that the NDP hasn’t developed a long-term economic development policy for the province, and the Tories may be trying to capitalize on that – they released a budget policy pamphlet of their own in the week leading up to the election call.

Remillard does give credit to the NDP for improving the relationship between the province and the City of Winnipeg, and working towards revitalizing downtown.

• Education •

Thomas thinks education and its importance to the economy will be a major theme for the NDP in this election.

But the government’s education policy actually caused some of its biggest headaches during the past 3.5 years. The forced amalgamation of school divisions, based on a seven-year-old report, raised the ire of school trustees and parents alike. Many were upset by the lack of public consultation.

Carolyn Duhamel, executive director of the Manitoba Association of School Trustees, calls the experience “quite bitter.” And she points out that the cost savings that were supposed to arise from melding smaller school divisions are not surfacing.

“We knew there would be huge costs embedded in this,” she said. “We recognize there are economies of scale, but it was more the manner in which it was achieved.”

Duhamel says the issue of basic education funding – which she says has dropped to 57 per cent of the operating revenue from 60 per cent – is also a critical issue.

Thomas says the controversy over how the divisions were amalgamated were confined to three or four communities and he doesn’t believe the issue will hurt the NDP province-wide.

“I don’t think they feel vulnerable on [education,]” Thomas says, pointing out that they also froze university tuition.

The NDP also backed away from a plan to use money from Manitoba Public Insurance to fund post-secondary education.

• Social policy •

Some of the NDP government’s most outspoken critics are coming from their traditional supporters on the left, concerned that not enough has been done on social policy issues.

Thomas says the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has called them “timid” and believes poorer Manitobans are worse off in relation to social assistance. Critics also say the NDP hasn’t significantly improved the minimum wage or public housing.

“There’s been no core commitment to what you would think the ideology of the NDP was when asking for the mandate,” Wayne Helgason, of the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg, says.

Hilliard, of the labour federation, says elections are about choices – choices based on who is available to you on election day.

“I think this is a middle-of-the-road government, it’s clearly successful for them,” Hilliard says. “Public opinion seems to be backing them quite well.”