Manitoba's government laid its plans for the next year in a Throne Speech at the legislature, marking a new session under Premier Wab Kinew's New Democratic Party since taking office last year.Crystal Schick/The Canadian Press
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew intends to freeze hydro rates and introduce new legislation against anti-competitive contracts among grocery stores in the province, two of many plans that he hopes will make life more affordable over the coming months.
In a Throne Speech delivered Tuesday by Lieutenant-Governor Anita Neville, the Manitoba government outlined its priorities for the next legislative session, while highlighting achievements since coming into power after last year’s provincial election.
The government made several pledges to lessen the impact of inflation and rising costs. It also promised to better a health care system that is in “desperate need of repair,” Mr. Kinew said in a press conference at the legislature discussing the speech.
“Our great nation has never been perfect. But here, in Manitoba, we are giving people reasons to hope with a plan that makes your life better,” Lieutenant-Governor Neville said in the speech, which was followed by a choir of young students from Riverbend Community School in Winnipeg singing a rendition of the national anthem in Anishinaabemowin.
Mr. Kinew’s pledge to pause hydro rates in the province – expected to take effect at the start of 2025 for both gas and electricity, and lasting at least one full year – is making good on an election promise. Last year, electricity costs increased in the province by 2 per cent, adding to the 3.6-per-cent hike initiated the year prior.
But Manitoba Hydro, which makes a significant share of its revenue through rate payments and saw its debt triple in the past two decades, warned in a report this summer that mending its aging infrastructure in the coming years will require billions of dollars.
Asked about those concerns, Mr. Kinew said he believes both things can happen at the same time: funding repairs that the Crown corporation needs, while saving money for the people who pay its rates.
“Manitoba Hydro exists to save people money,” he said.
Among other new affordability measures is a homeowners’ tax credit of $1,500 and a plan to stop grocery stores from preventing competitors from opening nearby. The latter of the initiatives, Mr. Kinew told reporters, is admittedly complicated, but one in which Manitoba could be a leader compared with other provinces.
At the moment, Mr. Kinew explained, there are so-called restrictive covenants placed in many parts of the country that limit the kind of stores that can open near the location of some companies, such as big chain retailers. The Premier is hoping to end that practice, which Canada’s Competition Bureau said last month it has recently been investigating.
“Without competition, grocery prices go higher,” Mr. Kinew said.
In terms of health care, the Manitoba government announced that it has added 201 new fully staffed beds to facilities in Winnipeg, Selkirk and Brandon since April. It plans to open another 102 in the next year, along with a new emergency room in Carberry, a new personal-care home in Lac Du Bonnet, and mobile MRI-scan machines in Thompson, The Pas and northern First Nations.
Mr. Kinew said the province is also expanding its nursing programs to bring in more internationally trained health care professionals, especially for rural and northern communities, where gaps are most pronounced.
Additionally, Manitobans will be able to apply next month for new plastic health cards; the cards currently only exist as easily torn paper printouts. The new cards will feature the Northern Lights, a pick from three possible designs that Mr. Kinew and his cabinet members had solicited public feedback on in September using social media.
Tuesday’s Throne Speech also revealed the government’s ambition to unveil a new statue at the legislature.
The site of a Queen Victoria statue, which had stood on the front lawn of the legislative building for more than 100 years, became vacant after protesters toppled it during a demonstration in 2021 deploring the deaths of Indigenous children in residential schools. The statue was covered with red paint; its head was removed and eventually found in the Assiniboine River.
Now, Mr. Kinew said, that area will feature a new monument of a mother bison and her child, symbolizing the sacred bonds between Indigenous parents and their offspring that were harmed by the horrors of Canada’s residential-school system.
“It’s sending and broadcasting a message about who we are as a people,” he said, without disclosing an unveiling date or costs, adding that the damaged Queen Victoria statue will likely be displayed in another way.