Opinion: NDP government’s mostly smooth flight about to encounter some serious turbulence
The Kinew government’s honeymoon is over. There are no hard and fast rules on when newly elected governments can stop blaming their predecessors for the problems they face.
But after more than 14 months in office, a new calendar year and a general feeling that the NDP is running out of excuses for failing to make good on many of its 2023 election pledges, it’s unlikely the Kinew government will be given much slack in 2025.
The hard knocks of politics are about to set in.
Premier Wab Kinew and the NDP have been riding high in public opinion polls. According to the most recent Free Press-Probe Research poll released last month, 53 per cent of Manitobans would vote for the NDP if an election were held at that time.
That’s down slightly from a peak of 56 per cent in September, but up from the 45 per cent popular vote the party received in the Oct. 3, 2023 provincial election.
The numbers are even more impressive in Winnipeg, where the NDP continues to gain ground. The poll shows the NDP with 61 per cent support, a gargantuan lead over the Opposition Tories, who are down to 27 per cent in the capital city.
The NDP received 52 per cent popular support in Winnipeg in the last election. The party even won the constituency of Tuxedo in a June byelection, a riding the Tories had never previously lost.
But that could change this year, as the public-policy headaches continue to pile up.
Health care is the No. 1 thorn in the NDP’s side. Despite pledging to “fix” health care by hiring more doctors, nurses and other front-line workers, there is little evidence health care has improved.
Emergency-room wait times at Winnipeg hospitals were longer in November than they were the same month in 2023. After improving slightly in the early part of last year, hospital congestion began to worsen again in the fall.
Wait times for hip- and knee-replacement surgery were longer in 2024 than in 2023, according to the most recent provincial data. And wait times for MRIs, CT scans and ultrasounds all grew last year.
The only glimmer of hope is wait times for cataract surgery were lower in 2024 than the previous year.
Is it still too early to expect better results from a government that’s been in power only 14 months? Perhaps, but that narrative will fade in 2025 as the excuses for poor outcomes run out.
Health care was the biggest focus for the NDP during the 2023 election campaign and it will be its toughest challenge in 2025.
Alleviating poverty and homelessness was another major pledge by the NDP. Sadly, there appears to be little, if any, sign that government has made progress on that file.
The number of encampments around the city and the daily evidence of homelessness on Winnipeg streets appears little different than it was in 2023.
The Kinew government has pledged to get more people off the street and into affordable housing in 2025. However, with few details on how it plans to do so, it remains unclear if it has the infrastructure and action plan in place to achieve that goal.
Affordability for Manitobans was another major plank in the NDP’s campaign platform. But with property taxes, gas prices and Winnipeg Transit fares all going up this month (not to mention little relief at the grocery store checkout), the NDP will struggle to convince voters it has made good on that pledge.
The Kinew government will face other challenges in 2025, including on crime, which governments have little control over in the short term. Efforts to tackle the root causes of crime, including poverty, addiction and mental health, take years to produce results.
Even then, it’s virtually impossible to show how improvements in those areas have a direct impact, since crime rates are driven by such a wide range of complicated factors.
Either way, governments will always get blamed for high crime rates. If there are no improvements in that area soon, the Kinew government will feel the pinch in 2025.
To add to its misery, the NDP will find it difficult to find the resources it needs to invest in all of the above areas. Part of that is the government’s own doing, after giving away hundreds of millions of dollars in tax cuts.
But government will also be challenged by what appears to be another year of weak to modest economic growth in 2025 for Manitoba (at least according to the forecasters), which means little extra tax revenues for the provincial treasury. That’s bad news for a government saddled with a projected deficit of $1.3 billion in 2024-2025. Kinew’s “economic horse” needed to pull the “social cart” is looking more like a donkey with a bum leg than a Clydesdale.
The easy road for the NDP government appears to have have come to an end. The heavy lifting now begins.
Tom Brodbeck
Columnist
Tom Brodbeck is a columnist with the Free Press and has over 30 years experience in print media. He joined the Free Press in 2019. Born and raised in Montreal, Tom graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1993 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and commerce. Read more about Tom.
Tom provides commentary and analysis on political and related issues at the municipal, provincial and federal level. His columns are built on research and coverage of local events. The Free Press’s editing team reviews Tom’s columns before they are posted online or published in print – part of the Free Press’s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.
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Credit: Opinion: NDP government’s mostly smooth flight about to encounter some serious turbulence
