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Manitoba

What's been promised by Manitoba's political parties in the 2019 election

CBC Manitoba's provincial election team kept tabs on promises made by parties. Our list is broken down by categories such as economy or health.

A list of the promises and pledges made during the election campaign

Manitobans head to the polls today. Here's a list of the promises that political parties made during the campaign. (Walther Bernal/CBC)

CBC Manitoba's provincial election team kept tabs on all the promises made by parties.

Promises that do not have a specific dollar amount or action attached to them (for example if aparty promises it will "encourage" an action or "promote" something) will be kept off the list.

Our list is broken down by the following categories:

Environment

Green Party

  • Create greenhouse gas reductions to be achieved by 2030, 2040, 2045 and 2050.
  • Introduce a carbon taxof $50 per tonne in 2020, which would increase by $10 per tonne per year after that.
  • Create a grant program for farmers to move ponds and wetlands around their land for convenient farming, as long as the water is retained.
  • Ban the mining of peat lands, fracking, uranium mining and exploration, use of all unnecessary single-use plastics, use of all materials that cannot be recycled.
  • Change building codes to ensure that all new buildings meet super-efficiency insulation standards, and include small-scale renewable micro-generators.
  • Implement a system of high environmental handling fees and adequate rebates to consumers for returning recyclable items.
  • Introduce a municipal compost program and a ban on single-use plastics

Manitoba NDP

  • Reduce carbon emissions by 45 per centof 2010 levels by 2030and become carbon neutral by 2050.
  • Implement a flat $20 per tonne price on carbon.
  • Ban fracking in Manitoba, end oil and gas subsidies.
  • Commit $500 millionto cover the provincial share of the North End Water Pollution Control Centre.

Manitoba Liberal Party

  • Spend $5 million to fund 70 per cent of the cost of adding "ferric chloride" to the Lake Winnipeg.
  • Issue$500 million in "Save Lake Winnipeg Bonds" that would be dedicated to financing the construction of infrastructure projects.
  • Become carbon neutral by 2030.
  • Create a $20-million a year fund to allow for research and development, innovation and invention in green fuels, wilderness restoration, and carbon storage.
  • Increase wilderness by 50,000 hectares by 2030.
  • Implement a landfill ban on organic waste by 2025.
  • Implement a renegotiated carbon tax.
  • Provide seedlings to Manitobans so 6 million trees can be planted.

Progressive Conservatives

  • Provide $25 million in annual investments for energy efficiency retrofits of existing homes and commercial buildings.
  • Invest $1 million for in aerial mapping of riverbeds through LiDAR technology to alleviate flood risks
  • Invest $30 million to add 120 kilometres of new active transportation pathways to Manitoba's trail network.
  • Grow the province's Enviroteams to include 2,200 new workers.

Health

A person pushes a stretcher down a hallway.

Manitoba NDP

  • Reinstate coverage for outpatient physiotherapy and sleep-apnea treatment, obstetrics program in Flin Flon, special drugs program and rehire lactation consultants.
  • Introduce a non-binary option on Manitoba government IDs, such as health cards.
  • Re-open two emergency rooms (Seven Oaks and Concordia) closed in the pasttwo years.
  • Hire more nurses in specific areas.
  • Double the number of counsellors in ACCESS centres.
  • Appointa minister responsible for mental health and addictions.
  • Cancel private contracts for Lifeflight.
  • Will expand Park Manor personal care home by 80 beds.
  • Free parking for two hours at all hospitals .
  • Provide free menstrual products at all high schools.
  • Hire six more midwives in the first year and restore the lactation consultant programs at Winnipeg hospitals.
  • Expandaffordable counselling.
  • Create integrated Youth Teams in schools.
  • Create virtual counselling for post-secondary students.
  • Promises to keep the Cadham Provincial Laboratory a public facility.
  • Restore a special-drugs program that used to cover the pharmacare deductible for people with chronic and serious illnesses.
  • Ban mandatory overtime for nurses.

Manitoba Liberals

  • Reverse the plan to close Seven Oaks Emergency Room.
  • Reinstate and expand the life-saving drugs program.
  • Merge regional health authorities into one body under Manitoba Health.
  • Cover clinical psychological therapy as part of medicare and invest in training mental-health professionals.
  • End Manitoba's practice of "rationing" hip and knee replacements, byswitching to a "patient-based" model for funding the procedures.
  • Spend $7 million on lead remediation efforts annually.
  • Promote a national Pharmacare program and partner with any government that introduces one.

Progressive Conservatives

  • Build a new emergency room at St. Boniface.
  • Spend $2 billion more on health care over the next four years.
  • Patients with a urinary tract infection (UTI) will be able to get prescriptions directly from a pharmacist instead of having to visit their doctor.
  • Hire 80 more paramedics.
  • Hire 200 more nurses.

Green Party

  • Eliminate mandatory overtime for health professionals.
  • Increase the existing provincial sales tax rate on "junk food" and use the proceeds of this tax to increase funding for health-promotion initiatives.
  • Allocate twoper centof total health-care spending to support preventative programs.
  • Provide universal basic dental care and vision care to all children 12 years of age and under.
  • Provide funding for conception planning under medicare and Pharmacare.
  • Increase the number of health practitioners and after-hours non-urgent care.
  • Establish and implement an updated fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) strategy with a focus on enhancing prevention and intervention services for people with FASD.
  • Commit 10 per cent of health funding to mental health supports and services.
  • Put a 20 per cent tax on sugar-sweetened beverages.

Municipal relations

Manitoba Liberals

  • Give 25 per cent of cannabis revenues to municipalities.
  • Reinstate the 50-50 operating grant formunicipal transit agencies.
  • Assist municipalities with the electrification of bus fleets.

Manitoba NDP

  • Reinstate the 50-50 operating grant for municipal transit agencies.

Green Party

  • Restore bus service to rural and northern communities.
  • Provide Winnipeg and other municipalities with assistance to purchase Manitoba-made electric buses.
  • Implement province-wide municipal composting programs.

Response to meth crisis

Progressive Conservatives

  • Launch a Safer Streets, Safer Lives Action Plan to address rising use and distribution of methamphetamine.
  • Create a new acute medical sobering facility staffed with mental health professionals that will treat between 20 to 30 patients at a time.
  • Open an additional Rapid Access to Addictions Medicine (RAAM) clinic in the Southern Health-SantSud region.

Manitoba NDP

  • Implementa plan by the Main Street Project to build detox, treatment and transitional housing beds.
  • Commit $2 million annually in operating funding for the plan.
  • Create a safe consumption site.

Green Party

  • Increase residential addictions treatment beds.
  • Create a safe consumption site, protective care sites, hireadditional addictions counsellors, and create additional treatment spots.

Manitoba Liberals

  • Use portion of revenue from legal cannabis to create a province-wide public awareness campaign against meth.
  • Fund anti-gang and intervention programs with cannabis revenue.
  • Create a drug stabilization unitandprovide transitional housing with mental health supports.
  • Open a virtual addictions co-ordination centre.

Economy and Taxes

Progressive Conservatives

  • Eliminatethe Provincial Sales Tax (PST) on home insurance for households and renters.
  • Eliminatethe PSTon personal care services such as haircuts .
  • Eliminate probate fees and the PST on professional services related to the preparation of wills.
  • Eliminate the PST on the preparation of tax forms.
  • Roll back the cost of passenger vehicle registration fees to save motorists $35 a year.
  • Implement Manitoba Worksjobs and economic growth plan to add 40,000 private sector jobs over the next four years.
  • Establishing a new $20 million Manitoba Mineral Development Fund as part of theManitoba Worksjobs plan.
  • Roll back the tax interest rate hike and reduce it to prime plus three per cent.
  • Create a new Economic Development Office in Brandon.
  • Remove price markups for beer, spirits, cider and wine that are both brewed or distilled and sold for consumption on the same premises.
  • Eliminate the education portion of property taxes over 10 years.
  • Balance the budget by 2022.

Green Party

  • Introduce a Basic Income (BI), administered through the income tax system and funded by the removal of selected refundable and non-refundable tax credits.
  • Implement a 35-hour work week.
  • End farmland school taxation.
  • Create a land bank to provide retiring farmers with succession opportunities.
  • Eliminate the education property tax and instead fund schoolsthrough corporate and personal income taxes.

Manitoba Liberals

  • Run a province-wide "shop local" campaign and introduceprocurement policies to make it easier for local businesses to sell to the Manitoba government.
  • Create an independent commission to review Manitoba's tax system.
  • Create a publicly-owned Manitoba Business Development Bank that would offer loans to businesses and make equity investments in new enterprises.
  • Spend$6.64 billion over four years in strategic infrastructure.
  • Increase enforcement of workplace health and safety issues, rescind the PC government'sPublic Services Sustainability Act and wage freeze, and commit to ensuring timely labour negotiations.
  • Raise minimum wage to $15 an hour.
  • Ensure all Northern Manitoba communities have access to high-speed internet and cellphone coverage within three years.

Manitoba NDP

  • Cancel the closure of the Selkirk laundry facility for hospitals.
  • Raise income tax on people earning more than $250,000 a year.
  • Increase threshold at which small businesses start to pay income tax to $550,000 from $500,000.
  • Increase the minimum wage to $15.
  • Balance the budget by 2023-24.
  • Create 50,000 new jobs and spend more than $6.6 billion in strategic infrastructure projects during their first term in office.
  • Receive a rebate of $350 on their Hydro bills.

Arts and Culture

Manitoba Liberals

  • Create a Manitoba Cultural Capital Fundby earmarking 2.5 per cent (about $25 million a year) of existing infrastructure spending for cultural infrastructure.
  • Increase per capita arts funding by $4 million.

Progressive Conservatives

  • Increase investments in the Manitoba Film and Video Production Tax Credit by $25 million over the next four years.
  • Increase funding model for tourism, giving Travel Manitoba five per cent of all revenue from tourism (from the current four per cent), with an estimated increasepegged at $12 million a year.

Education

Manitoba NDP

  • Restorethe cap on class sizes for kindergarten to Grade 3.
  • Restore funding for the Access bursary, which was reduced by $1 million this year.
  • Restore the position of assistant deputy minister in the Bureau de l'ducation franais.
  • Create600 new child-care spaces a year.

Green Party

  • Fund education only through corporate and personal income taxes rather than partly through property taxes.
  • Introduce an income contingent student loan repayment plan, where the repayment of student loans is based on the ability to pay.
  • Provide students in need of financial assistance with at least 50 per centof eligible assistance as non-repayable.
  • Create 20,000 new child-care spaces over 10 years at a total cost of $310 million plus $1.1 million a year in operating costs.

Progressive Conservatives

  • Build 13 new schoolsover the next decade.
  • Establish a four-year Bachelor of Midwifery program at the University of Manitoba.
  • Expand treatment for Manitobans with eating disorders.
  • Create a new child care funding program to help cover child care costs with a subsidy of up to $500 per month for 3,000 lower-income families.

Manitoba Liberals

  • Create 18,000 child care spaces to eliminate the wait list for child-care spaces.
  • Increase funding to the Access program by $5 million dollars, or 50 per cent, in the first year.
  • Overhaulthe eligibility requirements for Manitoba Student Aid.
  • Investmore than $6 million per year into literacy programs and to hire educational assistants in schools.
  • Invest in health care so the majority of people in the province are no more than 20 minutes away from access to primary care.

Housing and poverty

Green Party

  • End homelessness in Manitoba by 2025.
  • Restore the cuts made to the Rent Assist Program.
  • Introduce a fare-free public transit system.

Manitoba NDP

  • Reverse changes to Rent Assist that removed certain individuals from the program by decreasing the threshold.
  • Restorethe "Getting Started" benefit that was removed for people who are not disabled and who do not have children.

Justice

Manitoba Liberals

Green Party

  • Appoint a Manitoba restorative justice advisory council.
  • Develop a restorative justice program that focuses on the rehabilitation of offenders through reconciliation with victims and the community at large.

Progressive Conservatives

  • Invest $10 million toreduce crime in downtown Winnipeg throughenforcement and studying best practices.
  • Invest $2.8 million to support RCMP to reduce rural crime.

Electoral Reform

Green Party

  • Implement a mixed-member proportional electoral system.
  • Require each government department, within each twelve-month period following the forming of the department, to hold at least one public forum to explain and answer questions regarding its major initiatives.
  • Lower the voting age to 16.
  • Require the public release of a full costing of all significant new government initiatives before they are implemented.

With files from The Canadian Press