Provincial Finance Minister Rosann Wowchuk was in Thompson Feb. 3, meeting with local citizens and groups to outline Manitoba's financial position and gather feedback on the upcoming provincial budget.
"It's important to me to hear from different parts of the province on how we're doing," she said, noting that these consultations move from community to community each year.
Overall, Wowchuk said that Manitoba was not affected by the global recession as much as other parts of Canada, and therefore it hasn't bounced back as strongly - simply because it didn't have as much room to bounce. "As Canada declined, Manitoba did not decline as much," she explained. "Now Canada is growing faster - because we didn't decline as much, we didn't grow as much."
According to Statistics Canada, Manitoba's economic growth in 2009 was absolute zero - still enough to put it ahead of every other province, which saw their economies fall anywhere from 0.1 per cent in Prince Edward Island to 10.2 per cent in Newfoundland and Labrador.
The province had a $201-million deficit in 2009-10, which was less than the expected deficit of roughly $550 million. Under the government's current financial plans and projections, deficits will continue until 2014-15, at which point the province will return to surplus.
However, the approximately 15 Thompsonites in attendance - mostly representing groups such as the Thompson Crisis Centre, Burntwood Regional Health Authority, and Thompson Homeless Shelter - were less interested in offering suggestions on the province's fiscal situation and tax policies than on appealing for funding for their own needs, a message which clearly resonated with Wowchuk.
"We've heard some significant issues," she said. "The whole issue of Vale and the closure of the smelter is one that everybody is concerned about, but the other issue that is of great interest in to me is the number of people who are talking about services that are under pressure here - particularly with the zero vacancy rate in housing and the pressure that's causing. I didn't realize the need for this."
Wowchuk was accompanied by Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure and Thompson MLA Steve Ashton, and Selkirk-area MLA Greg Dewar. "What it really comes down to is choices, and what we've chosen to do is invest," said Ashton while introducing Wowchuk, citing the new University College of the North campus and the conversion of winter roads into all-season roads as two examples of that investment.
"This is not a government that says we're going to take money out of the North and put it in southern Manitoba," agreed Wowchuk. "This is a government for all of Manitoba."
Wowchuk also pointed to Manitoba Hydro as helping to drive the province's revenues in the future, noting that the Wuskwatim Dam is scheduled to be in service later this year with a generating capacity of 200 megawatts. Other hydroelectric projects in the near future include the Keeyask Dam, on the Nelson River near Gillam, which will be producing 695 megawatts of electricity as early as 2018, and the Conawapa Dam, also on the Nelson River, which will potentially be up and running by 2021 with a generating capacity of 1,485 megawatts. Wowchuk also noted that these projects would provide jobs to the North, which has a far higher unemployment rate than the province as a whole.
Earlier in the day, Wowchuk met with Thompson city council for their input on the budget. One of the issues that was raised in that meeting was that of video lottery terminal (VLT) revenues - council feels that Thompson sees far more money leaving the city through VLTs than what comes back. "When VLTs were first introduced in this province, there was a formula that was put in place on the percentage of VLT revenue that would be distributed back to the municipalities, and that's the formula that we work on," said Wowchuk.
Before coming to Thompson, Wowchuk was at Flin Flon City Hall for a similar meeting. The Northern trip had originally been scheduled for late October, but mechanical difficulties with the airplane necessitated the delay. Nonetheless, Ashton - who was already in Thompson - said that the "non-meeting" was productive.
