Right in the centre - Good or bad?

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Published on Thursday, March 31, 2016

By Ken Waddell

Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press

In response to a PC Manitoba announcement on how to increase private investment in post-secondary education, the NDP spokesman Andrew Tod called the plan "bad for students, bad for families and bad for colleges and universities.” Of course, the NDP didn’t say why it was bad, but we can assume from past performance why they think it’s bad.

First and foremost, for the NDP, it’s bad because it was suggested by the PCs. They don’t go on to say that they wouldn’t announce such a thing because they loathe any involvement in anything from the private sector. 

The second reason it’s bad to the NDP is that any involvement of the private sector tends to limit the involvement of unions. The unions are the backbone of the NDP. They have supported the NDP since its inception as the CCF in the 1930s and its transformation to NDP in the 1960s. The marriage of the NDP and the unions has distorted good public policy for decades. Once set up to improve the conditions of workers, the union movement has transformed, especially in the public sector, to become job protectors even in the face of obvious redundancy and to protect union numbers. In other words, the motive in public sector unions has been to increase the number of jobs rather than improve working conditions or get the job done to the benefit of the tax paying public. Hence, the PC announcement is bad because you don’t need more government funded staff to administer private funds donated to post-secondary education.

The Manitoba NDP are an ironic bunch. They would have died in the 1980s had it not been for Gary Doer. Doer was a bright young man who took a stint as an assistant at Vaughn Street Detention Centre and became the head of the Manitoba Government Employees Union. Doer, to his credit, saw a career opportunity to travel all over Manitoba to organize government employees. He did so fairly effectively and in his travels, he gathered together some other bright people to make MGEU into a powerhouse. It was always Doer’s admirable goal to achieve power because he knew things can be done with a combination of power and political capital. When it came time to transition to the provincial politics, he spent some time picking his party carefully. He was courted by the PCs and the NDP at the same time. He wanted to be an MLA, but only for a short time. He actually wanted to be premier and the PC party’s path to the top job was a bit more crowded than the NDP. There was no free ride to power in the PC party. Doer made the decision to stay with his union backers and power base and quickly became an NDP MLA. He became leader a short time later when Howard Pawley fell from grace. 

Doer then spent a lot longer in opposition than he ever intended to. It took him four elections to get to be premier and he got in , in part because the Filmon government had been in power for three terms and people were getting tired of PC rule. To Doer’s great fortune, the PC government had to be very frugal in their spending due to huge cuts imposed in federal transfer payments in the 1990s. By the time Doer got to power, federal spending was opening up again and the federal money started to flow.

Doer left politics to become Canada’s ambassador to the United States. Ironically, Doer, after his ambassador days ended, has been brought onto the boards of two of Manitoba’s largest capitalist organizations. I guess capitalism isn’t so bad after all. Greg Selinger became premier, but without Doer’s political capital or charm, Selinger is what he has always been, a political plodder, who loves to spend money, especially taxpayers’ money. 

Both Doer and Selinger, I think, both quietly rankle at the union dead weight that holds them in check. The unions have a poor mentality. They think that all capitalism is bad. They have to have an enemy to rally the troops against and that enemy is capitalism. In a self-fulfilling prophesy, the government provides a quarter of the jobs directly and a whole bunch more indirectly. 

Private investment in Manitoba is a willing movement, but there needs to be a change in attitude. Private investment in education at all levels from day care to post-secondary education makes sense economically and philanthropically. It needs to be encouraged at every step along the way. 

Private investment is the sleeping giant in Manitoba and it’s willing to wake up. The NDP and unions just aren’t willing to let it awaken, they keep holding a pillow over the investors heads, suffocating initiative.