For Wab Kinew and his new cabinet, the work starts now

If there's still such a thing as a honeymoon period for a new provincial government, Wab Kinew's NDP is already at the stage where it's time to return the key cards to the front desk, head to the airport and start reading work emails in the departure lounge.

Kinew was sworn in Wednesday as Manitoba's 25th premier — and the first First Nations premier of any Canadian province — in an historic ceremony that featured Dakota singing, Métis dancing, the lighting of an Inuit lamp and encouraging words from Indigenous leaders.

It was a moving and cathartic moment befitting a province often riven along ethnocultural lines.

And now that moment is over and, along with it, the national gaze that typically only veers in Manitoba's direction after a horrible flood or homicide.

Now, Kinew and his 14-member cabinet must get to work on fulfilling their campaign promises — the vast majority of which involved health care — and tackling every other complex issue facing Manitoba.

The toughest task belongs to Uzoma Asagwara, the new health minister and deputy premier. The former psychiatric nurse will carry the weight of living up to all of the NDP's primary-care promises, which include conjuring up hundreds of health-care workers to toil in reopened emergency wards and other expanded hospital facilities.

Throughout the election campaign, Kinew responded to questions about the feasibility of his expansive health-care hopes by stating an NDP government would listen to health-care workers.

If respect is all it takes to convince surgeons, sonographers and occupational therapists to move to Manitoba, then a bulk-purchase Amazon order of vintage Aretha Franklin vinyl is all it would take.

Dad jokes aside, Asagwara must find a way to turn this rhetoric into reality. 

"I look forward in my capacity to getting right to work once we've had the chance to really evaluate what's going on," Asagwara told reporters on Wednesday.

That, in itself, is no simple task when you're talking about demystifying a massive medical behemoth that involves five regional health authorities, hundreds of small private businesses — yes, many family doctors' offices are indeed private businesses — and whatever the heck it is Manitoba Shared Health is supposed to be doing to sew it all together.

Working adjacent to Asagwara will be Manitoba's new minister of housing, homelessness and addictions Bernadette Smith, who has been handed the Sisyphean task of creating more social housing in a province that has been shutting down social housing.

Smith will also be responsible for setting up a supervised consumption site and working with the City of Winnipeg to reduce the number of people living on the street, many of whom suffer from mental health issues.

The new minister reminded reporters on Wednesday she has a very personal stake in the latter task. 

"Certainly, having two parents that came to Winnipeg using the shelter system is something that I'm very familiar with. I've had family that actually have been homeless themselves and I've actually lived in social housing myself," Smith said.

Comparatively speaking, Finance Minister Adrien Sala will have it easy. In some ways, he's walking into an office on a path already paved by the Progressive Conservatives.

The 2022-23 fiscal year ended with a budget surplus, tax revenue is exceeding expectations and record financial transfers are flowing in from Ottawa. 

But when the time comes to start finding ways to fund the NDP's health-care promises, even this additional revenue may not suffice.

Manitoba can no longer bank on growing the economy through the magic of clean, green hydro-electric energy now that Manitoba Hydro is warning it doesn't have the excess capacity to connect new energy-intensive customers — think electric vehicle battery or solar panel manufacturers — to the provincial grid.

"That's a big issue, obviously, that we learned about just during the election, that there was a serious concerns about whether or not we can service new industrial customers or new businesses coming to the province," said Sala, who is also the minister responsible for Manitoba Hydro.

"I'm looking forward to getting down to work and seeing more information about the actual status of things at Hydro in terms of our capacity to serve those needs."

No solar panel plants, meanwhile, could make life easier for rookie MLA and Environment and Climate Change Minister Tracy Schmidt, who inherits a looming provincial decision on Sio Silica's proposal to remove millions of tonnes of sand from below the surface of southeastern Manitoba.

The PCs put off that decision but it could be moot if there is no juice to serve the solar panel manufacturing plant pencilled in as Sio Silica's primary customer.

Schmidt also faces an even heavier lift: Coming up with an actual plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in this province.

That's a task previous PC and NDP governments have not taken seriously, owing to their beliefs Manitoba has already done its part to mitigate climate change simply by building hydro dams.

To be fair to any incoming minister, the learning curve is always going to be steep. But that's the price you pay for trying to form a government — you are expected to govern.