Promise tracker, revisited: How well has Manitoba's NDP government fulfilled its 2023 election pledges?

During the 2023 provincial election campaign, Manitoba's New Democratic Party made dozens of promises. Following the party's victory on Oct. 3, 2023, a handful have been fulfilled. 

This is no indictment of the year-old NDP government. All new governments spend much of their first year in power familiarizing themselves with the vast provincial public service and figuring out how government works. It generally takes two years in office to make meaningful change, and multiple terms in office make dramatic improvements.

As a result, Premier Wab Kinew and his NDP caucus colleagues have a tremendous amount of work ahead of them during the remaining three years of what this government hopes will be its inaugural term.

Some of the NDP's election promises, such as a pledge to make the provincial gasoline tax disappear for a while, were easy to achieve in Year 1, even though that decision deprives the public purse of hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue and thus complicates a separate pledge to balance the provincial budget within four years.

Other promises were too ill-defined or ambitious for any government to achieve within a four-year time frame.

The party's vague pledge to restore Lake Winnipeg to its former health, for example, would require the financial and regulatory co-operation of three other provinces, four U.S. states, dozens of conservation districts, hundreds of municipalities and thousands of agricultural producers — not to mention new achievements in both pure and applied freshwater science.

What follows is an effort to track most of the NDP's 2023 election pledges over the party's first year in power.

Agriculture

Promise: Keep the education property tax rebate at 50 per cent for farm properties. Fulfillment: Rebate maintained, thus far.

Promise: Reverse Progressive Conservative government changes to Crown land leases, which reduced them to a maximum of 15 years. Fulfillment: Five-year extensions announced in January.

Child care

Promise: Expand $10-a-day child care at regulated non-profit child-care spaces during the summer months, weekends and school in-service days. Fulfillment: Not yet.

Promise: Expand child-care hours to be more flexible for parents who work varying hours. Fulfillment: Not yet.

Promise: Spend $1 million to demolish and rebuild Park Community Centre in Brandon, and promises to add a new child-care centre to the building. Fulfillment: Mentioned in 2024 budget.

Promise: Create 23,000 new child-care spaces by 2026. Fulfillment: Target not yet attained.

Cost of living

Promise: Freeze the provincial sales tax: Fulfillment: Freeze maintained so far.

Promise: Temporarily eliminate the provincial gas tax. Fulfillment: Introduced and extended until Dec. 31.

Promise: Freeze hydroelectricity rates for a year. Fulfillment: No. Deferred to some point in the future.

Promise: Retain 50 per cent provincial property tax rebate and stop sending education tax rebates to "billionaires outside of the province." Fulfillment: Tax rebate maintained in 2024. In 2025, it will be replaced with a flat $1,500 credit that will see owners of more expensive properties receive smaller rebates.

Promise: Continue indexing provincial income tax brackets to inflation. Fulfillment: Continuing so far.

Promise: Stop government interference with Manitoba Public Insurance. Fulfillment: Debatable. Appointed new MPI board with some NDP loyalists among the members.

Crime

Promise: Hire more mental health workers to work with law enforcement. Fulfillment: Review of mental health response promised, not yet underway. Money set aside this year to hire 25 mental-health workers.

Promise: Push for changes on bail measures. Fulfillment: $4 million announced in February to allow Winnipeg police to monitor and track down bail condition offenders.

Promise: Build a new justice centre in Dauphin. Fulfillment: Money allocated for preliminary design.

Promise: Hire more police officers. Fulfillment: $29 million added to police spending by province this fiscal year.

Promise: Design a comprehensive strategy to reduce rates of youth crime. Fulfillment: Coming in October, a government spokesperson said.

Promise: Give people up to $300 to add security technology like alarms and doorbell cameras to their properties. Fulfillment: Two tranches of funding doled out so far.

Promise: Require people to explain how they acquired their assets if crime is suspected. Fulfillment: The Unexplained Wealth Act passed in June.

Promise: Call an inquiry into the procurement and construction of Winnipeg's police headquarters. Fulfillment: $500,000 set aside in this year's budget, but with no start or completion date.

Economy

Promise: Balance Manitoba's budget within first term in office. Fulfillment: Further away from goal. Deficit increased in 2023-24.

Promise: Bring 10,000 new jobs to the province. Fulfillment: No increase in full-time employment from October 2023 through August 2024, according to Statistics Canada.

Promise: Create a premier's business and jobs council. Fulfillment: Created in December 2023.

Promise: Increase immigration to the province. Fulfillment: The number of immigrants to Manitoba rose from 5,032 during the third quarter of 2023 to 7,745 during the second quarter of this year, according to Statistics Canada. It's unclear if provincial policy played any role in this.

Promise: Close the gender pay gap for women. Fulfillment: Goal remains far away.

Promise: Improve employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Fulfillment: Not yet.

Promise: Hire former NDP Manitoba premier Gary Doer as a Canada-U.S. trade adviser. Fulfillment: Doer went on a provincial trade mission in April.

Promise: Give preference to local bidders in the awarding of government contracts. Fulfillment: Legislation enabling this to some degree has passed second reading.

Promise: Create critical minerals strategy. Fulfillment: Feedback about new strategy sought in March.

Education

Promise: Create a universal school nutrition program in the province at a cost of $30 million a year. Fulfillment: As of last month, 690 schools offer at least one meal, up from 400.

Promise: Reduce class sizes. Fulfillment: $3 million allocated this year to hire more teachers to work in elementary schools with large classes.

Promise: Strengthen the kindergarten to Grade 12 curriculum with a focus on math and science. Fulfillment: Not yet.

Promise: Introduce more STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programming at high schools provincewide. Fulfillment: Not yet.

Promise: Create an assistant deputy minister position for Indigenous excellence. Fulfillment: Achieved. Jackie Connell, a former assistant superintendent in the Frontier School Division, appointed.

Promise: Establish more Indigenous language programs in schools. Fulfillment: Nothing announced.

Promise: Spend $10 million to build a second gym, a new field and a rubberized track at Winnipeg's Kelvin High School. Fulfillment: Not yet.

Promise: Restore the assistant deputy minister role in the Bureau de l'Éducation française. Fulfillment: Achieved. René Déquier appointed.

Promise: Increase funding for all levels of French-language education. Fulfillment: Not yet. 

Promise: Develop a strategy to train and recruit more French teachers. Fulfillment: In progress.

Environment

Promise: Help Manitoba reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Fulfillment: Goal remains far away.

Promise: Offer a $4,000 rebate for new and $2,500 rebate for used electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles. Fulfillment: Yes.

Promise: Spend $7 million annually to build more charging stations. Fulfillment: Announced in budget 2024.

Promise: Sign on to a federal commitment to protect 30 per cent of land and ocean by 2030. Fulfillment: Seal River watershed protection announced so far.

Promise: Build more electric transit buses. Fulfillment: This year's budget called for more funding for Winnipeg manufacturer NFI.

Promise: Restore funding for environmental organizations. Fulfillment: This year's budget included a $350,000 allocation.

Promise: Keep Manitoba parks public and affordable. Fulfillment: Pledge too vague to be measured.

Promise: End deforestation in the province. Fulfillment: Unfulfilled.

Promise: Plant more trees. Fulfillment: Promise too vague to monitor.

Promise: Restore Lake Winnipeg "back to health." Fulfillment: No, nor is this a realistic pledge within a four-year timeframe.

Promise: Finish upgrades to Winnipeg's North End Pollution Control Centre. Fulfillment: Not yet. Third phase of project not fully financed.

Health care

Promise: Spend $500 million to hire 400 more physicians in the province, 300 nurses across Winnipeg within two years and 300 more in rural and northern Manitoba within their first term, plus upwards of 100 more home-care workers. Fulfillment: Government said in September it hired 873 net new health-care workers, but that figure includes workers in other categories as well.

Promise: Reopen Victoria Hospital's mature women's centre. Fulfillment: Money set aside in budget for preliminary design.

Promise: Speed up the process for internationally trained health-care workers to work in their fields. Fulfillment: Language barriers reduced for 31 professions.

Promise: Reinstate a grant program for medical students and newly graduated physicians starting a practice in Manitoba. Fulfillment: Fulfilled.

Promise: Reopen emergency rooms at the Concordia, Seven Oaks and Victoria hospitals. Fulfillment: Not yet.

Promise: Build a new CancerCare facility at a cost $350 million. Fulfillment: Money allocated for preliminary design, apparently using future tobacco settlement money.

Promise: Add an MRI machine at Thompson hospital. Fulfillment: Procurement underway, a government spokesperson said.

Promise: Open five neighbourhood health clinics in Manitoba and five more clinics that use a team-based primary care approach. Fulfillment: One open so far, in Brandon.

Promise: Cover prescription birth control and menopause transition medications under pharmacare. Fulfillment: Birth control now covered, but not the morning-after pill that was part of its election promise.

Promise: Expand surgical capacity at the Grace Hospital and add 12 beds at the hospital. Fulfillment: Announced 20 new medicine beds and 11 new surgery beds in November 2023.

Promise: Hire the full-time equivalent of seven forensic nurses to ensure sexual assault nurse examiners are available at all times, including in rural and northern communities. Fulfillment: $1.3 million announced in January to fund sexual examiners at Klinic Community Health and Ka Ni Kanichihk.

Promise: Restore birthing services in Pimicikamak Cree Nation and Norway House. Fulfillment: Seven midwives hired provincewide toward this goal, a provincial spokesperson said.

Promise: Recruit staff for a new nursing station and dialysis care in Pimicikamak Cree Nation. Fulfillment: Not yet.

Housing

Promise: End chronic homelessness in the province within eight years. Fulfillment: $70 million more in capital spending (on both new units and maintenance) and $30 million more in operating funds announced this year toward that goal. A comprehensive strategy, in partnership with the City of Winnipeg, remains a work in progress.

Promise: Eliminate the provincial sales tax on rental construction. Fulfillment: In effect this taxation year.

Promise: Create oversight of affordable housing to protect seniors and other renters. Fulfillment: Not yet.

Promise: Increase a tax credit for renters. Fulfillment: Yes.

Promise: Make it harder for landlords to raise rents above the province's annual guideline. Fulfillment: Legislation introduced in May has yet to pass. The bill, if passed, would only permit a landlord to apply for an above-guideline rent increase when they've faced a sharp rise in taxes, utilities and security costs, or where they invest in capital projects such as plumbing and heating. The bill would also let rent increases be phased in over a number of years instead of taking effect immediately.

Promise: Work with non-profits and private landlords to find a place for people without a home to stay. Fulfillment: Province announced Friday homes have been found for approximately 1,200 people, without a comparison with the previous year.

Promise: Pay for the equipment and installation of new geothermal systems at 5,000 homes. Fulfillment: Promised in first throne speech, target not achieved.

Reconciliation

Promise: Implement the 231 calls to justice outlined by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Fulfillment: It will take time to implement every call to action.

Promise: Reinstate a special MMIWG adviser. Fulfillment: Cora Morgan appointed in January as Manitoba's special adviser on Indigenous women's issues.

Promise: Establish a government database to track MMIWG victims in Manitoba. Fulfillment: Working this out with the federal government, a government spokesperson said.

Promise: Open three 24/7 drop-in centres for Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people. Fulfillment: Working with non-profit organizations toward this goal, a government spokesperson said.

Promise: Search Prairie Green landfill for the remains of homicide victims Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran. Fulfillment: Search slated to start late this year.

Recreation

Promise: Assist construction of the South Winnipeg Recreation Campus in Waverley West and the East of the Red Recplex in Transcona. Fulfillment: Provincial cash announced in July for a new school wing next to the South Winnipeg campus allows the city to qualify for federal funding.

Promise: End a PC municipal funding freeze to free up funds for recreation. Fulfillment: The former PC government ended the freeze in 2023.

Promise: Annual capital funds and grants for artists, festivals, musicians and performing arts organizations. Fulfillment: Unclear if anything has changed, as funding and grants predated the NDP's election.

Promise: Provide an upfront cash advance to companies that travel to create films and jobs in the province. Fulfillment: More money added to existing program.

Promise: Add tourism portfolio back to cabinet. Fulfillment: Glen Simard was appointed minister of sport, culture, heritage and tourism.

Promise: Pay for a new entrance to the Franco-Manitoban Cultural Centre in Winnipeg. Fulfillment: Funding for centre increased in April.