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

Kristin Annable | CBC News | Posted: August 12, 2019 9:00 AM | Last Updated: September 10, 2019

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

• Follow all of our election coverage here

• Environment
• Health
• Municipal relations
• Response to meth crisis
• Economy and Taxes
• Arts and Culture
• Education
• Justice
• Housing and Poverty
• Electoral Reform

Environment

• Create greenhouse gas reductions to be achieved by 2030, 2040, 2045 and 2050.
• Introduce a carbon tax of $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

• Reduce carbon emissions by 45 per cent of 2010 levels by 2030 and 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 million to cover the provincial share of the North End Water Pollution Control Centre.

• 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.

• 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

• 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 past two years.
• Hire more nurses in specific areas.
• Double the number of counsellors in ACCESS centres.
• Appoint a 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.
• Expand affordable 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.

• 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, by switching 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.

• 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.

• 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 two per cent of 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

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

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

• 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

• 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-Santé Sud region.

• Implement a 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.

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

• 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 unit and provide transitional housing with mental health supports.
• Open a virtual addictions co-ordination centre.

Economy and Taxes

• Eliminate the Provincial Sales Tax (PST) on home insurance for households and renters.
• Eliminate the PST on 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 Works jobs 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 the Manitoba Works jobs 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.

• 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 schools through corporate and personal income taxes.

• Run a province-wide "shop local" campaign and introduce procurement 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's Public 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.

• 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

• Create a Manitoba Cultural Capital Fund by 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.

• 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 increase pegged at $12 million a year.

Education

• Restore the 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'éducation français.
• Create 600 new child-care spaces a year.

• 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 cent of 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.

• Build 13 new schools over 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.

• 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.
• Overhaul the eligibility requirements for Manitoba Student Aid.
• Invest more 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

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

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

Justice

• Create a provincially-run police service, called the Manitoba Police Service which will have units dedicated to Indigenous policing, border security, fighting gangs, white-collar crime and human trafficking.
• Launch a "Safe Place" programs so people at risk can find a safe place to go, 24 hours a day.
• Create a Community Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV) to reduce gang violence and help those involved with gangs.

• 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.

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

Electoral Reform

• 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.