Manitoba election features accusation of secret plan for tax increase

Progressive Conservative Leader Brian Pallister said the NDP has promised $500 million a year in new spending that would require an increase in the provincial sales tax of 1.6 per cent. (File Photo: brianpallister/Instagram)

WINNIPEG — The two main parties accused each other Thursday of harbouring secret plans for tax increases as the Manitoba election campaign devolved into a math battle.

Progressive Conservative Leader Brian Pallister said the NDP has promised $500 million a year in new spending that would require an increase in the provincial sales tax of 1.6 per cent. The New Democrats have promised to hire more nurses, reopen emergency rooms, add classrooms and boost highway spending.

“The only way the NDP can keep that vote-buying (platform) is by hiking the PST,” Pallister said.

The provincial sales tax has been a key issue for Pallister. He was elected premier in 2016 on a promise to reverse an increase that had been enacted by the former NDP government in 2013.

The NDP had denied plans to raise the tax in the previous election and then changed course.

Pallister fulfilled his tax-cut promise this year and has been trying to make taxes a central issue in the campaign for the Sept. 10 election.

There were questions about his party’s calculations, however. Tory figures handed out Thursday assumed all NDP promises would be funded by a tax increase instead of other revenues that rise naturally every year, such as federal transfer payments and income taxes generated by economic growth.

Federal transfers alone have been rising by hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Tories later clarified that they assumed any natural revenue growth would be eaten up by an NDP government on existing programs.

“The average rate of NDP spending growth from 2010-11 to 2014-15 was 3.24 per cent,” read a written statement from Tory campaign headquarters.

The NDP said the Tories also made several math errors, such as counting capital spending as paid up front in cash instead of through borrowed money over several years. The New Democrats also said Pallister failed to take into account some already-announced NDP cost-cutting plans, such as a reduction in the use of consultants and the elimination of a recently developed Crown energy agency.

The NDP made its own tax accusation Thursday when it suggested Pallister may be planning to enact a health-care premium to help balance the budget. Pallister said in a televised debate Wednesday that he was on track to end the province’s deficits in 2022 — two years ahead of an earlier promise.

“There are only two paths to balancing the budget that early — either steeper cuts to health care or the introduction of a health-care tax,” the NDP said in a statement.

Pallister raised the idea of a health-care premium shortly after being elected, but has repeatedly ruled it out since then. He did so again Thursday.

“That dog don’t hunt,” Pallister said. “They’ve tried to float that one repeatedly.”

The New Democrats revealed a new spending commitment Thursday — $85 million a year to build new school classrooms and cap the number of students in kindergarten to Grade 3.

The Liberals promised they would bring cellphone service and high-speed internet to every northern community, largely by piggy-backing on Manitoba Hydro’s fibre-optic network.

“Flin Flon, which is a town of over 5,000, does not have access to any high-speed internet, and cell service around the north … is extremely bad,” Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said.

He estimated it would cost $20 million as part of a cost-shared deal with the federal government, although he did not provide a detailed breakdown.