Ok folks, you know the drill.  An election means a manifesto analysis, and with the Manitoba election only 24 hours away, I’m overdue on this one.

Manitoba is a 2-and-a-half party system.  Since 1969, the NDP and Progressive Conservatives have each had three periods in power (NDP for 30 years, Tories for 24), so these are the two platforms to watch. The Liberals have held seats in the legislature for all but 4 of those years, but only once managed to secure a spot where it briefly held the balance of power.  However, since this is potentially a close election (polls are currently predicting an NDP win, but not necessarily a majority) the Liberals’ current three seats conceivably could give them the balance of power, so they are worth noting.

In ascending poll order, here is what the parties are offering.

The platform of the Liberal Party (or rather, “Dougald Lamont and the Liberal Party,” which now seems to be their official designation) on postsecondary education is unusually thin.  The highlight pledge is to bring back a really foolish NDP policy from 2007 (ended by the Conservatives in 2017) in which the province rebates up to 60% of tuition to students who stay within the province after graduation.  I have explained on previous occasions why this policy – still in place in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick and soon to be introduced in Alberta – is an utter waste of money, so I won’t say more. The Liberals also want to reinstate health coverage for international students, “respect the autonomy of public post-secondary institutions”, which seems to be a reference to Bill 33, which restricted institutions’ ability to set fees, and “ensure stable multi-year funding for all post-secondary institutions”.  Applause for the mention of base funding (which is more than either of the other parties managed) but given that the costing document allocated exactly zero dollars to this pledge, I’d say this applause should probably be quite muted.  Total cost of the other promises: an estimated $60M/year.

Second in the polls is the governing Progressive Conservative Party.  I have no idea what happened to their platform.  They started rolling out elements of a “Fully! Costed! Platform!” a couple of weeks ago, but then stopped around the time a couple of terrible polls came out and the party went into full-on attack mode.  As of Friday, at 5PM, the platform page looked like this: 

And none of it mentioned postsecondary education.

Of course, after two terms in office, you tend to run on your record rather than on new promises.  For the most part, though, the Conservative record until last year wasn’t great.  Former Premier Brian Palliser was rather open in his loathing for the sector; until his departure two years ago, the main order of business for university and college government relations’ offices in the provinces could be summarized as “duck”.  Real funding to postsecondary education fell by 13% between 2017 and 2022.  At the outset of COVID, the premier made universities and colleges go through an exercise to prepare for 30% cuts to their transfers, an idea so stupid that it moved Winnipeg’s business community –in general a fairly small-government lot – to protest and cause the premier to reverse himself.   But the current premier, Heather Stefanson, is a different story.  She did a 180 in the 2023 budget, taking the entire sector by surprise with an 11% boost to funding in Budget 2023, making it the only province to have given the sector an increase above the rate of inflation last year.

And that brings us to Wab Kinew and the New Democrats, whose education plans you can see here.  Like the PCs, there is nothing in here about base funding universities, but the party does plan to a) increase funding to Research Manitoba (not hard, since its entire budget is just $12M which is among the lowest in Canada for a provincial research agency) and b) abolish Bill 33 (see above), which gave the government more control over raising tuition and ancillary fees.  I think that means the party is comfortable with fee rises but doesn’t want to say so for the usual predictable reasons. 

The NDP platform also contains some specific but small commitments to increase funding to Université St. Boniface (USB) and restoring health care coverage for international students.  There are also some uncosted, un-defined commitments to provide more student grants and “increase the number of co-op and apprenticeship placements (though it’s really unclear how they intend to achieve this since they are also committed to restoring a 1:1 journeyperson to apprentice ratio, which would reduce the number of available apprenticeship spots considerably).   How much all of this is allegedly going to cost is not clear because the NDP has not released any detailed costing of its plans other than a one-pager on its “fiscal framework” which just says, “trust us, we’re going to keep all this under $500 million”.

So, what to make of all this?  Well, let’s start with the fact that neither of the opposition parties seems firmly committed to restoring any of the institutional funding lost during the Tory years, so whichever party wins, we’re starting off on the same framework.  Both opposition parties are committed to paying more for international student health care. The NDP is committed to more income/need-based student grants, which is better than what’s on offer from either the Liberals (goofy tax rebates) or the Conservatives (nothing).  And the NDP also has some niche commitments around apprenticeships, research, and USB that the others do not. 

On paper, I’d say it all gives a slight but not overwhelming edge to the NDP.  But it’s more about vibes than promises and specifically which Progressive Conservative Party you think will show up if the party retains power.  If it’s the Stefanson version, maybe you take last budget’s stonking increases in funding as a good omen and back them.  But if you think the party might revert to Pallister-era hostility, then the NDP is the obvious choice.

But let me stress: it’s yet another election where no party is promising anything concrete on institutional base budgets.  The quiet erosion of institutional quality will likely continue a while longer.