With the 43rd general election scheduled for Oct. 3, Derek Johnson, the Conservative MLA incumbent for the Interlake-Gimli riding, spoke about some of the challenges facing the riding and how his party plans to make Manitoba a “have province.”
Johnson, who was appointed agriculture minister in addition to his MLA duties, said the party is committed to strengthening the provincial economy through business development, and that in turn will help generate revenue for vital services such as health care.
“It’s important we keep attracting businesses because economic prosperity is really what pays for the services we come to expect and deserve as Manitobans. When we have a booming economy, the government has the money to make investments,” said Johnson. “Our businesses, producers and entrepreneurs are the backbone of the Interlake and of the Manitoba economy, so we need to continue attracting investment and driving economic growth in the Interlake.”
The party is focused on “creating an environment” that will make Manitoba a “have province” rather than a “have-not province.” It’s already seeing encouraging signs that it’s on the right track, said Johnson. Full-time employment, for example, is up 4.2 per cent in Manitoba, the highest among the provinces. Labour income, which “pays for our services,” is up 7.3 per cent. Manufacturing sales are up 10.4 per cent. The province recently signed a memorandum of understanding with RCT Solutions to build a solar manufacturing plant in Manitoba and create 8,000 jobs. That will add to Manitoba’s gross domestic product and fund services such as health and social welfare.
“These are important stats to show we’re on the right track. You can make all the [election] promises you want but how are you going to pay for them?” he said. “As a Conservative government, we believe that growing the economy is what pays for this. And we have the third-fastest growing economy in Canada, second only to Alberta and Saskatchewan.”
With a shortage of physicians, nurses, lab techs and paramedics in the Interlake and frequent interruptions to hospital emergency rooms, Johnson said the government made a record funding investment of $200 million to address the recruitment of new staff, training and retention across the province.
In November the Conservatives launched a Health and Human Resources Action Plan that calls for the hiring of 2,000 health-care providers, increasing the number of health-care training seats and offering incentives to attract and retain medical staff.
The government provided monetary investments to encourage retired health-care staff to return to work, is recruiting overseas, offering weekend premiums and providing funding for cross-training of X-ray and lab techs to enable staff to have a better work-life balance, he said. The government has also provided funding to communities like Arborg, which invested in building a training centre to train health-care staff and will be seeing its 40th nurse graduating from an LPN course.
“We saw the value in the Arborg training facility and we gave them a grant,” he said. “When you can educate people right at home, they’ll stay and be part of their community for a long, long time. Training nurses in Arborg will be essential for when the [new] personal care home opens.”
The government also plans to lower income taxes for health-care professionals to make Manitoba a more attractive prospect.
“I know the NDP talks about increasing taxes in the higher income bracket, but doctors are at the higher end of the scale,” said Johnson. “The more you tax, the less they’ll want to put in additional hours and extra shifts here because it’ll end up going to taxes. I think it’s policies like that which may drive some of our professionals out of the province.”
On the education front, Johnson said his government made record investments to support Manitoba’s education system and built about 23 new schools.
“We’re the leader in the country in investing in our students,” he said. “We invest the most amount of money per pupil across the country to ensure our students succeed and have the education they need.”
Inflationary pressures on school divisions in the Interlake are felt most acutely in busing students across long distances, and the subsidization of transportation comes out of divisions’ education budget.
With the K-12 Commission review still in the works, Johnson said an idea about funding transportation separately may help divisions cope with inflation.
“At first blush it sounds like a good idea, but it would have to go through the process of the K-12 review,” he said.
With regard to the province maintaining its third order drains in the Interlake – a bone of contention in a number of municipalities – Johnson said the government has “increased investments” and is “making headway,” but the high cost of steel, concrete and the carbon tax on fuel have affected what the government was able do over the past few years.
“All these escalating costs along with the excess moisture we had in 2022 washed out some drains. It takes a lot of investment just to get back to where we were,” he said. “But that said, drainage is very important to our producers and our economy as whole, as well as our GDP as a province. It’s important to increase our GDP so that we have that money to make investments in drainage.”
Organizations such as Ducks Unlimited Canada also have to “come to the table” to find a solution to the wetlands it has built – namely the Narcisse DUC project that’s flooding producers – instead of “walking away from a project and leaving failed infrastructure on the shoulders of municipalities,” he said.
As for Manitoba’s commercial fishery, which encompasses dozens of communities in the riding, Johnson said the government’s deputy minister of natural resources and northern development has signaled his commitment to getting fishers to the consultation table.
“We have a fairly good set-up in the agriculture sector where turkey, chicken, egg, pork, flax, canola producers and various other associations all fall under Keystone Agricultural Producer’s umbrella,” said Johnson. “They get together and come forward with one voice. And I think it would be very advantageous for the fishers in the south basin of Lake Manitoba and Lake Winnipeg, the north basin, the channel fishers and the Indigenous fishers to form a single umbrella organization so that they have one voice. That would help the department of natural resources and northern development make decisions and know who to consult.”
Johnson has a campaign office in Gimli at 68 First Ave. He can be reached at (204) 671-3584.
