By Darrell Rankin, People’s Voice, May 1, 2013

Dealing a blow to workers and the poor, the Manitoba NDP raised the provincial sales tax from seven to eight percent in its April 16 budget. Take-home pay is taking another hit, reinforcing Manitoba’s status as a low-wage province.

An active coalition to demand a Peoples Budget is needed now, or business groups will increase their grip on the provincial government in the 2015 election.

The wealthy elite will barely notice the PST hike. However, workers will have less for the necessities of life. This is a wage cut by other, indirect means – about $300 a year per family. Before-tax wages in Manitoba were $3,500 (or 8 percent) below the country’s annual average in 2012.

The budget follows the model of pro-corporate governments around the world, making cuts that harm workers and the needy and protecting the corporations and the wealthy. Impoverishing workers prolongs and deepens the economic crisis that has gripped global capitalism since 2008.

In one sense, it is a standard Canadian Prairie provincial budget with no grand vision or hope for a fair society. It is blind to inequality, the wholesale robbery of Aboriginal peoples, the inequality of women and the growing climate catastrophe. Good-paying jobs, higher education and child care will continue to be just a crushed dream for many.

Without any factual basis, Manitoba NDP Finance Minister Stan Struthers claims that the PST hike will be “shared by everyone.” Struthers emphasizes the need for urgent flood protection spending, but most new spending is for overdue maintenance and an aging population’s needs.

Needed spending has been delayed for decades as a way to keep public spending low and give Manitoba a “competitive advantage,” but there is a limit to how long our infrastructure will last. The Manitoba NDP’s spending and tax hikes were demanded by local corporate leaders.

There is no other reason why workers and the poor are facing this new burden. The Chamber of Commerce differs with the NDP only by suggesting that the PST hike be entirely directed to municipal infrastructure. And unlike the two-year wage pause announced in the 2010 provincial budget that continues to rob public sector workers of hundreds of millions of dollars, this tax hike hurts all workers.

Labour and other groups are condemning the budget for promoting inequality and failing to reduce poverty. For example, the Progressive Conservative and Liberal opposition parties both endorsed an anti-poverty campaign pledge to raise the welfare housing allowance to 75 percent of market value, weeks before the budget.

The budget raised the housing allowance by a paltry $20 a month, far below the required amount of $100 to meet the anti-poverty coalition demands. This is the first real increase in the allowance since 1992.

A relatively small sum of $19 million would solve the housing allowance demand, something the NDP might do before the 2015 election. It will take far more significant measures to eliminate poverty, create good-paying jobs and grow the economy than this minor reform.

The Manitoba Federation of Labour is pointing out that the NDP has cut $1 billion in personal and corporate taxes since it was elected in 1999. These tax cuts helped the corporate elite. They also helped create a weaker and more unequal economy.

Taxes must shift to a progressive basis, on ability to pay. An inheritance tax on large estates would also go a long way to boost revenue for needed public spending and reduce social inequality.

Working people and the poor are being told by the Manitoba NDP that they must pay more to solve the crisis. It’s like the NDP has no memory how Canada’s economy grew faster and more people had better paying jobs when the wealthy and the corporations paid higher taxes.

The NDP is pushing the line that taxes are good regardless who pays them because we need medicare and roads, but the NDP overlooks the main reality. Today’s tax hikes and spending cuts are impoverishing workers. They protect the greedy, not the needy.

The Manitoba NDP is creating a new, cruel reality just like other pro-corporate governments.

Darrell Rankin is the leader of the Communist Party of Canada Manitoba