Municipal leaders say all parties appear ready to provide steady funding for municipalities, but aren’t giving infrastructure enough airtime as the provincial election draws near.
“We need to see more,” said Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett in a Sept. 20 news release. “Building and maintaining core infrastructure – from water and wastewater to broadband – is a priority for all municipalities and this hasn’t received enough attention in this campaign.”
Why it matters: Manitobans head to the polls Oct. 3.
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Fawcett, along with Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham, Portage la Prairie Mayor Sharilyn Knox and Association of Manitoba Municipalities president Kam Blight, spoke to reporters at a news conference in Brandon Sept. 20.
The local leaders emphasized AMM’s election priorities and recapped what the three major provincial parties have said on those issues thus far.
Those four main priorities are: fair and predictable municipal funding; investment in core infrastructure; investment in people (such as job training, especially for healthcare workers); and public safety.
Gillingham told reporters that municipal funding is “the most urgent and important priority for municipalities. Everything else flows from that.”
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Provincial funding transfers to municipalities were capped from 2016 to 2022, he said. The Progressive Conservative government lifted the freeze in this year’s budget, which Gillingham called “real progress.”
However, municipal governments need a new funding format in the future that will grow automatically as populations or local economies expand and that will index to inflation, he added.
The PC, NDP and Liberal parties have all told the AMM that they will at least consider municipal input on the funding model, Gillingham said.
On infrastructure, Manitoba’s municipalities are “displeased with the degree of attention to core infrastructure funding” in the campaign, AMM said in its news release.
The party platforms contain multiple promises related to infrastructure.
The NDP have included a pledge to “reverse the PCs’ cuts and invest in highways, bridges, roads and maintenance.” The PC election promises include $2.5 billion for highways over the next five years. The Liberals promise to repair “highways, provincial roads, bridges and intersections,” prioritizing those projects in consultation with the AMM.
The association said it expects more discussion on how parties will address infrastructure needs.
However, municipal leaders are pleased that all parties have seen the need to attract and train more health-care workers, AMM said in the release.
It also acknowledged that all three parties have discussed ways to address crime rates. Knox cited an AMM survey from this June that showed 56 per cent of Manitobans feel “less safe” in their communities than they did three years ago.
“Different parties have offered different detailed commitments on how they would address crime, and all have merit; the essential point is that this has emerged as a consensus provincial priority,” AMM said Sept. 20.
