See Gary Spend, Part II

Dan Lett has a column today, where (if I can boil it down) he essentially says the new legislation is a non-issue. However, he eventually makes the following point:

Even if the NDP wanted to require the province to balance its consolidated budget on a rolling, four-year basis, it could continue to balance the operating budget on an annual basis if only to save itself from criticism.

This is exactly what they should have done. Not to save themselves from criticism, but to give taxpayers confidence that they won't spend us into oblivion if Hydro has a few good years. The NDP has done little to give us confidence that they can control their spending -- for example, drawing down the Fiscal Stabilization Fund even though the economy was in full flight and transfer payments were increasing.

Hydro has only lost money once in the last decade. This IS essentially a free pass to increase spending, Mr. Lett.

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I went to the PC Manitoba web site to see what they had to say about this bill, and found ... nothing! There is nothing but one month-old press releases under the "Current News" and "Where We Stand" links, and there is a tiny link to an audio clip that gives no detail about the bill. WTF? If you're going to get all fired up about a bill and ask people to speak to the government about it, why don't you have something on your web site? Explain to us exactly why you think it's a bad bill!