While Gary Doer and the NDP deservedly get a lot of criticism for being the most boring government in the history of Manitoba, Hugh McFadyen and the Tories seem to have the market cornered on harebrained, what-have-you-been-smoking? schemes.
Last Spring’s election brought us gems like “bring back the Jets” and “let’s build a beach in Point Douglas.” Why these promises never converted into votes continues to be a mystery painfully obvious.
Now McFadyen wants to increase Manitoba’s population to 2 million people in the next 20 years. Of course there’s no actual strategy attached to this idea, it’s really more of an “aspiration” than anything else. And aspirations are fine, but this one is a bit ridiculous.
For starters, it would require Manitoba to achieve and sustain a five-year annual growth rate of about 13.6%. We haven’t come anywhere near that figure in the past nine decades. Even Alberta hasn’t had growth like that since the late-seventies.
Dan Lett suggests that, “McFadyen may have to give away free land to create two decades of explosive growth.” I’m thinking it’s more like free land, house, car, wife and dog. Better throw in a bike and fill the freezer with steaks just to be sure.
Secondly, did anyone ever bother to ask Manitobans if they wanted 800,000 new neighbours? While I’m sure there’s potential economic benefits to having more residents, it seems we have a hard enough time providing appropriate infrastructure and services for the people we’ve already got.
And if we’re to assume the bulk of these imaginary new people would be coming to the Winnipeg area, then it’s even more frightening. The City and surrounding municipalities haven’t demonstrated any ability to deal strategically with the snail’s-pace growth we’ve had over the past several years. God help us if we grow to the size of Calgary.
Personally, I’d much rather live in a well-run small city anyway. Places like Madison, WI and Colorado Springs, CO or even Omaha, NE come to mind. All three have populations that are similar in size to Winnipeg’s, and have been singled out as “great places to live” by various publications.
And that brings up a better aspirational goal in my opinion: let’s work toward being recognized as one of the great places to live in Canada, with a high quality of life and with governments that are efficient, responsive and well-managed. No, there’s not a nice round number attached to that goal, but it’s far more achievable within a 20-year timeframe.
On the other hand , if we added those 800,000 new people then maybe we’d finally get that Ikea we’ve all been dreaming about.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: hugh mcfadyen, Manitoba Tories, PC Manitoba
No wonder us federal conservatives want nothing to do with the provincial boys. Hugh is a horrible leader. He needs to go because these stupid promisies are going to Gary Doer another win in ‘11 .
Policy Frog and other Negative Nancies,
I fail to see why Hugh and the PC Party are getting attacked for being the only voices in this province of hope and growth for the future! Has Gary Doer and his band of socialists so infected the province with mailaise that when any one has the courage to speak of a future where Manitoba is again one of the top provinces in Canada, that they get shouted down as senseless dreamers?
It is time that we get off the teet of federal transfers and think BIG about Manitoba can be! This means that we have BIG DREAMS too! With a government commiteed to growth and innvoation like the PC government would be, I see nothing wrong with Hugh saying that Winnipeg can bring back the Jets or that Point Douglas, the oldest part of our city can be a busy, bustling urban area filled with young professionals and their familes and not a place left to the gang bangers. And now Hugh and the PC’s have another big dream! A growing province that can attract people by the thousands! Why not? I’m proud that Hugh is not giving up on Manitoba like the NDP and the Liberals have and has a plan and a DREAM of a better province.
Down south they have this Obama guy that is talking about Hope and Dreams too. They wanted to write off too, but he seems to be doing pretty good. Maybe, just Maybe, Manitoba is not so far gone that in 2011 Manitoba will take to Hugh and his talk about hope and dreams too. It is sure better than Doer and his gang’s talk of getting more money from Ottawa to toss around on social programs for the few people who have not fled to Alberta or Sask.
- A Tory with Hope.
Wow, ATWH must have picked up a whiff of the dreamer bug from Obama while he was in Grand Forks along with Hugh and all the other MB PCers.
2 million people does is not thinking big, it’s bad policy, full stop.
Why is it bad policy? It is over 20 years. More than enough time to expand services and infrastructure. As if we don’t have the room. Doer’s Waverly West itself is being built to hold more people than Brandon, plus you add in new developments in our slums downtown and around the city and Winnipeg could grow to a city of a million without many pains.
I think people in Manitoba will like to hear from a guy like Hugh, someone who has not given up, someone thats sees hope for this province. We just need to over come the media that seems to have a hate on for the Tories in this province.
“I fail to see why Hugh and the PC Party are getting attacked for being the only voices in this province of hope and growth for the future!”
When Hugh said that young people were leaving Manitoba because we didn’t have an NHL team, he lost my vote.
I am a young person and I might just be leaving this province. But not because we don’t have an NHL team. It’s because I can’t afford to live in a suburb and good luck finding somewhere downtown for me to live (you can live downtown?) Now he wants to fast-track the growth of this province, crickey, by the time another 800 000 get here the whole province will be a suburb.
I’d rather see Hugh talk about the environment, cleaning up our dying lake, commitment to making our downtown relevant, giving young people a place to live, combating auto theft, etc.
Everybody is a “negative nancy” about one politician or another (usually the one you don’t vote for but thinks they can win.)
We need less people in Manitoba, not more.
Winnipeg is already too crowded for it’s own good. Can we really support another million immigrants from war toen countries? These people already have enough trouble fitting it, and avoiding gang life when they get here. How can we have even more?
Or does he want every woman to have 8 kids like my grandmother did? I had 3 and it was hard enough to find enough money to put food on the table for a family of 5, let alone a family of 10 these days.
Actually, thanks to the joys of compounding, the annual growth in population would only have to be 3.53% per year in order for Manitoba to hit 2 million people in 20 years.
It’s the same compounding that makes the NDP’s 6% annual growth in spending so alarming. $9 billion in spending now will be $29 billion in the same time period.
@Proud – We’re currently just under 1.2 million, so wouldn’t it be more like 2.6% per year? I was using the 5-year growth rate (13.6%) because it corresponds with the census measure of population every five years.
Either way, it’s way more than double our current rate of growth, which is already higher than it’s been in several decades.
You know, Joe Diner once said something similar in 2005 to what you wrote on April 14, 2008:
http://www.uwto.org/fp/transit_2005parkingstall.html
Joe Diner of J. H. Barnicke said:
“Diner points to Galveston, Texas, now a thriving tourist town on the Gulf of Mexico that recovered from a downtown left derelict in the 1960s when the cotton trade moved to other ports.”
PolicyFrog wrote:
“Personally, I’d much rather live in a well-run small city anyway. Places like Madison, WI and Colorado Springs, CO or even Omaha, NE come to mind. All three have populations that are similar in size to Winnipeg’s, and have been singled out as “great places to live” by various publications.”
You wouldn’t happen to be one and them same, eh?
No, sorry Jim. I’m not the patron saint of the parking lot.
I was just using the 1 million rounded off – your number would be more accurate. I still contend it is within the realm of possibility, although I do agree it would entail doing something proactive to counter Manitoba’s currently anemic population growth.
The bottom line on population growth is job growth. In the 9 years since I finished high school in Winnipeg, so many people have left town that we might as well have a class reunion in Vancouver. Every one of them says the same thing – jobs. Some go to Alberta, some to BC, some to Toronto… and some to points further away. Almost every one of them says “I couldn’t find a job doing what I wanted to do in Winnipeg”.
I imagine that it’s the same for people from other places considering moving to Winnipeg.
And that is why I am moving to BC next month. Screw Manitoba.