Kinew Promised Affordability. Manitoba’s Debt Is Up $3.2 Billion. Taxes Are the Highest in the West.

Wab Kinew’s NDP won power in Manitoba on two promises: make life more affordable and balance the government’s books. Three years later, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has laid out what Kinew actually delivered. The debt is up $3.2 billion this year. The total provincial debt has reached $39.7 billion. Debt interest payments cost $2.4 billion per year — roughly $1,580 per Manitoban, or $6.5 million per day. The deficit has ballooned from the $128 million the NDP campaigned on to $1.6 billion in the latest forecast. And Manitoba is now the most heavily taxed province in Western Canada for middle-income families.¹

The stealth tax hike is bracket creep. In last year’s budget, the Kinew government stopped indexing income tax brackets to inflation — meaning that as wages rise with the cost of living, Manitobans are pushed into higher tax brackets even though their purchasing power has not increased. The CTF estimates bracket creep cost taxpayers $82 million in 2025. The cost will increase every year with inflation. The 2026 budget does not reverse it.²

The budget does offer some relief: removing the Retail Sales Tax from ready-to-eat grocery items, saving taxpayers $32 million annually, and adjusting the Homeowners Affordability Tax Credit to reduce education property tax bills for some homeowners — though homeowners with properties valued above $1 million will pay more. Total tax relief announced this year: $71 million.³

The math is simple. Bracket creep took $82 million from taxpayers last year. The new relief gives back $71 million. Manitobans are still worse off. The government is painting over a tax hike with a tax cut that does not cover it.

The gas tax tells the same story in miniature. When Kinew took office, the NDP cut the provincial gas tax to zero — a popular move that provided immediate relief at the pump. Then, a year later, the government hiked it back up by 89%. The temporary relief was always temporary. The tax is permanent.⁴

The debt trajectory is the structural problem. Manitoba’s provincial debt has increased 64% since 2016. During that period, the government has spent approximately $18 billion on interest payments alone. Debt interest is now the province’s third-largest expense — behind only health care and education. Nine percent of the entire provincial budget goes to servicing debt. That is money that cannot build a hospital, hire a teacher, or fix a road. It goes to bondholders.⁵

PiggyBank / Unsplash — A Winnipeg family earning $75,000 now pays more in provincial taxes than a similar family in any other major Western Canadian city. The government’s tax relief this year saves $71 million — while bracket creep cost taxpayers $82 million last year alone.

TD Economics flagged Manitoba’s debt servicing burden as the highest of any province this budget season — roughly 9% of revenues. The bank also warned that the government’s projected revenue increases “may prove challenging against a highly uncertain backdrop — particularly as the government itself is forecasting subdued economic growth.”⁶

The deficit path has been a steady escalation of broken promises. The NDP’s campaign platform forecast this year’s deficit at $128.1 million. Last year’s budget revised it to $794 million. The latest forecast: $1.6 billion. That is not a government that missed its target. It is a government that never had a target.

The spending side explains the gap. The government is spending $1.5 billion more than last year — even though it is also collecting $1.8 billion more in revenue. Revenue is at record levels and the government is still borrowing. The deficit exists not because Manitoba lacks money coming in but because spending has no ceiling.⁷

CBC’s analysis of the budget identified five “perils” in Kinew’s fiscal plan, including optimistic income tax revenue projections ($300 million higher than this year), reliance on a $140-million revenue transfer from Manitoba Hydro — which is currently forecasting a $464-million loss due to drought — and sales tax revenue assumptions that require Manitobans to spend significantly more in a war-affected, tariff-impaired economy.⁸

The interprovincial comparison is where the affordability promise collapses. A Winnipeg family earning $75,000 now pays more in provincial taxes than a similar family in Regina, Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto, or Montreal. Manitoba’s Retail Sales Tax sits at 7% — one point higher than Saskatchewan. The CTF says cutting it to 6% would save the average family about $315 per year and bring Manitoba in line with its neighbour.

As NDP Opposition leader in 2018, Kinew himself criticized weakened balanced-budget legislation, asking: “Why wouldn’t they just pass a law that says if you run a deficit, you take a pay cut?” Under the original 1995 law, cabinet ministers faced a 20% pay cut after one deficit year and 40% after two. The current law — which Kinew’s government benefits from — exempts ministers in their first year, allows them to avoid penalties by merely reducing the deficit, and permits docked pay to be repaid later.

Wab Kinew campaigned on affordability and balanced books. Three years later, Manitoba’s debt has grown by $3.2 billion this year. The total debt is $39.7 billion. Interest payments consume $6.5 million per day. The deficit has ballooned from $128 million to $1.6 billion. Bracket creep raised income taxes by $82 million — more than the $71 million in relief the new budget provides. A Winnipeg family earning $75,000 pays more in provincial tax than a family in any other major city in Western Canada. The gas tax was cut to zero and then hiked back up 89%. Revenue is at record levels and the government is still borrowing. The province’s debt servicing burden is the highest in Canada. And the premier who once asked why deficit-running ministers shouldn’t take a pay cut now leads a government that has run a deficit every year — under rules he weakened. The promise was affordability. The delivery is the most taxed province in the West, the fastest-growing debt, and a government that takes in record revenue and still cannot stop spending more than it earns.