Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - December 18, 2020, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A2 A 2 WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2020 ? WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM VOL 150 NO 40 Winnipeg Free Press est 1872 / Winnipeg Tribune est 1890 2020 Winnipeg Free Press, a division of FP Canadian Newspapers Limited Partnership. Published seven days a week at 1355 Mountain Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba R2X 3B6, PH: 204-697-7000 Publisher / BOB COX Editor / PAUL SAMYN Associate Editor Enterprise / SCOTT GIBBONS Associate Editor News / STACEY THIDRICKSON Associate Editor Digital News / WENDY SAWATZKY Director Photo and Multimedia / MIKE APORIUS NEWSMEDIA COUNCIL The Winnipeg Free Press is a member of the National Newsmedia Council, which is an in- dependent organization established to determine acceptable journalistic practices and ethical behaviour. If you have concerns about editorial content, please send them to: editorialconcerns@freepress.mb.ca. If you are not satisfied with the response and wish to file a formal complaint, visit the website at www.mediacouncil.ca and fill out the form or call toll-free 1-844-877- 1163 for additional information. ADVERTISING Classified (Mon-Fri): 204-697-7100 wfpclass@freepress.mb.ca Obituaries (Mon-Fri): 204-697-7384 Display Advertising : 204-697-7122 FP.Advertising@freepress.mb.ca EDITORIAL Newsroom: 204-697-7301 News tip: 204-697-7292 Fax: 204-697-7412 Photo desk: 204-697-7304 Sports desk: 204-697-7285 Business news: 204-697-7301 Photo REPRINTS: 204-697-7510 City desk / City.desk@freepress.mb.ca CANADA POST SALES AGREEMENT NO. 0563595 Recycled newsprint is used in the production of the newspaper. PLEASE RECYCLE. INSIDE Arts and Life D1 Business B4 Classifieds B7 Comics D5 Diversions D6-7 Horoscope D4 Jumble D6 Miss Lonelyhearts D4 Obituaries B6 Opinion A6-7 Sports C1 Television D4 Weather C8 COLUMNISTS: David Christianson B4 READER SERVICE ? GENERAL INQUIRIES 204-697-7000 The Free Press receives support from the Local Journalism Initiative funded by the Government of Canada CIRCULATION INQUIRIES MISSING OR INCOMPLETE PAPER? Call or email before 10 a.m. weekdays or 11 a.m. Saturday City: 204-697-7001 Outside Winnipeg: 1-800-542-8900 press 1 6:30 a.m. - 2 p.m. Monday-Friday.; 7 a.m. - noon Saturday; Closed Sunday TO SUBSCRIBE: 204-697-7001 Out of Winnipeg: 1-800-542-8900 DEFICIT ? FROM A1 SCHOOLS ? FROM A1 P REMIER Brian Pallister's stub-born claim his government can't afford to adequately compensate small businesses hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic just got a little tougher to sell. Two days after lecturing small op- erators to tighten their belts, Pallister announced Manitoba's projected deficit for 2020-21 dropped by nearly one- third, to just over $2 billion. It doesn't put the province on solid financial footing - not even close - but compared to the $3-to $5-billion shortfall projected earlier this year, it gives government more flexibility. Pallister can thank the federal gov- ernment. Ottawa provided Manitoba with $648 million in COVID-19 funding, the main reason for the lower deficit. The province's own-source revenues also improved. Income, corporate and sales tax revenues didn't decline as much as expected. Education property taxes were projected to fall $60 million, but they're back to original budget levels. Also, fee revenue, including automobile licensing, is $244 million better than what Manitoba Finance projected in its first-quarter report in September. That's, of course, offset by higher spending, including $188 million more in health care. All told, provincial finances are $890 million better than they were three months ago. That makes it more difficult for Pal- lister to argue the province can't afford to adequately compensate businesses driven to bankruptcy or near-insolven- cy as a result of mandated shutdowns. Whether those interventions - such as shuttering bars, restaurants, and retail outlets - were necessary or not, there's no question those operators have been disproportionately affected. Many have lost their livelihoods, through no fault of their own. The province has provided some financial aid to small business, but it's not nearly enough to compensate operators for their losses. For others, it was too late. Pallister was reluctant to compen- sate small businesses at all early in the pandemic, even after imposing restric- tions. It wasn't until he faced sustained criticism he finally relented. Even then, the first round of pro- grams was stingy. The Manitoba Gap Protection Program, for example, disqualified businesses that received federal aid. That's partly why the $120 million budgeted for it was undersub- scribed by $52 million (an amount later rolled into the Manitoba Bridge Grant program, which doesn't have those restrictions). Pallister had to be pressured for weeks to improve support for small business. He doesn't like spending money; it's in his DNA. Those miserly qualities served Mani- tobans well when they needed someone to clean up the province's balance sheet between 2016 and 2020. Manitobans needed fiscal discipline and Pallister delivered, eliminating a deficit of nearly $1 billion in four years, with relatively little pain (and a lot of help from Ottawa). The world has changed since then. Manitoba still needs a financially re- sponsible government, but it also needs a good financial manager - someone who understands that, during a severe economic downtown like the one we're in, government needs to stimulate the economy to bolster aggregate demand. In a pandemic, where government restrictions are used to mitigate the spread of an infectious disease, it also means compensating those dispropor- tionately affected. No one is suggesting the province go out and blow $890 million because the projected deficit declined as much. However, government should spend some of it to compensate those who have sacrificed their businesses for the greater good. We have an obligation, as a society, to do that. When the economy recovers, Mani- toba needs a long-term plan to balance the books, but that's a long way off. Right now, it doesn't matter if gov- ernment posts a $2-billion or $2.5-bil- lion deficit in 2020-21; nor whether debt as a percentage of GDP is 38 per cent or 39 per cent. What's important is government spends whatever is necessary to fight COVID-19, to save lives, and to com- pensate people who have sacrificed the most. That's job No. 1. tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca Projected deficit gives wiggle room on compensation TOM BRODBECK OPINION The province has not indicated in-school transmission occurred or declared an outbreak. It recently altered the definition of an outbreak to mean "evidence of significant in- school transmission where there is a risk to the larger school commu- nity." Dr. Brent Roussin originally said a school outbreak would be declared if two cases were found to be linked in a school. Since the oldest Spencer child was tested after the parents, it's unknown whether the child gave the virus to the parents, or vice versa. But after discussions with public health nurses, and the inability to identify close contacts outside the household aside from their kids' classmates, the father is convinced his child contracted the virus from a cluster of school kids. "This is why we need more testing and more surveillance - because we have no idea who got it first," he said. "There's more evidence to sug- gest (it was in school) than some- thing else. So, that's why I want this to be taken seriously - because the next family might not do as well with COVID. Someone might get seriously sick. Someone might get hospitalized. Someone could die. It's scary to think about." Earlier this week, when pressed about how he can say with confi- dence school transmission is limited if so many cases cannot be traced to a source of infection, the province's top doctor said Manitoba has been following school populations "quite closely." Precautions were put in place to reduce transmission in schools and education stakeholders have been successful in following them, Roussin said. He added, "We do extensive con- tact tracing and follow those people who were in contact with that case while in school and we just don't see a lot of secondary transmission." Infectious disease experts and edu- cators have pointed out gaps in such logic, arguing it's impossible to know what's really happening in schools without targeted surveillance. Re- search suggests young students are more likely than older populations to be asymptomatic when infected. Since children generally have either mild symptoms or none at all, testing resources have been redirected elsewhere. That means researchers still don't fully under- stand how children can spread the virus, said Winnipeg epidemiologist Cynthia Carr. "In Manitoba, about one in four cases now, we don't know where that connection was, where the ex- posure was. So. is it perhaps a lack of knowledge in what's going on among our school-age population? I don't know," said Carr, founder of EPI Research Inc. Alongside an initiative to provide teachers with rapid testing in the new year, Carr said she'd like to see Manitoba follow Ontario's school surveillance lead and undertake pool testing in schools that are in neighbourhoods with high test positivity rates. Pool testing is effective in situa- tions where there is limited trans- mission. It requires combining bits of various patient samples into one vial to limit the number of tests required in a population. If a combined sample is positive, each individual sample is retested to find out who is positive. If it's negative, the entire group is negative. The Spencers also want data and an acknowledgement of the possibility of asymptomatic spread in schools. "I didn't think it would actually come to us, because you don't. It's always someone else," the father said. "But it happened and it ex- poses how there are too many weak- nesses in the system set in place to protect our kids." As of Thursday, the province had identified 1,901 cases related to K-12 schools in Manitoba. Students make up nearly three-quarters of the total case count. Twenty-three per cent of CO- VID-19 cases in Manitoba are asymptomatic, although testing has been skewed towards symptomatic patients for the majority of the pandemic. maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @macintoshmaggie "They'd much prefer us to be able to reopen safely as soon as possible. So we're continuing to make that our No. 1 priority, focus on getting those COVID numbers down as soon as possible to save lives and also, as a consequence, to help our small business community bounce back." The province is benefiting from reduced borrowing rates because it has $800 million in a rainy day fund, Pallister said. NDP finance critic Mark Wasyliw said the Progressive Conservative government is benefiting from "rock bottom" rates thanks to Ottawa and the Bank of Canada, while struggling Manitobans go bust. "They're sitting like Scrooge Mc- Duck on a bank account with a huge pile of money and they're refusing to spend it because of one man's ego and political legacy," Wasyliw said of Pallister, whose stated mission since becoming premier is to balance Mani- toba's books. "There are people who are los- ing their livelihood, who have built businesses from scratch, and they're seeing their dreams disappear on them overnight," through no fault of their own, the finance critic told reporters Thursday. "We said, 'You've got to shut down your business to keep your neigh- bour safe' and they said, 'I'll gladly do it'. Where is their government when they need it?" Fielding said Manitoba will spend $633 million more than pre-pandem- ic budgeted amounts on health care, including $522 million for personal protective equipment. Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said nearly 10 per cent of the prov- ince's PPE investment was unusable. "The Progressive Conservatives are currently being sued over $50 million in masks that could not be used, and they bought $1.2 million in recalled hand sanitizer made from fuel-grade ethanol," Lamont told reporters. Most of the province's promised pandemic spending isn't new; it comes from the federal government and pro- vincial programs that have been cut, said Lamont. The NDP's Wasyliw contends that much of it may never be spent or help the vulnerable Manitobans whom Fielding says they want to help. "People are getting evicted, have their rent going up by 30 per cent and hydro (rates) are going up by three per cent," Wasyliw said. The province has made cuts to social assistance, the civil service, schools and post-secondary institutions while introducing tax cuts that primarily help wealthy Manito- bans, the finance critic said. "When you make these cuts, you put people out of work... You go into a tail- spin and it makes it harder to pay your debts because there are fewer taxpay- ers and less money in the community." The fiscal update notes that at $2 bil- lion, Manitoba is still facing a record deficit. It warns that the fiscal year is not over and the impact of a possible "third wave" of COVID-19 infections is unknown. "There remains significant uncer- tainty in forecasting the remaining months, as Manitoba continues to real- ize the fiscal and economic impacts of the COVID-19 second wave and associated public health restrictions," the mid-year report said. The province's revenue decline is largely related to decreased projec- tions for income and other tax rev- enues, and decreased revenue from the Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries Corp., which has closed its casinos. Shutting down the casinos has cost the province about $40 million a month, Fielding said. It's uncertain when they will be able to reopen, along with the rest of the economy, even with the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines. "These forecasts remain speculative because the trajectory of the pandemic in Manitoba and beyond our borders remains uncertain," the fiscal update said. - with files from Katie May carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Finance Minister Scott Fielding (left, with Premier Brian Pallister) released the 2020-21 mid-year financial outlook Thursday with a projected deficit of just over $2 billion. Manitoba's fiscal update ? Real GDP to decline by 4.6 per cent in 2020, then rebound in 2021 by a projected 4.1 per cent. ? Manitoba's net debt is projected to reach $27.6 billion. ? The debt-to-GDP ratio is expected to be 38.7 per cent. ? Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio, meanwhile, is expected to increase to 49 per cent in 2020-21 from 31 per cent in 2019-20. - sources: Manitoba 2020/21 mid-year report; International Monetary Fund Fiscal Monitor, and Finance Canada. A_02_Dec-18-20_FP_01.indd A2 2020-12-17 8:43 PM ;