Politicians were fighting for farmers’ hearts and votes in the first full week of Manitoba’s provincial election campaign, with all three main parties insisting they offer the best hope for a brighter agricultural future.
The Progressive Conservatives and the Liberals have been promising to cut farmers’ education taxes. The Tories are trying to shore up their strong rural base while the Liberals are trying to establish a hold outside Winnipeg.
The NDP has not made big promises, but so far has pointed to its record in government and to the ethanol legislation
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it recently introduced.
It has also been critical of the two other parties, describing their tax cut promises as irresponsible, unrealistic and desperate.
OAK BLUFF, Man. – When Progressive Conservative leader Stuart Murray stood in a farmer’s yard to lay out the details of his education tax cut, he hadn’t even left the city limits of Winnipeg.
Even though the location was probably chosen to ensure Winnipeg media would cover the event, it was symbolic of how the Tories are trying to build a bridge between rural and urban taxpayers.
“We want to make sure that we keep our country vote strong, but this is also about all residences across Manitoba,” said Tory MLA and candidate Larry Maguire about his leader’s tax promises.
Murray said if the PCs are elected, all education taxes will be removed from farmland and residential property tax. Commercial buildings will still be taxed.
The net cost, according to the Tories, is $223 million. The NDP claims the Tory promise would cost $287 million.
Farmers would save about $40 million, Maguire said.
Murray said the cuts might not cost anything because “tax cuts pay for themselves.”
But he also said the tax cut is designed to treat homeowners, and especially farmers, fairly. That isn’t the case now, he said.
“The health of family farms like this is essential to the overall health of the provincial economy,” said Murray.
“The agricultural sector operates in an extremely competitive environment.”
Maguire said the education tax cut is the highest profile promise his party is making to farmers, but it will also hammer away at the ruling NDP by attacking its behaviour on the agricultural policy framework, the proposed federal five-year plan for agriculture.
“They signed it but didn’t put any money into it,” said Maguire. “There’s a broken promise to begin with.”
The Tories are traditionally strong in rural Manitoba and would like to hold those seats and take away the NDP’s rural seats in the Dauphin-Swan River area.
“We aren’t taking any of those seats for granted,” Maguire said.
But to win the election they also need to win in Winnipeg.
Maguire said the party’s campaign will try to highlight issues such as property taxes that make both urban and rural people fume.
