Manitoba throne speech a setup for election: opposition

With Manitoba's legislature set toopen Wednesday, opposition politicians say Gary Doer's NDP government is using the new session to test whether tocall a spring election.

Lt.-Gov. John Harvard will read the throne speech to open the fifth session of the 38th Manitoba legislature at about 1:30 p.m. local time Wednesday.

Hugh McFadyen, the Tory Oppositionleader,said a number of funding announcements that the government has made in recent months seem to add up to election promises.

The announcementsand when they were made include:

• $300 million over two years for Manitoba highways (Sept. 25).
• $50 million over two years to fix Winnipeg streets (Sept. 26).
• $42 million to improve the child welfare system, including $6.1 millionfor foster parents (October).
• $11 million in annual provincial tax relief for pensioners (Nov. 1).
• $7 million to cover intra-facility ambulance fees for rural Manitobans (Tuesday).

The new session will run three weeks before adjourning for the holidays.

The province hinted on Tuesday that it is looking into the idea of offering tuition rebates to post-secondary students.

"It is a whack of dough, and to go seven years of saying, 'Oh, we've got no money for infrastructure, we've got no money for post-secondary education,' and then to suddenly come out with about half a billion dollars in new spending on the eve of an election campaign, I think just makes people cynical," McFadyen said.

Liberal Leader Jon Gerrard accused the NDP of trying to spend its way back into office in the event of an election call in the new year.

"This has been a terrible year for the NDP, [with] huge problems with highways, and health care, and child and family services," Gerrard said."Their reaction has been to throw millions of dollars here, there and everywhere to try and provide the illusion that they're actually doing something.

"They don't have the credibiltiy that they did seven years ago, and we're quite skeptical about this kind of 'throwing money at something to solve it' approach."

Doer's NDP government has been in power for two terms since 1999.