By Cam Scott
On September 25, the Manitoba NDP launched their new Economic Development Strategy, pledging to make Manitoba a “have” province by 2040 and to “foster a business climate that is conducive to productivity growth.”
Launched before industry and business lobbyists, the forty-page report appears to harmonize the province’s development plan with federal designs on free trade, all without a single mention of climate change.
The cornerstone of this strategy is a new $50 million loan program, marked for businesses that invest in new technology. In language and aspiration, the strategy closely resembles the boosterist, pro-business verve of recent deregulatory legislation from neighbouring provinces – “unleashing private capital” by way of tax breaks and credit. Not only does this strategy propose to generously subsidize private stakeholders, but it earmarks these injected funds for new technology rather than for personnel, simply presuming higher wages and job creation to flow from this investment.
While this plan is bolstered by proposals for continuous re-training of the workforce to “tariff-proof” the provincial economy, any strategy based in greatly increasing capital intensity is sure to short labour. As the authors themselves explain, nearly rediscovering Marx: “We become more productive when we work smarter and get things done more efficiently. For example, by using the latest machinery and software, not by working more hours or working harder. In fact, when we work more hours to create the same value, we’re less productive, not more.”
Simply put, the more that a firm invests in technology or material, the less it necessarily invests in labour. Moreover, the law of capitalist accumulation shows that this approach is sure to maintain and grow a contractible “reserve army” of the un- and intermittently employed. One might even suggest that the strategy’s emphasis on flexibility and constant retraining of the workforce – framed as “resilience” – anticipates this generalized precarity. And where this same strategy recommends an investor-based immigration system, it’s certain that this wage-suppressive reserve will continue to exploit and scapegoat migrants of all skill levels.
None of this is surprising to see in a capitalist development plan, but it’s strange that such a document would sketch the system from such a rudimentary level. Regardless, as the Manitoba NDP proposes to address lagging productivity by typically competitive means, it’s difficult to imagine how otherwise welcome proposals of industry education, a new apprenticeship system, and other positive commitments to job creation could meaningfully alter business as usual.
The larger goal of this proposal is to wean Manitoba off federal transfers, which right-wing commentators continue to portray as a bursary from western oil fields, administered from Ottawa. Under present conditions and according to plan, this will require the activation of Manitoba as an open pit for extractive enterprises. As one expects, mining, quarrying and oil production are central to this proposal.
In conjunction with aggressive resource extraction, the strategy places a great deal of emphasis on Manitoba’s strategic location for resource export, noting the importance of the Hudson Bay. The Port of Churchill was named earlier this month by the federal government as one of its first referrals to the Major Projects Office, and the provincial plan builds out from here. As the strategy notes, the Port is the shortest marine route from western Canada to Europe, and shipments are expected to greatly expand alongside investments in defence and critical resource extraction.
Here and throughout the document, there is a great deal of geopolitical speculation left to subtext. While the strategy notes aggressive competition within global value chains and clearly means to supplement uncertain trade relationships with the United States, its development goals should still be placed alongside last year’s Critical Minerals Strategy, which was significantly purposed at military applications in continental markets.
To speak of mining and its environmental impact, this economic strategy omits any mention of climate change, outside a passing note on leveraging Manitoba Hydro. Either from political dissociation or for the sake of damage control, the NDP waited two weeks to publish their separate climate plan, Manitoba’s Path to Net Zero, which nonetheless envisions leveraging Indigenous participation and diverse energy sources for investment. Here too, the plan seems thin on practical goals for implementation – high-level to the point of seeming merely aspirational, and clouded by consultant speak.
All told, the Kinew government’s Economic Strategy is ominously vague, with very little pledged concretely outside of a sizable transfer to private business. Between commercial language and vague signposting of outcomes, it contains almost no news for working people. As wages continue to stagnate and rents soar, all one reads here is a dubious repeat assertion that with streamlining and training, workers will see “tangible gains, driven by higher productivity.”
This is nothing to write home about, and less still to count on. But at least there aren’t any promises to break.
[Photo: Manitoba Chambers of Commerce]
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