Manitoba has a larger public sector than most other Canadian provinces, and unfortunately private sector growth has not kept pace. In fact, the number of self-employed Manitobans has actually shrunk between 2015 and 2023.
The public service gobbles increasingly more of taxpayer dollars, prompting deficit spending. Manitoba has a larger public sector than most other Canadian provinces, and unfortunately private sector growth has not kept pace. In fact, the number of self-employed Manitobans has shrunk between 2015 and 2023. The budgets that burden taxpayers and generations yet unborn.
It is imperative for policy makers in Manitoba to shrink the public sector and, at the same time, facilitate the expansion of the private sector. It is obvious that this is not sustainable over the long term. Author William Gairdner has noted that when social welfare recipients and government employees outnumber private sector working people, democracy struggles to constrain the interests of the majority who burden the minority. He compares it to a sheep before two wolves.
Read the full report (14 pages): FB132_MBPublicSector_OC0623_F2
Lee Harding is a Research Fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
