Truth is the first casualty of an election campaign

Opinion

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This article was published 23/08/2023 (392 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“If you tell a lie once, all your truths will become questionable.”

Even though nobody knows who came up with this quote, it should be required reading for all political parties during an election campaign. It should be emblazoned on coffee cups in the war rooms, screened onto T-shirts worn by volunteers. Heck, it should be tattooed on the forearms of all campaign directors.

Lamentably, not only will none of that happen, most of the people who direct campaigns won’t even pause long enough to contemplate the adage’s deep and not-so-hidden meaning.

They’ll all be too busy lying.

Case in point: this week, during yet another day in the unofficial election campaign that has descended on Manitoba, the NDP promised to keep Manitoba Hydro publicly owned. If you were unaware that continued public ownership of Hydro was a campaign issue, you are not alone.

It’s not really an issue.

However, for what seems like forever, the NDP has accused the Progressive Conservatives of a secret plan to privatize Manitoba Hydro. The Progressive Conservatives have strenuously denied they have any plan to sell the province’s most valuable Crown asset.

Given that no Tory has promised — or even suggested — such a plan, the allegation is a pure lie. In fact, given the value it has to the economy and provincial treasury, it would be insane for any government to even wonder aloud about a sale.

The worst part is the NDP knows it’s a lie, but continues to use it in a shameless bid to conjure the misty ghosts of the 1996 decision by the Tories to sell Crown-owned Manitoba Telephone System (now Bell MTS). It is ancient political history, but the MTS sale still causes many core New Democrats to seethe.

Why keep hammering away at this lie?

There is no denying that, in previous elections, the lie has successfully undermined confidence in the PC party. That’s why NDP Leader Wab Kinew stood behind a lectern Tuesday and promised to keep Manitoba Hydro public with that “over my dead body” bravado politicians love to summon.

Not that he needed it, but Kinew had another motivation in the form of a counter-allegation from Premier Heather Stefanson that is, also, a bald-faced lie.

Starting earlier this year, Stefanson has accused the NDP of harbouring a secret plan to jack the provincial sales tax to 10 per cent to pay for its election promises. The NDP has made no such pledge and — given the vagaries of election accounting — it’s unlikely the party will bring forth any plan that cannot be theoretically paid for out of existing revenue.

And yet, Stefanson uses almost every public appearance in the pre-writ period to give this whopper another spin.

The Tories will say — much like the NDP says about Hydro — that former NDP premier Greg Selinger did bump the PST by one percentage point in 2013 to fund infrastructure, after promising he would do no such thing just one year earlier. The ‘they’ve done it once, they’ll do it again’ approach to levelling allegations may be pure cow dung, but during an election, it smells like freshly baked cookies.

In a way, it’s too bad Kinew led with the lie. There is so much more that could, and should, be said about the Tories and Hydro.

For instance, how the PC government undermined the independent regulatory role of the Public Utilities Board, and politically manipulated electricity prices to the detriment of Hydro customers.

The NDP highlighted concerns about future surge pricing, and correctly noted electricity rates have gone up by 20 per cent since the Tories came to power in 2016. The Tories will argue the higher rates are due to NDP mismanagement of dam and transmission line projects. However, while capital cost overruns did play a role, political manipulation has had an arguably bigger impact on rates.

Against howls from consumer advocates and big industrial power users, the Tories passed legislation that forced Hydro to amass much larger cash reserves than any knowledgeable source believes it really needs. The Tories claim this is to pay down NDP-created debt; intervenors at the PUB argue it’s really a cynical plan to fatten the provincial treasury to make the summary budget — which includes balance sheets for all Crown entities — look better than it would otherwise.

The evidence is clear: the Tories have messed with Hydro, and Manitobans are paying more now than they really should be paying. Unfortunately, that narrative is not at the tip of the NDP spear.

Instead, Kinew is railing on about privatizing Hydro and — wait for it — freezing Hydro rates. A freeze may be warranted, but surely the PUB is the place to determine that.

After seven years of watching the Tory cabinet manipulate electricity prices, the last thing we need is a new government that promises to politically manipulate electricity prices. Not surprisingly, the Consumers’ Association of Canada, a frequent and influential intervenor in PUB rate hearings, denounced the NDP plan on Tuesday.

Manitobans definitely need a new and more accountable approach to managing Hydro. What they don’t need is one party trying to out manipulate the other when it comes to electricity rates.

» Dan Lett is a Winnipeg Free Press columnist.

» This column was previously published in the Winnipeg Free Press.