It’s well-known that in high-concept theatrical magic, magicians often rely on misdirection to maintain illusions.
It’s a diabolically simple technique: direct your attention to one action, drawing away from the fact they’re actually doing something completely different.
The same approach can be applied to things such as governing. Governments frequently manage announcements and public events to draw the attention of their citizens and distract you from what else they are really up to.
All of which is to say, after seven years in power, we can with some certainty Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative government is a frequent practitioner of the dark art of misdirection.
As is the case with any government fighting for its very survival, the Tories are making all kinds of announcements, and uttering all sorts of claims, in the hope they can somehow win re-election this year.
The early reviews have not been positive.
Governments frequently manage announcements and public events to draw the attention of their citizens and distract you from what else they are really up to.
A torrent of announcements and pledges that attempt to fix the health-care system have either backfired or failed to excite voters. Similar efforts to shore up public education have largely failed to impress.
However, they have one card left to play in a desperate attempt to snatch victory from what appears to be likely defeat: tax cuts.
The most recent budget tabled by the PC government contains nearly $1 billion in tax expenditures, including big bites out of income tax and education property tax. All this on top of years of a previous one-point cut to the PST.
The heavy reliance on tax cuts as its major selling point could also be seen at the recent PC annual general meeting.
“Manitobans deserve to keep more of their hard-earned money, because we know that Manitobans know best how to spend their money, not government,” Premier Heather Stefanson told party members.
Get ready for the misdirection.
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES
While the Tories and Premier Heather Stefanson have been thundering on about returning hard-earned money via tax cuts, they have been clawing back hundreds of millions of dollars through higher-than-necessary increases in hydro and automobile insurance rates.
Unfortunately for the Manitobans the premier referenced, while the Tories have thundering on about returning hard-earned money via tax cuts, they have been clawing back hundreds of millions of dollars through higher-than-necessary increases in hydro and automobile insurance rates.
The cost of electricity from Manitoba Hydro and Autopac coverage from Manitoba Public Insurance are supposed to be determined by an objective analysis of the finances at both Crown monopolies, a process overseen and regulated by the Public Utilities Board.
It’s a system that has worked exceedingly well for consumers.
However, in the past few years, the Tories have weakened the role of the PUB and manipulated the way both Hydro and MPI do business — all to allow both Crowns to retain significantly more money than they need or spend it on things they shouldn’t.
Consider Hydro, which recently asked the PUB to approve a four per cent increase to basic electricity rates over the next year that will add nearly $100 million in additional revenue to its reserves at a time it is earning record revenues fuelled by historically lucrative export sales.
RUTH BONNEVILLE / FREE PRESS FILES
Hydro recently asked the PUB to approve a four per cent increase to basic electricity rates over the next year that will add nearly $100 million in additional revenue to its reserves at a time it is earning record revenues fuelled by historically lucrative export sales.
Why is Hydro doing this?
The PC government ignored the experts and passed Bill 36, forcing the Crown utility to amass much higher equity (cash) reserves than previously required.
Why would government insist on the higher targets?
After giving away more than $1 billion in tax cuts, the Tories are trying to protect their weakened treasury by pumping in more cash from Hydro reserve accounts, which helps shore up the summary budget balance.
In short, they’re using Hydro rate increases to shrink the size of the deficit and obscure the impact of the tax cuts.
A similar sleight of hand is going on at MPI, where the government allowed the Crown auto insurer to take $113 million in Autopac revenues to cover the costs of a massively over-budget IT project and operating costs for Driver and Vehicle Licensing.
In short, they’re using Hydro rate increases to shrink the size of the deficit and obscure the impact of the tax cuts.
MPI administers DVL on behalf of the government, which is supposed to transfer money it collects from driver’s licence and vehicle renewals and registrations to cover all costs.
However, since 2016, the Tories have not given MPI enough to cover those costs, even though, in 2021, government collected $212 million from DVL — more than enough to cover the cost of the IT upgrades and driver and vehicle licensing.
But if the Tories did that, then all that easy money from driver’s licence and vehicle insurance renewals wouldn’t be available to fatten up general revenues and shrink the deficit.
The Tories must know, as a political strategy, misdirection has its limits. As is the case in magic, once somebody realizes sleight of hand is involved, there’s no illusion left.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
