The Business Council of Manitoba

I met today with the President and CEO of the Business Council of Manitoba, Jim Carr (photo above). He is meeting with each of the political parties in Manitoba in the period before the provincial budget.

The Business Council of Manitoba has done some extensive analysis of the situation in Manitoba. Their analysis shows that Winnipeg, our capital city, has shown population growth of 5.9% since 1990. This is considerably less than Montreal (10.8%), Saskatoon (11.3%), Halifax (14.5%), Edmonton (19.8%), Ottawa (22.5%), Vancouver (34.8%) and Calgary (38.1%). Winnpeg's employment growth and GDP growth are also much less than all the other cities.

Manitoba's average weekly wage rate at $618.78, is lower than Saskatchewan ($634.26), Quebec ($652.58), British Columbia ($701.85), Ontario ($737.44) and Alberta ($741.84).

There is clearly a need to do better than Manitoba has done under either Conservative or NDP governments. That is why I believe we need a Liberal government in our province, and that is why, every day, I go to work determined to do what I can to change and improve things for Manitobans.