The Province of Manitoba offers the opportunity for Manitobans to send in ideas for each yearly provincial budget. This year, Make Poverty History Manitoba contributed to the 2019 Province of Manitoba budget consultation, Making Choices. Our vision is simple: a Manitoba without poverty. The recommendations in our coalition’s submission are rooted in the priorities of people with lived experience of poverty as well as those who work directly with them. We believe that the six ideas we’ve contributed, based on prioritization within the community, will contribute to greatly reducing poverty.
Recommendations:
- Develop and implement a comprehensive poverty reduction plan with targets and timelines for reducing poverty. It must be noted that the government is now almost two years late on introducing a renewed poverty reduction plan – contradicting both the law and their own campaign promise.
- Minimum Wage: Incrementally raise the minimum wage to a poverty line wage of $15.53 per hour.
- Social Housing: Build at least 300 net new social housing units annually for five years.
- Income Benefits: Introduce a new livable basic needs benefit to lift all Manitobans up to or above the poverty line.
- Child Care: Create at least 17,000 licensed and funded, non-profit childcare spaces with priority in low-income neighbourhoods.
- Mental Health: Double the funding allotted to community-based mental health services for low-income Manitobans beginning with an increase in mental health spending by 40 per cent over three years with priority given to community-based mental health services.
Read the entire budget submission here!