With this budget, the NDP has maintained a long-standing right-wing trajectory by increasing funding to policing at the expense of things that actually keep people safe. The “justice” budget is a shameful expansion of criminalization that regardless of the government’s supposedly progressive bluster will result in even more Indigenous people being policed, jailed, and criminalized.
Greater numbers of police will not improve public safety and will further destabilize the lives of people targeted by police for surveillance, intimidation, harassment, and formal criminalization. The Manitoba NDP’s public safety strategy does not take into account the fact that the same people who are most vulnerable to violence are also most vulnerable to criminalization.