Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston just showed every premier in Canada how easy it can be to cut waste.

That’s because Houston just cut the province’s Publishers Assistance Fund that handed out about $700,000 a year to publishing houses.

It’s a clear waste of money to force taxpayers to hand money to businesses that should stand on their own two feet.

Trimming this one program won’t solve Nova Scotia’s budget problems overnight, but it shows that the government is at least willing to look for waste.

Houston showed respect for taxpayers by cancelling the subsidy program. He recognized that government should focus on core services instead of funding ideological projects.

That’s not the case in Manitoba. The government is still giving its own taxpayer-funded handout to publishers.

And it’s clear that these programs are wasteful.

Fernwood Publishing received $135,000 from Nova Scotia’s program in 2024. This Halifax- and Winnipeg-based company describes itself as “politically driven, not profit driven.” The publisher says this approach allows it to “take risks in publishing radical analysis” to “engage with radical ideas and contribute to structural change.”

Now that may be its choice, but if a business is explicitly “not profit driven,” taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for that bad business plan.

Recent titles include Red Flags: A Reckoning with Communism for the Future of the Left, which describes itself as exploring the “alternative to capitalism.” Despite the handouts, the book currently ranks No. 396 in “Communist & Socialist Ideologies” and has just one review on Amazon.ca.

Other titles published by Fernwood include I’ll Get Right On it, which is a collection of poems about “working life in the climate crisis” and Openings and Closures: Socialist Strategy at a Crossroads, focusing on what actions socialists should take in 2025.

Under Manitoba’s Publisher Marketing Assistance Program, Fernwood Publishing has received more than $86,000 since 2020. In total, Manitoba spends about $114,000 a year on handouts to book publishers for marketing

Fernwood also received $306,900 from the federal government between 2020 and 2024.

That means Manitoba taxpayers were forced to bankroll books with a political agenda. That’s wrong. Government should not force taxpayers to pay for projects they may fundamentally oppose. And Manitoba can’t afford it.

Think about it this way: imagine a family struggling to pay the grocery bill. The mortgage payment is due. The kids need new skates for hockey. That family would never take money from the grocery budget to sponsor a political book project.

The Manitoba government is that struggling family. It has increased the provincial debt by more than 64 per cent since 2016. During that time, the government wasted about $18 billion on debt interest payments.

In fact, the debt has ballooned so much that almost a tenth of the provincial budget is spent on debt interest payments. Debt interest is the government’s third-largest expense.

And Kinew hasn’t done anything to find savings for taxpayers. In fact, the government is also spending about $311 million more than it said it would at budget time last year.

Cutting waste is the right place to start. If the government isn’t worried about how much it’s wasting on the small stuff, how can it tackle the big structural problems in the budget?

Houston understood this. He pulled the plug on a program that wasted tax dollars.

Now Kinew should show the same leadership.

“I think part of what we want to do as a province is to be fiscally responsible,” said Kinew. To start to be fiscally responsible, he needs to trim the fat in Manitoba’s budget.

Cut the publisher subsidy program. Save taxpayers money. Let publishers succeed or fail on their own merits.

Premier Tim Houston showed that politicians can cut waste and respect taxpayers. Now Premier Wab Kinew should follow his lead and end these publisher handouts.