The Manitoba government has increased the debt by 61 per cent over the past decade and the government is increasing the debt by another $2.2 billion this year.

Premier Wab Kinew needs to immediately change course, cut spending and start to pay back Manitoba’s mountain of debt.

Every Manitoban’s per capita share of the provincial debt will be about $24, 831 by the end of the year.

That’s unsustainable and taxpayers can’t afford it.

Finance Minister Adrien Sala says he is still committed to balancing the budget in the year 2027.

That’s a good goal, but it’s like planning to be fit as a fiddle one year from now. To make that happen, one needs to eat right and exercise starting now.

That means the government needs to start controlling spending now to achieve that goal.

The Manitoba government has only balanced the budget twice since 2015. The government can’t keep wasting billions of dollars every year on debt interest payments. Interest is continuing to eat a bigger and bigger chunk of the provincial budget and it’s a waste.

The government has wasted almost $18 billion on debt interest payments since 2016. That’s enough money to build Princess Auto Stadium and then burn it down and rebuild it again another 85 times.

Debt interest payments cost about 21 per cent of what the government collects in taxes every year. That means for every dollar you pay to the provincial government, almost a quarter isn’t used for building roads or fixing hospitals, it’s set on fire to pay for the government’s poor fiscal decisions and reckless borrowing.

The government wastes more on debt interest than it collects in education property taxes, the health and education tax, corporation taxes, fuel taxes and the land transfer tax combined.

This year, the government is wasting $2.3 billion on debt interest payments. That’s about $1,550 per person and the second highest in the country.

But if the government keeps racking up debt and wasting hundreds of millions of dollars a year on interest payments, the government will likely try hiking taxes to keep up with its spending habits.

Taxpayers have already seen the start of that in the last budget when the government hiked income taxes through bracket creep.  Bracket creep is a stealth tax hike that happens when the government stops indexing income tax brackets to inflation. That means when Manitobans receive a cost-of-living raise, they can be pushed into a new tax bracket and get a higher tax bill despite not being able to afford anything extra.

This bracket creep tax hike is expected to cost taxpayers $82 million this year. But that cost is going to compound every year and cost taxpayers more because of inflation.

If the government keeps racking up debt and wasting billions of dollars a year on interest payments, there’s a real risk the government will continue to raise taxes on Manitobans.

But it’s clear that more tax hikes won’t fix the government’s problem. A Manitoba family making $75,000 a year already pays more in provincial taxes than a similar family anywhere else in Western Canada.

The government needs to cut up the taxpayer credit card to deliver for taxpayers. The Manitoba NDP’s election platform it said they would only increase spending by $522 million this year. At budget time, the government blew through that promise and increased spending by more than $1.3 billion.

And the government has kept overspending. The latest fiscal update shows the government has spent an additional $129 million over its already inflated spending plans.

Taxpayers can’t afford more debt and they certainly can’t afford higher taxes. Kinew and Sala need to come up with a plan that controls spending and starts to pay down Manitoba’s monstrous debt.