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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tManitoba Lt.-Gov. Anita Neville delivers the Speech from the Throne, at the Manitoba Legislative Building in Winnipeg, Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS\/David Lipnowski<\/p>\n
At play is the government\u2019s plan to eliminate the provincial sales tax from more food items as of July 1, announced in the March budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Debate has erupted inside the chamber over whether a tax cut can take effect before the accompanying bill is passed into law.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s often done, but it\u2019s a little bit constitutionally murky whether an announced measure that\u2019s introduced into the legislative assembly but not yet passed, whether the executive branch should be collecting that yet,\u201d said Bryan Schwartz, a law professor at the University of Manitoba.<\/p>\n
Basic groceries including bread, meat, milk and produce are already tax-exempt. The government\u2019s change would extend the exemption to prepared meals, snacks and soft drinks, saving an average family of four roughly $100 a year, government estimates say.<\/p>\n
The government introduced an omnibus bill to enact the change, along with many other budget measures, on May 7. It has demanded the Opposition agree to let the bill go to a final vote before the legislature\u2019s summer break begins June 1.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If the bill doesn\u2019t pass by then, the tax cut would have to be delayed and the Tories would be to blame, the government has said.<\/p>\n
The Tories, however, have said governments have the authority to enact tax changes before a required bill becomes law.<\/p>\n
The Tories have raised the possibility of not allowing the budget bill to pass by summer, in hopes of pressuring the government to also provide income tax cuts that would save families more money. They have said the NDP could enact their food-tax cut as planned while also looking at further tax relief.<\/p>\n
The Tories appear to have several precedents on their side. Previous Manitoba governments have raised fuel and tobacco taxes before the accompanying bills were passed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 2013, Manitoba\u2019s sales tax was raised in July, and the accompanying bill was passed five months later.<\/p>\n
Federally, the current Liberal government temporarily suspended its excise tax on fuel in April, before the accompanying bill was introduced in Parliament.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe premier can reduce the \u2026 tax if he wants to,\u201d Tory Leader Obby Khan told reporters last week.<\/p>\n
The government, however, produced a memorandum written this month by a lawyer in its legislative counsel division.<\/p>\n
The memo says there\u2019s parliamentary convention to support consumption tax increases before the accompanying bill is passed. Because if the bill is defeated, people can seek refunds.<\/p>\n
A tax decrease, however, is different. If the bill is never passed into law, retailers have no way to retroactively collect the tax from consumers.<\/p>\n
The six-paragraph memo initially contained a typographical error \u2014 the missing word \u201cnot\u201d \u2014 resulting in some confusion. A request to interview the author was not granted.<\/p>\n
The memo has been criticized by the Tories for not citing laws or precedents for its reasoning.<\/p>\n
But Premier Wab Kinew has said its legal opinion is solid.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tax on your groceries will not go down unless this bill passes the house before the house rises this summer. So the (Progressive Conservatives) need to get out of the way and let the bill pass,\u201d Kinew said last week.<\/p>\n
The NDP used the legislative standoff in a fundraising email sent to supporters Friday asking for money to help the party fight Opposition \u201cobstruction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul Thomas, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Manitoba, said there\u2019s a \u201crushed\u201d look to the government\u2019s memo. Thomas stressed he\u2019s not a lawyer but has seen many tax changes happen before bills are passed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are so many precedents supporting backdating tax changes that it would require some novel precedent or court ruling to claim that a tax reduction could not be implemented before approval by the legislature,\u201d Thomas said.<\/p>\n
Schwartz said he couldn\u2019t comment on the conclusion of the government\u2019s memo but having a distinction between a tax increase and tax decrease seems reasonable.<\/p>\n
Michael Lukyniuk, a former principal clerk for the House of Commons, wrote in the Canadian Parliamentary Review in 2011 that enacting tax changes before bills are passed isn\u2019t supported by any statutory authority. He said it\u2019s a long-standing convention commonly used in budgets.<\/p>\n
The bill that enacts Manitoba\u2019s planned tax cut is bound to pass by November at the latest, given the NDP government\u2019s majority in the legislature.<\/p>\n
Kinew has threatened to keep the legislature sitting into the summer, if need be, in order to pass the bill sooner.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 18, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WINNIPEG \u2013 Manitoba\u2019s governing NDP and Opposition Progressive Conservatives are at odds over who will be to blame…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677503,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-677502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}