Will Wab Kinew’s budget burn us?

Premier Wab Kinew has been coyly and cleverly dancing around building new infrastructure in Hudson Bay so oil and gas guys can profit. The purported leaders suggesting we ship LNG out of Churchill are publicly sacrificing their values for a big oil pipe dream.

In Manitoba’s coming budget, we’ll see how far gone to the dark side our elected officials are.

Putting fossil fuel exports through Hudson Bay would be a catastrophe. We’re experiencing pain and horror around the world right now from reliance on big oil, and it’s sickening to see war as a rationale for increasing our fossil fuel addiction. Shipping fossil fuels seems to be the only thing CEOs and premiers in Alberta think about, but we don’t have to fall for the con.

Kinew having private conversations with Shell is supposed to be fine because they’re “just friends,” but everyone knows fossil fuels are a losing game that’s deadly to perpetuate.

Do we need to remind the premier that eight per cent of the forests in the province burnt just last year, and that those fires were caused by fossil fuel-powered climate catastrophe? People lost their lives and livelihoods.

The final tally on how much the fire cost Manitoba in property insurance, firefighting expenses, or healthcare expenses for people that were breathing toxic air for months is still not complete. But we do know that the only way to stop extreme fires like this is to act on climate.

It’s not just Alberta that’s pointing Kinew toward pipelines.

Prime Minister Mark Carney is driving climate change with his Build Canada Act and Major Projects Office. Federal dollars and resources are being funneled to destructive projects such as LNG Canada outside Kitimat, B.C. Every premier in Canada is competing to get a development listed in the Major Projects Office so they can funnel money to their province or territory. The Port of Churchill is part of this conversation.

Prime Minister Carney is disregarding the climate action that he says he wants the world to adhere to.

Instead he’s pushing climate-wrecking fossil fuel expansion, and these are the purse strings that Premier Kinew is reaching for. Yet Carney’s colleagues at the World Economic Forum just published their Annual Global Risks Report, which again says the biggest economic threat in the next 10 years is climate change. He knows better.

The folks in Churchill will suffer twice for this preposterous project.

The climate crisis will affect their lives on the land and their tourism operations, but they will also have the health impacts and mental stress of living beside a gigantic industrial site. LNG facilities are massive, with a footprint bigger than a kilometre long in even the smallest plants being built right now. The noise, light pollution and toxic gas flares from the facility will forever change the tundra around town.

We’ll keep hearing jobs rhetoric from the premier regarding expanding Churchill.

Yet we know, like all industries relying on finite resources, an LNG facility will only create jobs until either the reserve is extinguished or the climate crisis makes the industry untenable. However, improving operations of the Port of Churchill for the economic benefit of the town and Indigenous communities instead makes more sense.

Using federal and provincial money on assisted living facilities and long-term care for northerners would create meaningful jobs in the community. The export of LNG has driven up natural gas prices for domestic consumers in other places by as much as two and three times, making life even more unaffordable. Affordable housing is already an issue in the North, and everywhere, so how will hundreds of construction workers in town for a few years add to that financial hardship?

What we haven’t seen whatsoever from the premier is the necessary funding for nature protection and climate action. In 2007, when we started tracking funding, the Conservation branch was 1.3 per cent of government expenditures. In 2025, Manitoba only spent 0.88 per cent of its budget on climate action and nature. We’re not funding the climate action needed and building out a big oil project will burn us even more.

We are going into budget season in Manitoba and we cannot accept line items for big oil exports out of Churchill and Hudson Bay. We need to see funding for environment and climate action, to the tune of 1.5 per cent of expenditures.

You may be an elected official or even a premier, but if you’re ramping up fossil fuel infrastructure in the year 2026, you’re not a leader.

Isabel Siu-Zmuidzinas is the climate campaigner and Eric Reder is the wilderness and water campaigner for the Wilderness Committee.