Greg Selinger

0:03Premier, thank you so much for doing this. No problem. So my first question is, what leads someone to politics? Because it's not a financial reward business. You do it for the love of, I guess, helping. Community service. I think anybody that, well, in my case, you go in because you see that you can make a difference. You see there's things that have to be addressed, whether it's education for Northern Manitoba's and Sanad original people, whether it's creating opportunities for young people to get an education and get jobs in cities, whether it's growing the economy so that everybody can be better off, whether it's developing your green energy resources in case of Manitoba, which is primarily hydroelectricity and wind power and geothermal. It's the opportunity to build a better community so that the next generation can have a decent quality of life. Is it that something you think of now as a child?

0:50What led you to this? I mean, I'm sure it wasn't the green initiative in hydro. You don't need to get a lot of sense. No, I think when you're a kid, I think you just find that what's interesting about politics is the leadership that you see the people that are role models for you and why they inspire you, whether it's a Tommy Douglas in Saskatchewan, a near kid or an Ed Shrier in Manitoba, somebody that sort of says to you, well, that guy seems to be doing something that's worthwhile and I'm attracted to that. So it pulls your interest in when you see things happening and you see the people behind making those things happen. Is that what led you to NDP Tommy Douglas, I try? Yeah, yeah. I mean, what led me into it was just my concern that government has to be for the people, not just some people, but for all the people. And the NDP in my view expressed those values properly that they found tried to find the right balance

1:37between growing an economy and making sure everybody could have a participate in that economy and making sure that people had a chance to have a decent life. And so that's still very much the motivation for me. Do you think any people ever win a federal election? It works very well here in Saskatchewan, but it doesn't seem to. And it might be because the left is split off into three factions and the votes are kind of split that way. Do you ever see that? You know, historically they came very close just after the Second World War, but let's not get ourselves the liberals and the NDP have always competed on the same turf for in terms of policies. And from time to time, they've influenced each other and their ideas. It would depend. It would depend on the circumstances and conditions. One thing we know about politics, conditions can change very rapidly. So you should never say never.

2:24You know, the NDP federally has always made a very strong contribution in terms of protecting people's pensions, dancing the interests of people that are unemployed, making sure that there's a perspective of social justice in Parliament. So they've played a very important role in acting as what many have called the conscience of Parliament to make sure the Parliament pays attention to everybody. Okay, attention to everyone is funny because Manitoba's the only legislature that's a horseshoe shaped almost. And I guess that's the most civility between members, but you watch question period at the federal level, and it's just like children fighting all the time. It's not a huge amount different in any legislature than I'm aware of. Legislatures are not exactly the place where people show their best behavior. They tend to be sort of a combat zone. And I'm not sure that we do set the best example. We have to keep working on that,

3:09but things do heat up and the passion, the passion is what drives politics. And a lot of that gets expressed in the legislature. Do you think it's become too confrontational in that regard? It can, it can. It can get to the point where things get too black and white and people nuances of what makes things work properly. I think people forget that most bills and initiatives that are brought forward by a government are usually, over 90% of them are usually acceptable to everybody, including the opposition parties. And what you're fighting about are things on the margin. And so that's often forgotten that the overwhelming bulk of things that get done, there's broad consensus that supports it among all the political groups. But people have a big fights on the margins, and the margins are what move you forward in certain directions or not. Did you expect to be where you are right now, or ago? Did you know this was all happening? No, I didn't.

3:55No, I knew there was a, I know I did not know that it would be happening this quickly. I knew that eventually there would be a transition, but it came suddenly. And we rolled with that. And as it turned out, there was a leadership race, and I was fortunate enough to win that race with a good bulk of the delegates at the selection process of over 60% of them. And so it offered me the opportunity to try this rollout and move Manitoba forward, which is what we're doing. And move it how, what are you goals for problems? Well, very clearly we've wanted to have a very positive program to move us out of this recession, and that has included protecting our frontline services, whether it's health or education or services to children and families infrastructure. We wanted to do that by stimulating the economy. So we have a program, a major stimulus program, which will generate 29,000 jobs and build assets like schools

4:43and hospitals and roads and things like stadiums. All of those things will be things that will make us a stronger community. We wanted to do that while keeping Manitoba an affordable place to live. And we're in the top three for affordability. And we wanted to do that by being fiscally responsible, even though we've entered a period where government is spending more than it's taking in in the short run. We have a program to rebalance within five years and pay down a historic level of debt during that period of time. And so all of these things are part of an overall program to move the province forward and not drag us back into a situation where we're cutting key services and seeing the economy stagnate. So it's a positive program. I was talking to some people here and they were wondering how you plan to keep the youth in Manitoba. Well, we are retaining our youth.

5:28One of the things we're doing is we're keeping education opportunities affordable. We have a very dynamic cultural sector, music sector, theater sector, creative arts sector, our new media sector, for example, is one of the best in the country. We have very good programs and tax credits to support that, our film sector. But we spend the second highest per capita on cultural programs of any province in Canada. And that generates a lot of creative talent in this province. A lot of people have the opportunity to put together a music or an album or a CD or a film or put a performance together, right of play, to get involved in the theater. All of those opportunities are not just fringe opportunities. They're a source of the economy, whether it's the Folk Festival, whether it's the Jazz Festival, whether it's the Fringe Festival, all of those things.

6:13Generate economic activity, give people creative outlets and make Manitoba an exciting place to live. I'd be remiss to ask if I didn't, is there any plans or are you trying to get a hockey team back here? Look, that's always a possibility. We have a lot of the right elements that would support that. If the opportunity became available, we have a new arena, a new hockey, a new arena for hockey. It's a 15,000 person facility right downtown. It's one of the most used facilities in North America for concerts and other activities. We have really good owners of the Manitoba moose that have a solid reputation for running a hockey team. So if the opportunity came up, Manitoba would have an opportunity to move on that. I know you have a cabinet meeting coming up shortly, but go through a day-to-day process for you.

6:59What is the job entail that you didn't expect it to entail? Well, I don't think it's hugely surprising. You have to deal with the issues of the day. And we usually meet early in the day and figure out how we're going to tackle those issues and make sure that we're moving constructively to deal with them. And then we have our ongoing program of work. And the cabinet's part of that, Treasury Board's part of that, our Community Economic Development Committee of Cabinet works on a variety of issues. Our healthy child community works away on making sure children and families get a good start in Manitoba. And so we have my schedule every day involves moving the agenda forward that we've articulated from the public in our throne speeches and in our budgets and in our election platform. And you do that by working with various sectors of the community to make things happen. What's surprising the most about the job?

7:45Again, not a huge amount of surprises because I've been at it for over a decade now. But there are always more demands and there are resources. And the challenge is to sort of manage those in a way that's realistic and make sure you have clear focus and priorities. Thank you. Thank you.