View From the Legislature

It’s been almost two years since I first raised the issue with the NDP government of criminals with outstanding arrest warrants collecting welfare dollars. This came about as a result of a discovery that many of the thousands of individuals in Manitoba with outstanding warrants simply ignore those warrants and collect taxdollars through welfare, essentially getting paid to avoid the law.

Outstanding warrants can be for a variety of things such as failure to appear in court or an arrest warrant for a crime an individual is suspected of being involved with. All the person who has the warrant needs to do is turn themselves in to police to deal with the matter and the warrant is expired. But because there is an estimated 20,000 outstanding warrants in Manitoba at any given time, it is very easy for someone with a warrant to ignore it because the police simply do not have the time to seek out these individuals. They are too busy answering the day to day emergency calls they receive.

Most often, people with outstanding warrants are discovered by police in routine ways, like during a traffic stop for example. Unlike what we might see on T.V., it is not the result of an extensive manhunt.

Because of this, individuals with warrants who are also on welfare often receive these taxdollars by simply ignoring their warrants. In essence, they are getting paid to avoid the law.

More than a year ago I brought in legislation to Manitoba that would end any welfare payments to individuals who had an outstanding arrest warrant. And while the NDP government originally dismissed the idea, after significant public support was demonstrated they flip-flopped and passed legislation that would end the flow of welfare dollars to those with arrest warrants. While I was disappointed it took a while for the government to act, I was glad they finally did and said so publicly. That should have been the end of the story. Unfortunately, when dealing with the NDP, things are rarely that simple.

A year later, criminals with outstanding arrest warrants are still eligible for welfare payments because the NDP have refused to proclaim the legislation into law. While it passed the Legislature quickly last year it is still not valid law because they refuse to give it proclamation.

While this is disappointing, it is not surprising. The NDP were always ambivalent to the idea of ending welfare payments to those with outstanding warrants. They reluctantly supported the idea only after widespread public pressure and then only when faced with an imminent provincial election. And every day that the legislation is not proclaimed into law it sends the wrong message to those who obey the law as well as to those who don’t.