By Frances Russell | July 24, 2013 The man who would be Manitoba's next premier grew up on a farm near Portage la Prairie, towers over all his political adversaries at six feet eight inches, reached national level success in baseball, curling and basketball, plays the piano and sings at weddings, used the proceeds from his insurance business to buy a $2 million, 9,000-square foot house on Winnipeg's prestigious Wellington Crescent along the Assiniboine River – and is a Conservative right out of the Stephen Harper mould. One of his long-time political opponents describes him as ruthless, abrasive, insensitive and downright nasty. “He's a one-man show.” “I feel like a steer,” the man himself said in a lengthy profile published in the Winnipeg Free Press last March after he took over the Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party leadership uncontested. “But it's not because I don't have the balls. It's because I can't feel the power.” The erstwhile Manitoba PC MLA, former Minister of Government Services in the Gary Filmon PC government and two-term Portage-Lisgar Canadian Alliance/Conservative MP is definitely feeling the power now. After 14 years in office, Manitoba's NDP government led by Premier Greg Selinger is trailing in the polls for the first time. And Pallister can claim a lot of the credit due to the province's draconian Balanced Budget, Debt Repayment and Taxpayer Protection Law which he authored and is now using to pummel his NDP adversaries. Facing enormous budgetary pressure thanks to the disastrous Assiniboine River/Lake Manitoba floods of 2012, the Selinger government decided this spring to raise Manitoba's provincial sales tax by one point to eight per cent without holding a province-wide referendum as required by Pallister's novel law. Premier Gary Filmon's Conservatives made it the centrepiece of their victorious 1995 provincial election campaign and placed it on the province's statute books immediately upon securing a majority government. Incidentally, by the time Filmon's PCs embraced Pallister's balanced budget idea, they had added $4 billion to Manitoba's accumulated $14 billion debt. Pallister's balanced budget law stipulates that budgets must be balanced every year with only a few exceptions: a natural or other disaster “that could not have been anticipated; “a war or apprehension of war;” and “a reduction in revenue of five per cent or more.” Finally, the legislation states, “if there is a deficit in a fiscal year that is not authorized by this Act, the government is required to achieve at least an offsetting surplus in the next fiscal year.” Nor does the draconian statute stop there. Under the section entitled “Referendum for Tax Changes,” the law goes on to require that “the government shall not present to the Legislative Assembly a bill to increase the rate of any tax…listed below unless the government first puts the question…to the voters of Manitoba in a referendum…” The taxes affected are all the major ones: income, corporate and sales. Pallister, a fiscal hawk every bit as dogmatic, doctrinaire and prickly as Harper, began his anti-deficit anti-tax crusade in July, 1993 by writing a letter to the right-wing Fraser Institute asking if the U.S. had balanced budget laws and whether they were effective. He received a reply from then-Fraser Institute policy analyst John Robson, now a columnist with the Ottawa Sun, described by one of his former colleagues at the Ottawa Citizen as “a real conservative who has never wavered from his principles.” Robson assured Pallister in a lengthy article published in the May 1994 Fraser Forum that there were many balanced-budget laws in the U.S., but they weren't very successful. Robson's feature article, entitled Yes, Mr. Pallister. There is a Balanced-Budget Amendment, was anything but encouraging. Forty-eight of the 50 American states had constitutionalized balanced-budget provisions. But by 1990, these states had an accumulated total debt of $860 billion. In an effort to find hope in despair, Robson did point out that because of the balanced-budget provisions, "the problem became visible much more quickly." But when he turned to Canada, his prognosis became even bleaker. “ Unfortunately, and this is the part of my reply you may find the most depressing... (L)egislative controls like the U.S. Gramm-Rudman Act, or various expenditure-control measures by our own federal government, apparently can't do it either,” Robson continued. “The condition of our provinces and of Ottawa suggest that legislative restraint is not very reliable. Politics is hard to manage. Even the U.S. Congress doesn't pass laws binding on itself.” Robson concluded the only real sanction is public opinion. He didn't give his views on Pallister's taxpayer referendum idea. Perhaps because he sees himself not just as a fiscal hawk, but also because Manitoba's Balanced Budget, Debt Repayment and Taxpayer Protection Law is his baby, Pallister, now Manitoba's opposition leader, is going to the wall for it politically. As might be imagined, the proposed one-point rise in the provincial sales tax (PST) from seven to eight per cent has enraged the opposition and the business community. But there's a question mark hovering over how angry Manitobans really are. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation was only able to collect about 8,000 signatures on its July 18 petition against the PST hike. Commented one Free Press reader, tongue-in-cheek: “I have a beef with the PST increase. Before the increase, two Slurpees (well they're not official Slurpees but they're Co-op equivalents) cost me $4.02 and that was rounded down to $4.00, but now it's $4.05 and I have to bring an extra nickel every time. Damn you, Selinger! Woof!” The Conservatives have been fillibustering government business since mid-June and are now poised to shut the government down completely by refusing to pass the supply motion required to pay the province's bills, including the salaries of the provincial civil service. Trapped in Manitoba's massive un-airconditioned limestone legislative building now well into July, MLAs' tempers are becoming ever more frayed. Last week, NDP House leader Jennifer Howard accused Pallister of calling an unidentified NDP MLA a “retard,” causing Pallister to issue a fierce denial and hit back with “It's all false. It never stops” and “just another NDP smear campaign.” Not only are the Conservatives continuing their fillibuster but they have hired one of the province's top lawyers to challenge the province's PST hike in the courts, claiming the government is breaking the law by not holding a referendum. “ We're standing with Manitobans today against an injustice the provincial government is trying to perpetuate against all Manitobans and our future," Pallister said. Howard claims the stalemate is threatening to "push the government over a fiscal cliff. We're heading into uncharted territory now. We've never seen the opposition use such a scorched earth policy,” she told the House last week. “You don't wait until catastrophe to act. And these guys want to be government? I shudder to think about that.” Conservative House leader Kelvin Goertzen, rumoured to be considering running for reently-retired Public Safety Minister Vic Toews' Provencher seat, hurled back that “This is self-induced hysteria. They have no ability to manage this so they cause panic.” If the Conservatives' fillibuster does end up pushing the province over a fiscal cliff, they might not be the only ones who will face the wrath of voters. The New Democrats have allowed a law they knew to be toxic to rational public governance to remain on the province's statute books throughout their 14 years in power simply because they feared the rage of Canada's burgeoning anti-tax lobby. Frances Russell was born in Winnipeg and graduated from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and political science. A journalist since 1962, she has covered and commented on politics in Manitoba, Ontario, B.C. and Ottawa, working for The Winnipeg Tribune, United Press International, The Globe and Mail, The Vancouver Sun and The Winnipeg Free Press as well as freelanced for The Toronto Star, The Edmonton Journal, CBC Radio and TV and Time Magazine. She is the author of two award-winning books on Manitoba history: Mistehay Sakahegan - The Great Lake: The Beauty and the Treachery of Lake Winnipeg and The Canadian Crucible - Manitoba's Role in Canada's Great Divide. Both won the Manitoba Historical Society Award for popular history. She is married with one son and two grandsons and lives in Winnipeg.